My friend Sue has (had) a Char-Broil gas grill for a little over a year when it malfunctioned and could have easily burned down her house. When she called the company instead of trying to defuse and solve a bad situation the company apparently tried to blame her for what clearly seems to me to be a defective product.
How do I know this? Well, Sue has a blog and wrote about it. I had never heard of this problem before so I did a quick generic search (Char-Broil Gas Grill) and found lots of examples of this happening. The first one I found was on the second page of Google, but I believe it’s probably moving up fast and soon may be found right up there with the companies own site on the first page. Imagine that! A potential customer searches for your name and right below your site they see complaints about shoddy products and poor customer service. In my mind that’s no way to build any business.
I have written before about the problem of ignoring or blaming others for your problems and the proper way to handle problems. This situation is yet another lesson in how not to behave. You may say it’s not really the companies problem, but I say that even if it only looks like they’re at fault, in today’s era of social networking and commentary, in the end the company will always lose this fight and maybe big time.