Sony sure is a PR nightmare, not to mention their careless disregard for the safety and security of their customers. Apparently knowingly installing rootkit software on their music CDs which opened up their customer’s personal computers to hacking (which ultimately lead to a lawsuit and recall) wasn’t quite enough for them, as it’s now coming to light that with the current issues that Sony faces with their laptop batteries catching on fire, they apparently knew that the batteries were flawed and vulnerable to overheating and catching on fire!
As the number of Sony laptop batteries affected by a recall of the flawed Sony batteries continues to skyrocket, Fujitsu announced this week that they were also recalling some 287,000 Sony laptop batteries used in current-model Fujitsu laptops. Apple and Dell had most notoriously and recently recalled flawed Sony batteries, after laptops from both lines had caught fire under normal use when their Sony batteries had overheated and ignited.
The total number of Sony batteries recalled worldwide has now exceeded a whopping 7.5 million.
Now, according to an article this week in Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, it appears that Sony knew about the battery problems as early as the fall of 2005. That was when the first Dell laptop burst into flames, igniting both itself and a public outcry at the problem. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun article, Sony back then determined that the problem was a flaw in the battery manufacturing process which had caused metal particles to be left behind in the battery.
Of course, the recall is estimated to have already cost Sony nearly a half billion dollars, however the cost to consumers who have had to deal with their computer catching on fire is, well, priceless.
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Knowing your product catches fire and doing nothing about it… Did Sony learn nothing from the Ford debacle with the Pinto?
Sure, you don’t have families suffering fiery deaths when the batteries fail, but fire and explosion of any form, even if they do not cause injury are sensational images that can seriously affect the outcome of a jury trial.
Dumb, dumb Sony.