Toshiba's Biggest Worry About Exploding Batteries Is Its Brand?
from the aren't-there-more-important-things? dept
Toshiba is one of a long, long list of laptop makers who has had to recall batteries made by Sony. However, Toshiba somehow seems to think this is all about them. They're considering suing Sony over the problems -- not, mind you, for the potential danger it put their customers in, but for the damage to Toshiba's brand. That, of course, assumes that anyone actually considers this a Toshiba problem. With just about every other major laptop maker being hit with the same problems, it's pretty difficult to see this impacting Toshiba's brand any harder than anyone else's. In fact, it's Sony's brand that's getting slammed throughout the whole thing. To be honest, about the biggest slam on Toshiba's brand seems to be the fact that they're more concerned about their own brand than on the fact that their laptops might explode and put their customers in danger.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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The average consumer
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Re: The average consumer
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This isn't upsetting
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The "Average" Consumer
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Well actually it is
If Ford or GM has a recall none of us blame the actual part maker but the automotive company we purchased the car from. It really is the responsibility of the company Toshiba etc. to maintain constant quality sampling and testing on parts from outside vendors.
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Concur
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I don't look at my IBM laptop and think that the battery was made by someone else, I bought it from IBM, and they are responsible for the parts.
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but ... they don't explode
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It is quite conceivable that they don't have any legal argument when suing for "potential harm" but have a good case with harm to the brand. Seems pretty dumb to piss on them for this when suing for something that 'could have happened' in U.S. courts would obviously go nowhere.
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They can probably make a good case that customers won't buy their brand anymore because they're afraid that yet another battery would explode (even if the battery is from Joe Shmo company). A customer may blame Toshiba for not performing proper quality assurance or something similar.
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branding
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