Mary: Good afternoon everybody, welcome back. I just want to remind everyone, again my name is Mary House, I'm an attorney in the office of general counsel. The views and comments and opinions of staff this afternoon are just that. They have not been reviewed or approved by the Commission, and may not necessarily represent the views of the Commission. I'm going to briefly go over the sections of 6A that are relevant to report to the farm. As Melissa discussed this morning, we have to, the Commission is required to establish a databases which is publically searchable, publically available searchable and accessible through the internet. The database must contain a clear and conspicuous notice to users that the Commission does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the database contents. This afternoon we're going to be going over to the database which are reports of harm which are defined as incidents of illness, injury, death or the risk of illness, injury or death, relating to the use of consumer products, or other products or substances regulated by the Commission. The Commission must provide that submissions of reports of harm submitted electronically, telephonically, or via paper based. Database must include reports of harm received from consumers, local, state or federal government agencies, healthcare professionals, child service providers and public safety entities. There are five minimum requirements that a report of harm must contain in order to appear in the publically searchable database. That, those are a description of the consumer product, an identification of the manufacturer, the private labeler of the consumer product, description of the harm related to the use of the consumer product. Contact information of the submitter of the report of harm. And a verification by the submitter of the truth and accuracy of the information in the report and consent to include such information in the publically searchable database. The provisions of section 6A and 6B relating to product specific information that identifies the manufacturer does not apply to reports disclosed in the public database. With regard to procedural requirements, once a report of harm is submitted that meets those five minimum requirements, the Commission has, to the extent practical, no later than five business days to transmit such report to the manufacturer. The manufacturer, or the private labeler may submit a comment on the information the report of harm, and request that such comment be included in the public database. Any comments received and requested to be posted, shall be made available at the same time the report of harm is made available or at some, you know, as soon as practical thereafter. I don't see that there's a time limit on comments necessarily, but if they're given to us in time we would include those at the same time as the report of harm. The report of harm itself must be made available in the public database no later than the 10th business day after the date in which the Commission sends the report of harm to the manufacturer. With that, we will turn it over to James Overall.
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James: Make sure this is working. So I think almost everybody here, on the panel, was probably here for this morning's session. I'll keep the introduction very brief. As I said this morning, just to set a little context, sort of the, you know, why we're here, what we're, what we're looking to achieve. With regard to the public database, we're, within the agency right now, we're really in the phase of starting to figure out what the design of that thing looks like. So we've held a number of sessions internally. We also recognize of course the value of seeking public comment on the, the design as well, which is really what we're trying to achieve with these workshops over the, today and tomorrow. So to that end, the idea here is really that this is a, an informal back and forth dialogue if you will, a discussion. So more in the vein of a discussion than a testimony. I think, you know, for everyone who was here this morning, you saw there was a lot of good, just sort of back and forth between panel members, between CPSC staff and panel members, and audience participation. So we're, we're, we'd like to continue in that vein. Very briefly, a couple procedural things. With regard to the microphones, push the button to talk. Push the button again to turn it off. Red means you're on. Green means you're in the cue if there are already four people on, you'll go in the cue. What, what folks did this morning worked out really well, when you want to talk, push the button. I'll call on people as, as, I'll see your red lights light up. I'll call on people, keep, keep the conversation going that way. A couple other real quick things. My colleague Pat Doherty here is taking, capturing notes. This is primarily for the, the team here on the ground who are doing the design, development work. We're trying to capture decision points, outstanding issues, questions, concerns, things of that nature. There's also a professional transcript of, of the, the workshop that will be, be taken. I should also point out there are a number of people in the audience here who are part of the team that is working on designing the database. So the good news is, we're getting first hand, I'm part of that team. First point, we're getting first hand to hear what everyone says, which I think is, is fantastic. A couple other just really quick things. Make sure when you speak, please speak into the microphone. We had some comments this morning about, for the folks on the webcast, to hear people at times. So just make sure you're speaking in to the microphone. One other thing, we've got a, an email address set up for the folks who are at the, who are watching on the webcast. It's web, WorkshopQuestions@CPSC.gov. If you are watching on the webcast, and you have some questions that you would like to pose to our panel members or to our CPSC staff, please send.
