More bad news for Samsung: more Note 7 bans and a dramatic car fire

The bad news keeps piling on for Samsung, who just a few weeks ago was looking forward to a very successful holiday season. The Note 7 recall is threatening to turn the entire season in the opposite direction, and the latest news related to the Note 7 won’t help at all.

The Galaxy Note 7 has now been banned by a college, a first for the troubled device. New Jersey’s Stockton University emailed all students about the danger of using the Galaxy Note 7 on campus grounds and asked them to power off their devices until the remediation of the problem.

“Here at Stockton, we’re a small city. We have about 3,000 students that live on campus and anywhere from 10,000 individuals that come on our campus each day. So we wanted to take a proactive measure and assure that the environment is safe, and free from a potential fire,” said Pedro Santana, Dean of Students at Stockton University.

“We don’t want it in our campus,” said the dean.

The first college ban is followed by the first metro ban. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is now urging passengers to abstain from using or charging their Galaxy Note 7 while on MTA trains and buses.

Topping off a bad day for Samsung, the Galaxy Note 7 is being blamed for a dramatic car fire that occurred in Port St. Lucie, Florida. According to a local station, the 55-year-old driver said he was charging his Note 7 in his car when he heard a loud pop and that he believes that the exploding phone was the root cause for the fiery demise of his vehicle. No one was hurt in the incident.

In a perfect illustration of the perception problem that Samsung is facing right now, the local police department said on Facebook that the driver was charging his “Samsung 7” when the fire started. Whatever that means…