bullzeye
Precision Pothole Locator
Well, their legal advisors seem to saying to them: "deny a few rather than pay for all". To them, this is purely a financial matter, no question about it.
IF a recall of 100,000 RT FDs were to be required at a cost of $3K each, they'd be looking at a $300-million outlay...BMW can pay a lot of lawyers for that kind of money.
But I maintain that it's a "chicken-egg" proposition...by paying a little more for better bearings (or whatever), the number of complaints might decrease, and the legal bill might be lower.
This is a "Quality" issue that goes to the heart of their (any) manufacturing organization, and lawyers are simply a "band-aid" for flawed decision making, poor quality and bad customer service.
I found this "admission" of quality issues by BMW in an old issue of Motorcycle news, from 2008:
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/N...tember/1-7/sep0108-bmw-admit-quality-problems
Good News: Sales are up!
Bad News: So are Quality Issues!
So, of course BMW knows there are problems, but in the interest of shareholder value, do not see it necessary (yet) to address them. We are left with only legal recourse, or are we?
Witness the ($1.5-billion?) settlement reached with Toyota this week following their "unexpected acceleration" debacle. "Quality isn't expensive, it's priceless!"
Perhaps we could attack this via BMW's quality program? For what it's worth, BMW is ISO-registered--which means there must be proscribed methods for systemic review of all internal processes, from design through customer satisfaction. Maybe there is an avenue to be taken that would cause BMW to reconsider their treatment of "non-conforming product" under threat of ISO de-certification? Or would we just get a corrective action report?
We clearly need a bigger, or different kind of hammer. The one tool we all share the ability to recommend (or to denounce) this company, its products and its customer service practices.
None of these quality issues really matter, until they happen to -you-!
IF a recall of 100,000 RT FDs were to be required at a cost of $3K each, they'd be looking at a $300-million outlay...BMW can pay a lot of lawyers for that kind of money.
But I maintain that it's a "chicken-egg" proposition...by paying a little more for better bearings (or whatever), the number of complaints might decrease, and the legal bill might be lower.
This is a "Quality" issue that goes to the heart of their (any) manufacturing organization, and lawyers are simply a "band-aid" for flawed decision making, poor quality and bad customer service.
I found this "admission" of quality issues by BMW in an old issue of Motorcycle news, from 2008:
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/N...tember/1-7/sep0108-bmw-admit-quality-problems
Good News: Sales are up!
Bad News: So are Quality Issues!
So, of course BMW knows there are problems, but in the interest of shareholder value, do not see it necessary (yet) to address them. We are left with only legal recourse, or are we?
Witness the ($1.5-billion?) settlement reached with Toyota this week following their "unexpected acceleration" debacle. "Quality isn't expensive, it's priceless!"
Perhaps we could attack this via BMW's quality program? For what it's worth, BMW is ISO-registered--which means there must be proscribed methods for systemic review of all internal processes, from design through customer satisfaction. Maybe there is an avenue to be taken that would cause BMW to reconsider their treatment of "non-conforming product" under threat of ISO de-certification? Or would we just get a corrective action report?
We clearly need a bigger, or different kind of hammer. The one tool we all share the ability to recommend (or to denounce) this company, its products and its customer service practices.
None of these quality issues really matter, until they happen to -you-!