[ Beep ] We'll track those real time, and we'll get to those later on in this workshop. One final note, there is an opportunity for audience participation towards the end. We've broken the panel up into two sessions. So at the end of each session we're going to reserve time for audience participation. I'll give everyone a, a heads up when we're getting close. So we can wrap up the discussion. We'll open up the microphone at the back, please feel free to step forward with your questions or comments for the panel or CPSC staff. With that, I'd like to turn it over, if everyone could very briefly give an introduction, name, organization your represent, and keep it under 60 seconds or so. We'll do that very briefly and then we'll get going.
Brad: Good afternoon, my name is Brad Brush, I'm general counsel for Alasco Products, Inc. out of Westchester, Pennsylvania. Alasco is a manufacturer primarily of consumer products, specifically and primarily fans, heaters and humidifiers. Thank you.
Wayne: Wayne Morris with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers in Washington, D.C.
Claire: Claire Crammer with Underwriters Laboratories, here out of Washington, D.C.
Liz: Liz Hitchcock with the U.S. Perk, the national federation of state public interest research groups based in D.C.
George: George Rutherford, with Engle Consulting Group, and I'm a 30 year vet of CPSC.
Steve: Steve Lempel, Fort Worth Association, the trade association based in Rosalind, Virginia.
Christine: Christine Hines with Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization and we're based here.
Elcho: Elcho with Interact. I'm a researcher based in Oakbrook, Illinois.
Nancy: Nancy Coles, with Kids In Danger, a non-profit that works on children's product safety based in Chicago.
Amiga: Amiga Diaz with Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.
Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Winetrap, director of Product Safety and senior counsel with Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit organization made up of consumer organizations based in Washington, D.C.
Phil: Phil Zipperman, I'm with the Consumer Production Division of the Attorney General's Office from Maryland.
Sean: Sean Canes, Safety Research and Strategies. We're a research advocacy firm specializing in motor vehicle, consumer product safety.
James: Okay, thanks very much. Let's jump right in. Just sort of set a little bit of the tone for this particular workshop. For those of you who were here for the last one, or were part of the panel for the last one, we kind of opened it up. We had six fairly broad questions. We opened up the discussion. For this particular panel though, with, as it pertains to reports of harm, and incident reporting, we'd like to take a slightly different tact, which is we've got a number of very specific questions actually that we posed as part of the public announcement. And I'd like to go through those one by one. Certainly if the, if the conversation, you know, moves on to a different question, we move to a different topic, that's perfectly acceptable. I would like to make sure though that the CPSC staff on our panel have opportunity to, to get feedback on each one of these questions. So with that said, we'll, we'll jump right in to the first question for this workshop. Which is, how should the CPSC design the incident report form so that it is clear and easy for users to complete? So if I could ask someone from the CPSC side to maybe give a, a very brief elaboration of what we're talking about here, and maybe talk briefly about some of the discussions we've had, and then pose that to the, to our panel.
Hi James. I guess I'll take this one. The, what we're talking about is the incident, incident report form. Currently there is an incident report form out on the CPSC website. We've gotten reports, we've gotten feedback that it can be improved upon. So what we're looking at for the new, for input into the new database is some of the things we talked about this morning. How can we en, capture necessary information, ensure the, the data quality. One thing we've been kicking around is drop down lists, instead of having a lot of free text fields where spelling errors can occur, we'll have drop down lists of manufacturers names, of categories, etc. So that we can, one, ensure that the data is correct, and two, make it easily searchable and sortable and that type of thing. The other, we talked about is adding more information. For example, I think that's also a comment we heard this morning, is ask, asking the consumer where they bought the, the product. The store they bought it at. Had they reported this incident to the manufacturer? If not, do they plan to? So those are all ideas that we're kicking around. Nothing's been formalized yet until we get everybody's feedback. But that's sort of the direction that we're, we're thinking about.
James: Okay thanks [inaudible]. Open it up to the panel at this point. Does anyone want to response to, to that question? George.
George: Just a small thought. Actually that, my associate, Robin England brought up earlier. And that was, I'm sure you've thought of it out there. After you come up with your form, test it. Give it to human factors and let them get some focus groups done, or somebody to look at it and see if it works before we put it out there to the world.
James: Yes.
