That’s one of my thoughts too.
Also, I sometimes think that manufacturers believe that a certain level of defects and customer complaints is an acceptable cost of doing business. They probably have a feeling that not all product defects or poor designs result in customer complaint or actual product failure. They may also feel that, those that do, can be handled more profitably than what it would cost to fix the problem. Redesign, or instituting a rigorous QA/QC program cost money that can eat into profits. So if a less than optimum design or failure rate does not rise to the level of a CSPC recall - they just go on with business as usual. Hopefully at least, they learn what to do better for the next product design as long as “value engineering” and profitability considerations don’t get in the way.
I have heard from a friend of mine in a industrial production business that they know full well they’ll never please everyone so they don’t try. TO the point they have complaint rejection policy, that works a bit like this. Say you sell 5000 units of something in the first month of intro. You get 150 unfavorable reviews but more importantly you get 90 actual product returns from the stores. Taking them back from customers, etc.
Of that 90, you might ignore 30 of them. Of the remaining 60 there will be a review of the complaints and if there isn’t complaint of actual hard defect it gets ignored too. Something like the switch is too soft, or things like that are often ignored too. He tried to explain the math and it was going to require paper to work though. at any rate their process was created with a psychologist or something. Since that conversation I’ve looked at how I complain about things I buy carefully. If they do that I assume other companies of size do something similar.
Anywho I’m glad this case worked out.