Response to case study scenario 1

Given the consequences that could occur in the event of a fire, I would put forward the idea that the manager should rethink his response. Ignoring this problem could cause a fatal fire and the company may be liable for damages caused by the faulty device.
Should the manager ignore my request, the matter would be reported to the customer support department manager as they are also able to proceed with the actions to rectify this problem. This would ensure that any decision has been made by someone who deals with faulty products, instead of the CEO of the company who has many more important things to worry about then a single batch of faulty products. The CEO would be someone to contact should the manager or point of contact that I have reported to ignores the problem, as they are then neglecting the companies responsibilities to provide safe products to its consumers.

It is the responsibility of the company to ensure that its products are safe to use and if any of these should cause a fire it could easily put a lot more potential customers off the idea of buying such a product. In such an industry as USB memory pens, many similar priced and specified alternatives can be found easily and consumers are more likely to buy another make if they hear a bad report about a certain make.

Although it may only be a small percentage, what if the fault condition was to develop in the units which passed the test. This could be the case, if the batch were all constructed from the same batch of materials then they all have the potential to develop the same fault.

Noting that all of the batch went to the same consumer, recalling the products and issuing replacements should be an easy goal to achieve. This should also build a relationship with the customer that may lead to more business in the future.

I would suggest either recalling the whole batch or alerting the customer to the defect and offer a free replacement scheme should they wish to take part.
Although both of these are valid options, it may be hard to communicate, as the products may have been sold to a business which then sold them on to the general public.

I have myself, experienced a situation where a number of batteries for my make and model of laptop were faulty. The situation called for the customers to return the battery if they experienced certain symptoms with the battery. This was made available through the support section of the website and you could check your status through the serial number of the battery. Although if the same symptoms occur with a battery that was not included in the recall scheme the users had the option to call the support hotline for further help.
The support hotline was the method I used, due to the serial number of my battery not being listed as part of the faulty batch.