I think before you start developing of the reach, some level of conclusion as to how you want to use the data and how it ought to be sorted. Because, to a certain degree, that'll drive the way you want to structure your form. And so if, from my perspective, the best forms would be ones that start very, to start to narrow down the fields of information very broadly and then work their way, I guess parametrically to a much broader base so that a consumer, when they're finally asked to do and enter significant amounts of information concerning what product they're reporting on, isn't going to be asked to yield or work their way through the entire universe of drop down menus. So, and I don't know how you organize your products, but you talked before about 15 categories. And so it seems to me you ought to start by asking some basic information that's going to get the consumer to go down one of those 15. So that whatever menus the consumer is being asked to negotiate, is going to be limited to only the information they would need. So that they only have to walk down that one path and have far fewer choices. It seems to me the second advantage of doing it that way is, is by definition. And I'm not an IT expert. But the path that the consumer takes, in and of itself, puts your data for your uses. So that each time the consumer advances to a different menu, somehow you can account for that path that the consumer has taken to use it to document the different types of data source. So that if it's important to you, for example, to know how many complaints that you're receiving in those 15 areas, you don't necessarily have to rely on consumers input, it's going to be the path that the consumer takes that will tell you that it's a child's product, versus some other product, and so on and so forth. I think that makes it easier for the consumer and as a practical matter it creates sorting mechanisms for you to use to take that data and use it as you see fit.
James: Steve.
Steve: Just a good example of that is we're talking before about like model numbers and things like that. If we're talking about clothing, we're not going to have model numbers. You may have other things, lot, style numbers and that may not even be something that's relevant that you want to include in it. So I think as you're, as you're asking people if they choose a category that's got say an electrical circuitry involved then that's going to, that's going to trigger the next page, will then have a number of other questions that you would then ask and try and get some information from. But if it doesn't have electrical circuitry then you wouldn't worry about that. For example, that, that might be one approach that you want to go through, which you design it.
James: Rachel and then Wayne.
Rachel: First I think this question is a really important one. How the Commission creates the portal or the form for which consumers to respond is critical to whether the information will be submitted. How it will be submitted. And whether the information is as complete as possible. so as a, as a threshold issue, the form should not be an impediment. And this was discussed a bit at the previous panel. It should not be an impediment at all to those reporting information. It should not be intimidating. It should be clear. And it should facilitate the receipt of information in as easy and as clear a way as possible. And therein I think lies what this whole panel is about. How to do that in a way that it makes consumers, doctors, people from the public health community, those who are reporting this information, able to convey what they need to convey in the most efficient and clear way possible.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: I will agree totally with Rachel in terms of we've got to make sure that the first we get the consumer involved in this situation, and that they want to fill this out and we don't intimidate them with too much information, or, or a form that looks so complex that, that they shy away from the situation. I would say these days there are a large number of people that do internet surveys. They are familiar with how to go about forming questions, how to, how to design forms in such a way that they aren't intimidating and might be useful for the Commission to talk with some of the companies that, that routinely gather information in this regard. Because I think that they, they could tell you some of the, that you do and not to do in terms of inviting consumers in and trying to keep them involved. Especially as you go. They know exactly how many questions you can ask a consumer before you reach saturation. That how you go about raising questions. All of the good companies that do surveys will, will be able to do that. I would say beyond what is in the statute, which are the minimum situations that are called for, we've debated things like UBC code, date code and serial number. And I'll tell you, we, we, we're hard pressed to, to really look at that situation honestly because there's a large number of products that won't have those available. Or the consumer won't be able to find them on a, on a fairly sophisticated or difficult product. So I'm not, I'm not going to tell you that, that that one's an easy one. In terms of description of the injury, I think that there, there needs to be some discretion used in trying to tree a consumer down and feed a little bit more information in. What did that involve some care provider, if so, who and what kind maybe would be something you ought to think about in that situation. In addition to that, as mentioned earlier, whether the manufacturer or retailer, private labeler, was contacted, this will be very important because it'll help us to link up information also to be able to, to contact other sources to find out if the information's already been gathered. We don't want to bother the consumer with having two or three or four people contacting them to, to track information if it's, if it's possible to get it all with one. Also if the product is available for, where is the product and what condition it's in. That might be helpful as well. And, and what condition it's in, and that might be helpful as well. Whether the, whether the product was used with another product. This is frequently the case with electrical products. For instance, was an electrical appliance used with an extension cord? If so is the extension cord available? Was the, was it used with a temporary power tap, or, or outlet strip kind of situation Is that available? Were there adapters used and other kinds of situations. That, or were there assessors that might have been used with a product. And in the neighborhood of something like a kitchen appliance that might have accessories that were used with it when the actual incident took place. Those are important because it isn't necessarily only the product, but maybe the accessory. Sometimes there are after market accessories that a consumer buys to use with a product, thinking that they're acceptable to the manufacturer, when in fact they're not, and that needs to be captured in such a way. And also how the product was installed. Who installed it and, and has the product been actually maintained or serviced by somebody would be other possible information. Again, I'm not suggesting we do all of these. I'm merely throwing these out as possibilities for you to think about. I just want to make sure we capture the whole field so that when you step back and look at the ones that are practical you at least have some things to choose from. Thanks.
