Last Christmas I bought my eldest daughter a Samsung Tocco Lite mobile phone. I bought it from Phones4U, as they were also providing a free Samsung 8GB Micro SD card.

4 months of use later and the card has failed. And I don’t mean the data has gone – it appears the controller has stopped working and, hence, the card is totally inaccessible. Unfortunately, my daughter didn’t backup her myriad of photos, videos and music.

But… seriously? 4 months?

I’ve contacted Phones4u and, with no quibble, said they’d send out a replacement card.

I thought I’d also contact Samsung to see if there’s anything they can do about recovering the data. Or at least query why their card lasted so little amount of time. Unfortunately, Samsung UK only offer support via phone or post – no twitter or email support. I tried the phone option but it appears to be an Indian-based Helpdesk and I gave up.

I’ll try sending a letter and see how that goes – Phones4u haven’t asked for the faulty card back so I can hold onto that in case Samsung are able to do anything about the contents.

There are companies that will remove the memory chip and recover the contents, but it’s an expensive process.

So, top marks to Phones4u and a wooden spoon to Samsung. So far. Can they redeem themselves?