I am from a poorer European country, and I've never noticed that. But it's a commonly held belief. We're paying the same prices or higher, so I don't see how it makes sense to sell devices that don't pass QC for other countries :/
And you are often getting a worse bin or even completely different product under the same name for that! This is 100% true, and the big co will continue doing that for as long as they they think they can get away with that.
Samsung is notorious for that. Some of their devices with the same name can have up to 4 different sets of internals for sale in different countries.
As I said, it has not been my experience. But Chinese products like Huawei and Xiaomi are extremely popular due to lower price and similar quality, so if Samsung and other companies really do this, well they're giving up market share for no reason imo.
>> I am from a poorer European country, and I've never noticed that.
I am too. My distant acquaintance does business with a large retailer in the UK where they would buy returned products off the retailer at a much cheaper price (e.g. defects) and resell them in the Baltics.