James: No and that's, that's I think very good feedback in terms of some very specific sorts of pieces of information we could add to, or potentially add to, to the incident report form. Sean, and then Amy.
Sean: Echo some of what Phil had said, really the driver on the front end makes a lot of sense to, to take a run at, at taking and categorizing right out of the box. So that what you end up with the consumer interface is they're not going to have the same kind of complaint if they're reporting about an electrical product as they are a, a non-electrical product. For example, or a, a, you know a toy or, or a heater. By categorizing it, by doing it you can take advantage of the unique fields that would be relevant for consumers to fill out in context of the product types that they have. But also, you know, there's some, there needs to be [inaudible], and we have to consider how, consider multiple category overlaps. So what we've seen, again just drawing on [inaudible] for a moment, we have really only four categories in the [inaudible] area. There's vehicles, tires, equipment and child restraints. And each one of those has their own set of fields. However, one of the things we find, for example, was in a consumer reports a problem about a motor vehicle, they may be reporting about a, a problem with a tire, or a component part of that vehicle which is the child restraint or something along those lines. So what we've seen happen is, is in that, in the agency's response to that, they will create a, another, using the same unique ID, there's what's called the VOQ number and ODI number. It's a unique ID for that complaint, you'll have another duplicative complaint, but it'll be in, in that separate category. So as you're searching for, for example, a tire complaint on a particular vehicle, you could search either on the vehicle and see what complaints are on that vehicle, but you could also search on the tire. And I think that may be particularly relevant if there's some overlapping categories here.
James: Okay. Amy.
Amy: I wanted to echo the point that I think has come up a few times, that definitely in the beginning and I would urge throughout the process, the, the simpler the incident report form is the better for getting consumers to fill it out. Obviously the statute lays out certain minimal, minimum requirements of information, and those all seem to make complete sense, obviously. It's got to be, it's got to serve a purpose and be able to be used by the Commission. So I would urge that that information stay, that that form stays simple. John Dadovich [assumed spelling], I apologize if I'm mispronouncing his name, in the earlier panel made a good point that perhaps manufacturers and private labelers should register with the Commission, early on. To lay out all the different names under which products are sold, and license, and people who have licenses to sell and that kind of a thing. Perhaps combining that will Phil's point about having the drop down box, drop down menu option as late in the process as possible. Perhaps when the consumer gets through the category of the particular type of product, and they've filled out certain information, at the very end when they're trying to figure out what the model is, or the brand is, or whatever the appropriate product name is to help identify it, that drop down menu could be a list of company names that's been supplied by a manufacturer and private labelers. So you've got a, a discreet alphabetized list of, of names, company names. Much like [inaudible] has when you looked at all the different car models on their database. So that's just an idea for how to, to have that drop down menu options. You're capturing all the companies out there, but you're also keeping it fairly simple for the consumers to use. And third, I think the points that Wayne mentioned, I think those are best left for the Commission to ask when they're reaching out to an individual consumer. All, all the, you know, whether another product was used, and whether the part is still within the consumer's possession. I think those are best left to the [inaudible] process.
James: George.
George: Well, I think Amy took most of what I was going to say because I think, again, I just want to raise that flag about, okay, you're going to have some drop down menus and guide some people through some places. But you have got to keep it as simple as possible. And again, all the, the possibilities that were raised about looking for additional bits of information and attachments and all that sort of stuff, again that's stuff that that CPSC needs to do, if they choose to follow up. Or if the manufacturer at some point is in contact with the person, they can follow up with them. It's, we're not going to get a whole in depth investigation conducted by a safety professional out of somebody whose reading on the third grade level who's trying to report an incident report to us. Really need to dumb it.
