Toyota: Old Recalls, New Investigations
05-19-2010
By Mike Rozembajgier
Sales are back up. The company has agreed to pay a big fine. But Toyota isn’t out of the woods yet. As plaintiffs lawyers and judges sift through legal documents, including complaints filed by Toyota drivers, the company is facing new federal investigations related to its recalls – both past and present. Make no mistake, a federal agency is not above investigating your past recalls – even ones that may have happened more than five years ago – to determine whether you did things right. As a result, recalls are an ever growing threat to your brand and corporate reputation.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently announced a new investigation into Toyota’s recall of 2003 Sequoia SUVs. The recall was originally announced in 2005 and affected almost a million trucks and SUVs. The problem? Defective steering rods that could slow acceleration. News reports suggest that not only is there question about whether Toyota was timely in its recall process, but whether drivers were forced to pay for a defect that the automaker may have known about for years. An effective recall remedy should never cause the consumer additional harm, inconvenience, or even money.
But let’s take a closer look at what’s behind NHTSA’s latest investigation of Toyota. Just what does it mean to conduct a timely recall? First, it requires that the company closely monitor consumer complaints for potential problems. Then, perhaps the most critical step in Toyota’s case, the company must recognize when a problem poses a danger to consumers and do something to fix it as soon as possible. That often means a recall.
It seems like a fairly straightforward process. But don’t be confused. Monitoring and sifting through consumer complaints for potential risks and then identifying the probability that a given pattern of complaints could suggest a real risk to consumers can be tricky. With a product as complex as an automobile, there is always room for user error.
But if there is any possibility at all that a recall may be necessary, it’s probably best to consult your legal counsel, recall experts, and even federal regulators. If the regulators get to you first and find out that you knew about the problem and took no action to fix or prevent it, you could be in big trouble.
The lesson: it’s never too late for federal regulators to decide that you failed to conduct a recall in a timely manner.
Stericycle ExpertRECALL™ is the industry leader in recall logistics and regulatory compliance for consumer product, pharmaceutical, medical device, juvenile product, and food and beverage recalls. ExpertRECALL’s professionals are experts in recall management who can help you streamline the entire product recall process.
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