The five stages of product recall

Today’s column was going to be about the recent reports from Europe on a certain brand of mobile phone exploding, but despite a weekend of digging around on the topic, I’ve no idea if those allegations are true.

What did come out from that weekend’s research is a pattern of responses to past debacles, from exploding batteries to flimsy laptop screens, dud operating systems, support failures and the Leyland P76.

In an eerie way, it’s like Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief. Lets have a look at them:

1. Denial and Isolation

“There is no problem. Go away.”

“You still here? Damn. Well, the claims are product is crashing randomly, exploding, setting fire to people’s balconies and scaring their cats is a figment of a few anonymous bloggers and a media beat up.”?

2. Anger

“Our product is designed to the highest engineering standards and manufactured to .0001 micron precision. Any failure in them is due to operator misuse and will void the customer’s warranty.”

“Claims the product has a design flaw are unsubstantiated claims by journalists in the thrall of our competitors and proof of the left wing, anti-business bias of certain media organisations.”

3. Bargaining

“We have no comment as to whether we are compensating customers for the damages allegedly caused by our product.”

“Accusations we’ve offered Caribbean holidays to the entire tech journalist and blogger communities are totally unfounded.”?

4. Depression

“Yes, we have discovered an usual and unexpected flaw in our product. As a consequence we have fired three contractors in our Mount Gambier sales office and senior management will go on a five day dealing with crisis course in Tahiti.”

“We still maintain our products are designed and manufactured to the highest standards and are considering legal action against scurrilous bloggers and those media outlets that misreported this unfortunate chain of events.”

5. Acceptance

“Okay, we messed up.”

“We’ve dropped the lawsuits, paid the fines to EU consumer protection authorities, plea bargained a five year prison sentence for our North American managers, compensated our injured customers and are now working on a better product that won’t lose your data, catch fire on your back balcony or break down in Lane 6 of the Harbour Bridge during a wet winter morning peak.”

“We’ve learned our mistakes and won’t repeat them.”

“Honestly. You can trust us.”

Paul Wallbank is a writer, speaker and broadcaster on technology issues. He founded national support organisation PC Rescue in 1995 and has spent over 14 years helping businesses get the most from their IT investment. His PC Rescue and IT Queries websites provide free advice to business computer users and his monthly newsletter has over 3000 subscribers.

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