James: Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: I, I think I'm echoing the need for both simplicity and accessibility here. Somebody mentioned focus grouping the descriptions. And I think that we, we do need to recognize that the jargon, those of us who live in Washington and who have read every word of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, twice, know certain products by certain names. But they may not be the, the name that lives in an average consumer's experience. So I, I would echo the need just road test any drop down menus that, that we are constructing so that the, the database is as simple for a consumer to use and is as accessible for a consumer to use as possible. Earlier, and again I discourage the kind of jargon that we might understand in this room, but that doesn't really experience, isn't really part of the experience of the average consumer. The other thing I would encourage is to make it possible for a consumer to be as descriptive as possible. And, and I know we're leaning toward drop down menus. But I would allow for some additional description. And I know Alan Corn suggested this morning and I would support that ability of a consumer to upload a picture of the product, and if we can upload a, a picture of the actual defect that they're describing, that I think would be quite helpful.
James: Okay, thank you. Yeah, Philip.
Philip: If, if, and I too agree that a narrative is as appropriate. I was just going to suggest that to the extent you're going to use a narrative you put it at the end, because if you put it at the beginning and the consumer's including all of the data that you want on their fields in their narrative, the consumer's not going to want to fill it out a second time.
James: That's, that's a great point. Nancy.
Nancy: Yeah I was just going to say one way to, to make it both simpler and to make sure that you get the information you need, it's like when you go to fill out certain forms on the, on the web, it'll tell you ahead of time, this is the information going to me. And even have a printable worksheet that the people can print out, take over to the product, look for the model name, look for the manufacturer's name. Have that written and bring it back to the computer. Because if they have to get up to leave to go find, take the mattress off the crib with them, and so if you sort of very simply lay it out a head of time, here's some specific information we'll want. Click here if you want to print out a worksheet to gather the information before you fill out the form.
James: Back to George and then Sean.
George: Okay, well, I'm going to go 180 degrees from what Phil just said because I disagree with him completely. I want the narrative first. I want him to write everything he can think of in the narrative, and then as he's going down the drop downs, maybe he has to repeat something, or maybe he sees something he hasn't mentioned. But if I've got it in the narrative, I've got it. And don't, if I wait until the end to get to the narrative, and there's something in there that I haven't thought to mention and I've tired them out going through 27 drop down menus, I'm not going to get the information.
James: Phil did you want to respond to that briefly, or?
Phil: I can do that. It depends on how much work you want to do creating your own database. And one of the purposes of the drop down boxes is to have the consumer create your data for you. And so to the extent that you want that data created for you, you want to encourage the consumer to fill that portion of your form out. The other thing and this sort of dove tails to the comments that were made this morning, with regard to non, people that don't have computers. We get a lot of narrative complaints, we get a lot of, actually we get a lot of third hand narrative complaints where somebody will write attach a letter that they send to the business that they're complaining about and they'll say see my complaint attached. And so you do spend a lot of time with, with that type of complaint, if, if consumers are going to be allowed to complain by phone, or in writing. Then, then you have to devote some sort of a standardized coding system to figure out what consumers are saying in, in their narrative type complaints, so that you can incorporate that into your overall database. And so to the extent that that's going to be a necessary component of this process, I'm not saying that narrative complaints are, are a problem. But it's always if you can make the consumer do your work for you.
James: Okay. Sean.
Sean: In, in context of, of the drop downs, one of the things that I'd be concerned about is where, you know, most of the folks are here and attending these kinds of meetings and workshops, if you're a manufacturer particularly, you're going to be a recognized entity. It's those entities that are not that are not registered with the agency. It's the companies that, you know, are coming and going, or, or may be under the radar. And so it's doing the drop down for the most popular example by having auto fill so that if there's a, you know, like a recognize the company name, but they may not have registered it with the auto fill for, and make sure that the consumer understands that just because it's on this list doesn't mean that's everything. And we'd also need to keep the list as short as possible. I know with [inaudible] when you look at just the pull down for, for me, like under equipment manufacturers and you're dealing with thousands and that's just, you know motor vehicle equipment. Here we're dealing with a much, much broader realm. And also kind of weigh in on what George and Phil had to say. Because I, I talked to a, a statistician who does a lot of work with us, and, and who's used to dealing with consumer complaint data. And his point of view was much along what George had, had indicated is, is get the information out first. Put it in the narrative first. And that'll, that'll trigger everything that gets the, the other information filled in. Which almost felt counter-intuitive to me. I'm not sure where I weigh in on it other than, you know, there's this diversion points here.
