Originally Posted by
sweeks
I get this. The question has to do with how the products are known to be at risk. I don't have any special knowledge of this, but I'm guessing that no one knew the products were at risk until there were failures.
This is the part I don't understand. I have a Tern bike. Shortly after I bought it, I was aware of the recall but my frame was not involved. Subsequently the recall was extended and my frame *was* involved. My understanding was that there were frame failures *outside* of the group of frames originally recalled, and so the recall was extended to include frames that had something in common with the more recent failures. I don't know how this is done (ranges of serial numbers, manufacturing dates, shifts, etc.), but I assume there is an effort to include all the frames that are likely to have a problem without recalling every frame ever made.
If 1,000 were at risk, why would only 100 be recalled? The products would be considered "at risk" because they share some significant feature with the one(s) that failed, as I indicated above.
I probably need to go back to school to more fully understand the nuances of manufacturing.
Steve
Steve, read back over this thread, between posts 30-40 where I explained weld design philosophy. The reason I think the recall started small was simply to limit their losses. I strongly suspect Tern knew about their dodgy weld design right from the moment they started getting broken frames back, but what are you going to do as a company to survive? You can't recall your ENTIRE sold stock and your warehouse stock, that will surely send any company broke. So they probably recalled as few bikes as they could, blamed it on dodgy manufacturing instead of faulty design. That way, they could issue a limited recall over a range of serial numbers. But as more and more frames broke, they were forced to expand the recall. In the meantime they introduced the reinforcement which you have on your bike.