Product Recalls – Worthwhile or Inconvenient?

A little while back, Dyson issued a safety notice regarding its DC05 Motorhead vacuum cleaner. In a nutshell, electrical contacts in the vacuum hose could be exposed as a result of cracking or detachment on the handle. As a sign of good will, Dyson offered customers two choices:

1. Receive a replacement part free of charge, or
2. Get a discounted upgrade (for around $329) to the current DC23 Motorhead (normally sold @ $1,099).

For us, this was a no brainer. Since the vacuum was about ten years old and a 70% discount was on offer it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Dyson also covered the postage of the vacuum cleaner back to them which was a bonus and would call back their customers once received.

Who wouldn’t take up this offer?

Well, it seems like everyone knows a bargain when they see it and Dyson have been receiving approximately 200 vacuum cleaners a day. Apparently, Dyson now have a huge warehouse full of them and a huge backlog of upgrades to process. I think the marketing or PR person that crunched the numbers may have severely underestimated how popular the upgrade option was going to be,

As you can imagine, vacuum cleaners are one of the more prominent cleaning devices in a household and up there with washing machines, dryers and dishwashers.I can imagine that a typical household would only have a maximum of one of each of these devices. As such, if one of these devices fails there often isn’t a backup device on hand. Hoping for a speedy turnaround, the missus and I didn’t bother looking for an interim replacement.

Sadly, things have not been as fast as we had hoped.

The missus and I have now been without a vacuum cleaner for nine days. With two dogs in the house, I prefer the vacuum once every couple of days and as you can imagine, the floor needs some attention. The missus contacted Dyson today about when we could expect our phone call to finalise the upgrade and was duly advised about the overwhelming response to the upgrade offer with thousands of vacuum cleaners to process.

What I think Dyson needs to realise is that while vacuum cleaners might be a work of art for them (and a money spinner if they can afford a 70% discount even to save face), it is an important modern appliance for the everyday family. The longest I would have anticipated coping without a vacuum cleaner would have been a week.

Dyson, you need to take a serious look at your upgrade process or throw more people at it to handle the situation. Any good will (or butt-covering depending how you look at it) you are attempting to generate is being lost through a slow, uninformed process and lack of communication with your customers.