James: No, I, I think to me this is a good example of, several people brought up this idea of focus groups, or you know, sort of test running the form. You know if that's something that's feasible, that strikes me that that could be an area where you might run two separate versions of it. You know if, if we were able to do this, run two separate versions see, you know, see what kind of different responses you get. Seems like it would be a, a natural thing to do. Rachel and then Claire.
Rachel: Another issue that we haven't discussed is just what some of the more visual aspects and some of the more processes. For example, the reading level. We want to make sure that level is at a level that is accessible to as many people as possible. But that needs to be taken into consideration. And I know there are experts in assessing what reading level a certain document is. Also, the, the font, the color and the size. These are all also critical factors to making sure that it's as accessible and easy, easy for consumers, or anyone else to report. Another thing is, you know when you have, and I find this, you know just as a consumer. When you're reporting something in a box, you want to make sure that there are as few limitations as possible. So you definitely don't want to have, you know, word limitation, character limitation, for where there is the space for a narrative, whether it's in the beginning or the end. You want to make sure that the person can put, you know, everything they want to say. So making sure there is completely enough space.
James: Okay.
Rachel: That's pretty critical, thank you.
James: Claire:
Claire: I was just going to add, based on our experience with accepting consumer complaints about products. There's been a lot of talk about visual evidence about the actual product in question or a corner, the hook or whatever. One of the things that's really helpful is actually pictures of the label itself. Because people have difficulty identifying the manufacturer, the product number, what not. So making sure that opportunity to include photograph evidence, or visual narrative so to speak, a label description might be able to let the expert at CPSC be able to say, well actually that's XYZ Offshore Manufacturers. You know, it's this, and to be able to work through it that way.
James: So not just a picture of the item, or the product in question, but perhaps the label as well.
Claire: Yeah, just I mean a series of photographs that can help tell the complete story.
James: So, one of the things that strikes me, and this is kind of a good transition into our next question, is this idea of simplicity, of making it easy to fill out as possible. But the next question that leads up to is okay, what if it isn't completely filled out. So what if we end up with an incomplete form, where certain pieces of information are, are missing, or, or are, you know, not up to what the standard is. How should we handle that, and I'll turn it back over to the CPSC staff at this point to kind of give some clarification around what our thoughts are on, on that. So, Ming you want to jump in here. I don't mean to put you on the spot.
Ming: I'm fine actually. You have been doing that all morning. No, no, I'm just kidding. So I guess a very good example of that is the model numbers.
James: Right.
Ming: So if we don't have a, a model number, you know the report is not complete. But, but for as far as public interest we want to get any report of harm out there as, as quickly as possible. So how should we handle situations like that? I think one of the problems you'll have, even if a consumer populates a certain field, for example, with a model number, the CPSC will have absolutely no way of knowing whether they put it in the date code, whether they put in a serial number, a model number. If it's populated, the system will assume that it, it's accurate at least for the time being. So the Commission really doesn't have a way I think of verifying that information. I think again that, that can fall back on the manufacturer as it goes back again full circle to the manufacturers being notified and letting them then comment on when if anything upon contacting the consumer.
James: And I would suggest that we put in the parking lot for our manufacturer discussion this idea of how can we make it as easy as possible for manufacturers to verify that product information and get us feedback, you know, on that. So if we can capture that parking lot. George did you have a comment, canceled, okay. Sean.
Sean: Yeah I would echo what Brad said too. I think it's going to be near impossible. We look at just again tires for example. Tires have all of them are required under federal law to give a DOT number. The DOT number provides a manufacturer's plant. It gives them size information. It provides the data manufacturer. And when we look at the [inaudible] data, inevitably I'd say about 98 percent of the tire label points have no DOT information. Even where you can go and most consumers, if they get a DOT number off the side, it's incomplete, it's not filled, it's a very difficult thing to have, I think filled in. That said, I think having a, a field that would allow for product identification information, regardless of what that is, and, and allowing the consumer to put in whatever identifying marks they find may be those important clues to helping. And, and we have used that for example. Using VIN numbers from vehicles. Even if they're not fully complete. A VIN number or some kind of check of identifying back against the product category would give you some way of, of really analyzing what you've got. And when someone gets it into, into the data. So having a generic, you know, field even for some product identification information is valuable. Whether or not, you know, you're going to be able to use it in any meaningful way, you know is going to shake out as you move along.
James: Amy and then Steve.
