Owners File Class Action Suit Against Dometic

[Retiredin1993]

https://rv-pro.com/news/owners-file-class-action-suit-against-dometic#.VxqV4jg5-Io.facebook

[Al F]

While I know little about the legal side of the argument, I always wondered about the recall. It seemed the recall focused on stopping or limiting damage instead of fixing why the tubing cracked or split in the first place. After all these absorption fridges have been around for decades w/o the problem and then all of sudden lots of them have the tubing break open.

[Kirk W]

I have had the same question as Al. I suspect that may play a part in the suit. I also know that the owner of ARP-rv tried to sell or license the use of his safety device to the Dometic people and was rejected out of hand. I had quite a conversation with Paul from ARPrv about this. He also approached Norcold and they responded with an attempt to make a small modification to his product and then patent it themselves, but were rejected by the patent office.

 

I have long wondered why the fire problem developed when it was not around for many years previously. What has changed?

[Al F]

What probably changed, is what goes on with any mass produced product, management & engineers analyze the manufacturing process to find ways to lower the cost of making the product.

 

Sometimes the reduced cost reduces the reliability of the part so it breaks where as the old slightly more expensive process would not have failed.

 

Or they found a new supplier to build a part for a lower cost, and the new supplier didn't build as durable a part.

 

IMO, nothing wrong with a company trying to lower the cost of building a product, unless it lowers the reliability of the product.

 

Now for Dometic or Norcold to go back and spend millions to replace many thousands of the possibly defective cooling systems is not likely to happen. Big business figures it is less expensive to just fight it out in court, pay something to settle some cases out of court and not fix the underlying problem. Works fine for the big businesses, until something gets big enough for courts to get some emails or something which shows they knew about the problem.