Samsung has issued a highly unusual double recall of the Galaxy Note7 phone and its replacement after persistant reports of battery fires. Both Consumer Reports and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) have urged Note7 owners to power down these phones and bring them back for either a refund or an alternate phone.
But it's unlikely that Samsung's recall and return program will get all Note7s out of customers' hands. And those remaining phones could cause a public safety risk—not just to the owners, but to those around them. The potential danger was brought into stark relief when reports surfaced that a replacement Note7 caught fire on a Southwest Airlines flight before takeoff on Oct. 5.
“Historically, manufacturers have had a difficult time with recalls,” says Dirk C. Gibson, associate professor at the University of New Mexico, who has analyzed product recalls since the mid-1990s. “Recall return rates, even for the most dangerous products, never approach 100 percent. In fact, they rarely reach 50 percent.”
And there's little reason to think that will change this time around. According to reports, only a relatively small number of models have actually overheated or burst into flames. And the current incentive offered by Samsung and its cell partners—a different Samsung phone and $100 credit, or $25 credit for those customers who choose a phone from a different manufacturer—may not be enough for people who have not only grown to like their phones, but have also spent time and effort to fill those phones with apps, photos, and contact info for their friends.
That leaves Samsung, cell phone service providers, and officials at the CPSC with a difficult challenge. If the public isn't sufficiently motivated to turn in the phones, how do you compel people to do that? Could the company or the cell service providers go so far as to render those phones inoperable, and "brick" them with some sort of automatic software update?
We posed that question to Samsung and the four major carriers. Samsung, AT&T, and T-Mobile declined to comment, while Sprint and Verizon have not yet responded. We also reached out to legal and regulatory experts to see whether it was legally possible, or even advisable, to disable these phones remotely.
Attorney David Wix, a partner at Tarpey Wix LLC, who has represented clients such as phone maker Kyocera in dealings with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, was intrigued. “If they send out some kind of notice, perhaps through the phone, that service will be shut off in a certain amount of days, I think it’s a good idea.”