Originally Posted by
Bob Dopolina
You obviously don't do a lot of shipping.
The cost to ship a completely boxed bike is 10x what it costs to ship a fork. Beyond the liability calculations (which are real) depending on the expected rate of failure it might be cheaper to just ship all new forks. But...
There is also the problem of actually producing enough forks to do a complete recall in a timely fashion. I've never made forks so I don't know what the capacity per day is for a fork mold, how many molds they own and how quickly they could produce enough forks to replace all the ones in question. I'm sure this calculation was done and factored in.
My point is that some may be reading too much into HOW they are handling the recall and that there may be other factors involved.
I have done a lot of shipping and even presided over shipping departments.
Your shipping cost comments are moot. Every single bike affected by this recall will have its fork removed and shipped to Specialized, checked and then shipped back. As stated this calculus is all carefully planned. Indeed Specialized may not have to tool up for 12,000 replacement forks. But they know they will have to replace a subset...based upon a statistical guess of those or they wouldn't be participating in this recall. They likely even know the time period and lot of forks that are bad...just can't correlate this to bikes in the field and why the breadth of the recall.
I know a lot about recalls. Fortune 100 companies have dedicated 'departments' which exist only to reduce revenue loss balancing liability versus recall and replacement. My observations are based upon what Specialized is doing..or not doing and nothing more.