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Toshiba Slammed for No-Redress Over Laptop Glitch
Japanese electronic firm Toshiba, is under fire for its refusal on Sunday to compensate Chinese consumers as it did in the United States for a disk drive flaw in their laptop computers that could cause data loss, according to Tuesday's China Daily.
Lin Xiaobing with Toshiba China, who earlier told China Youth Daily that Toshiba would not compensate Chinese users, said in a telephone interview on May 15 that the company was waiting for directions from its headquarters in Japan.
China Youth Daily reported that Toshiba said that they would not compensate Chinese users as they had in the US because China does not have as stringent consumer protection laws as the United States.
A Beijing-based news website, 21DNN, broke the story on May 8, and the news soon spread in China via the Internet.
Toshiba agreed to compensate US$1.05 billion to some 500,000 Toshiba notebook computer users in the United States for its disk drive problem.
Toshiba denied that "the floppy disk controller constitutes a problem or defect in Toshiba notebook" on its US website, adding that "Toshiba is not aware of the instance in which one of our users has experienced data loss or data corruption."
In order to avoid possible lawsuits in the United States, Toshiba agreed to compensate consumers.
Lin told China Youth Daily that the compensation is focused on US market and is not a global-wide measure.
He admitted that Toshiba fears that a lawsuit in the United States could harm the company's image.
Lin also admitted that "theoretically, the computer bug could lead to data loss."
Law professor Dong Ansheng at Beijing's Renmin University told China Daily Monday that according to Chinese consumer protection laws, producers have to compensate consumers who can prove that damage has occurred when using a product.
To date, no cases of Chinese users losing data from their Toshiba laptops has been reported.
But some people saw the case from a different angle.
"Toshiba placed the news on a very prominent position on it's US website with a detailed compensation notice, while on its China website there is only a vague announcement on the issue with just a few words explaining the technical setback," said a report from 21DNN.
Local popular Internet news providers like Sina.com and Netease.com all posted the story prominently on their websites. Some users of these websites have expressed indignation over Toshiba in chatrooms.
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