High-flying phone problem solved by Turn to Ted team

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Tina Farilona Savino is a flight attendant so she spends a lot of time in the air.

And if this single mom wants to stay in touch while up there - she needs to connect to onboard Wi-Fi. Earlier this spring, she got a brand new Samsung phone.

"Phone was awesome - it worked perfectly fine," Savino said.

But after a upgrading the operating system this spring, she ran into trouble.

"The moment I did the update, the phone would never connect again to the aircraft wifi," Savino said.

Thinking it was a Sprint issue, she called them.

"I know I made 22 phone calls with Sprint."

But in the end it wasn't Sprint. So she turned to Samsung.

"They factory reset the phone."

That didn't work. She sent the phone in.

"It still didn't work on the aircraft."

She sent it in again. No luck. So she turned to ABC13's Turn to Ted team.

By then she'd also been writing the CEO's office. Samsung was familiar with Tina's issue. Once we called - they called her.

"They gave me two offers," Savino said. "One was to replace the phone or refund the money."

A Samsung spokesperson told us, "We regret the experience (Tina had)... and have worked with her to (resolve it). This experience is extremely rare for the many Samsung phones sold in the U.S."

Tina decided on a new Samsung phone, the company shipped it, she took it on board and success.

This is really another case where her persistence and insistence on a solution paid off. Samsung says they've never seen something like this before. But says customers should always start with their 800 number.

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