Point taken about grey imports, although Samsung (or any other product manufacturer for that matter) should be able to differentiate between their genuine imported product and a grey, non-Samsung made product. These are global products made to exacting global quality standards and have serial numbers that can be tracked across the globe. So as far as Im concerned warranties should be able to apply globally and there should be systems and standards to verify genuine products from grey products for purposes of validating warranties.
This refusal to endorse a warranty on a genuine imported product sounds like a scam to get us to buy locally marketed products which tend to be pricey compared to imported products (even when shiping costs are taken into account)
Grey are not fake products, those are black, grey are products brought into the country through unofficial channels, its not only Samsung that does it and its not only south africa, every manufacturer in every country in the world has the same policy, that why laptops get advertised with global warranties, if you moved to London and took your LG tv with you your warranty would be useless toy ou there, same with any and all other products you buy. The serial number is how they track that its not an official import.
Remember it costs them money to repair this product and having come through unofficial channels there is no way to determine if any alterations were made tot he device by the grey seller, which is something that has and does happen often, electronics are sent to a country for specific reasons and in some cases there are slight differences in devices depending on the country based on the countries laws, signal requirements and what not depending on the type of product.
Also the other risk in grey imports and its literally luck of the draw, is local customs charges for unofficial imports of electronics can be as much as 300% of the sale price. I have personally had a parcel stopped at customs and was contacted to provide a copy of the original sales receipt, clearance fee was R25 and an additional duty fee of 70% was imposed, by the time i got my ram it was already above the current retail price in part because of shipping time, but also that serious duty fee, that kit was R1800 when i ordered it @ R950ish, but the time it arrived the market price had dropped to about R1300/R1400 and by the time customs had screwed me i paid almost R1700 for it, basically only saving R100 off the price of when i ordered it but R300 more than what i would of paid had i walked into computer mania. Official importers like Samsung pay at most a 15% duty fee, something to do with market promotion and economical growth, at one stage the private and commercial import duties were both bellow 100%, but once they changed official to a cap of 15% they greatly increased the maximum private import to prevent people from doing exactly what you are about to.
If they don't check it you are likely to pay no import fee, maybe not even a clearance fee, but if they run that through an x-ray they will most certainly stop it, open, and then decide if and how much they will charge you to actually get it. If they request an invoice they will calculate it against the current days exchange rate, so if the exchange has shifted you could end up paying a clearance fee based on an amount higher than what you actually paid for the product and legally speaking up to 3X that amount. Although i do know many people who import products and in most cases its 70% - 100%, they have to be in a really **** mood to go higher than that.
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