Digital Journal — Oy vey. Those were the only two words that came to mind when I heard Canon is recalling more than 140,000 copiers because they could spew smoke or catch fire.
Before you bolt for the home office to check your Canon copier, realize this recall only affects units made in Japan between 1987 and 1997. The hoopla surrounds a faulty connection involving the power cord, which means the machines could overheat and erupt in flames. Three instances of Canon copiers overheating have been reported since 1992, the latest in July this year.
And so it goes for tech companies scrambling to save face amidst serious shortcomings in their products. Canon’s recall is the latest in a laundry list of tech giants who are warning customers about faulty product lines: Apple recalled 1.8 million notebooks with defective Sony-built batteries, Dell announced that 4.1 million faulty batteries have infected their notebooks (the largest recall in U.S. consumer electronics history) and Panasonic recalled more than 6,000 laptop batteries due to fears they may overheat.
While the dire news from Canon may not tarnish the company’s brand, it will undoubtedly frustrate customers who don’t want to worry about smoke inhalation from their electronics. The Canon recall could push people over the edge into unrestrained anger, a perfectly justifiable reaction to an industry rushing to release the latest gadgets without giving us full safety assurance.
Imagine if food manufacturers were facing the same problem: Factory workers mistakenly dropping dangerous objects into soda bottles, forcing the parent company to recall millions of sugar-water jugs; microwave dinners exploding because of building pressure under that plastic seal; canned mushroom soup actually containing psychedelic mushrooms. The public would be enraged, parents would start picketing, and the media would be screaming with headlines about consumer protection.
Why isn’t this happening with the influx of technology recalls? Each time we hear about an exploding gadget, companies rush to save face by calling mistakes “isolated incidents” that have been dealt with appropriately.
But production errors only ripple to people who have the units — a decidedly small margin compared to pop buyers or soup eaters. But if you dig technology in all its glory, these recalls should be a rain on your Best Buy parade.
Whether the industry likes it or not, consumers will eventually become more skeptical about that new laptop with the knowledge that its batteries could be susceptible to overheating. Soon, everyone could be a suspect.
The tech industry needs to wake up and smell the smoke before it lights a fire under itself.