Amy: I appreciate obviously the difficulties in having an incomplete report and, and you know that's frustrating and, and all of that. Our take is that some information is better than none. And there's some products where it may be difficult for the consumer to find the model number information. Nancy may be able to speak to this better. I put you on the spot. But with cribs sometimes it's difficult for that consumer to find that label that has all the information with the model and the brand name and the license. License or name and all that. But they may have valuable input to pass on to the CPSC. They have an incident that occurred with their child that the Commission should know about. And it may result in investigation as others have mentioned, you know, the Commission calls the consumer and says okay; hey tell us more about this. The incident itself is a value even if the consumer's not able to immediately put their hands on that label.
Steve: I think in the statute there's, there's a list of items that needs to be in each report. And I would look, look at making sure there was a way to populate each of those five items. I mean it says, you know, for example, identification of the manufacturer private label, or, ideally they'd be able to point to that. But maybe you say, I don't know. You know maybe that's one of the things. It says the contact information for the person who made the report itself. Somebody doesn't fill out the phone number or the email address, or, or whatever you deem is the minimum contact information, but they still want to send in the, the system should kick back and say no you haven't, you haven't given us enough information so we can get a hold of you to, to follow up, to figure out what's going on here. So I think that's, that's where you should put your focus in terms of what's, what constitutes completeness in terms of actually submitting a report. And then the second question is, what's completeness in terms of making sure something gets up there, you know, gets into the contrast panel and I think probably tomorrow in terms of the conversation with the manufacturer, make sure there's accurate information, variable information, things like that. So it means there's a couple of ways you need to [inaudible] this in terms of submitting and then publishing.
James: Okay. Wayne and then George.
Wayne: I'm, I guess most of us are familiar with filing out some types of forms on, on the internet these days. And most of them at least required information and, or they either star the information or they color code it something along that line to where if that information is not filled out, then the, it sends it back to you again with some prompt situation. I would think consumers are pretty savvy at, at doing that kind of situation these days. So I would imagine having the minimum number or minimum items they're called out in the statute would be sufficient to where that would be a limiting factor on the report. And then beyond that, certainly that, the rest can be handled as, as was said earlier in, in follow up examinations or follow up phone calls from the Commission, or from manufacturers or someone. So I think that the less intimidation as I said earlier the better. The more that we can make this as friendly as possible. But I do think that stressing those particular minimum ones will help us to at least have them, the minimum necessary to move forward. Thanks.
George: Again, since there are five items that are required in the statute, obviously we're stuck with those. Other than that, I would personally be opposed to anything that had any kind of required field that shut you down if you don't put it in there. Because those are flat out data discouraged. And you're going to lose a lot of data if you tell people no you didn't tell me this. If they know it, and again, maybe, maybe I don't know the model number is and adequate answer. They've, because you don't need to have enough information in there to do a recall, you just need to have enough information to know that it was a brand X kid that your kid fell out of.
James: Nancy.
Nancy: I was just going to say that I think it, looking back at those five items that have to be there for the report to be published. I think the person can still submit it if they don't have one of those. And I think someone suggested and I don't know. Is, or you know, don't have the information. And then some attempt could be made to get that information before you just decide that that just can't be published because the [inaudible]. That's the piece of those five pieces I think is going to be the hardest to find. Amy mentioned cribs, there was recently a crib recall where the, the manufacturer name that we know the crib by appears no where on the crib, because it was licensed to someone else. They sell it under a different model, name than their official manufacturing name. And so you know there would be some difficulty in consumers finding that information. So I think while we can't publish them without that manufacturer's name, I think there needs to be some way for the person to still, to submit it. And try and get that information.
James: Steve.
Steve: And, and I'm just kind of looking back at that same section with the five points and just kind of brings back what was mentioned before about the submission can be electronic, telephonic or paper based. Well the electronic will be whatever groovy technology manages just to come up. But the telephonic is, you know, you're going to have to probably have to have some sort of voice prompt, paper based. Somebody faxes in, they mail it in, whatever. But in either side of the telephonic or the paper based, there's probably an individual in this building or somewhere who is taking that and transcribing that and putting that on there. Yet it's going to have to mirror the, the data elements of the five that you submit electronically. So I think this is an argument for making sure it's as simple as possible. That, that first common, sort of common set of points so that you're not getting one set of information here and then different kinds of information through these other means. Because I think Congress is intending for them to sort of be equally created, even though obviously the technology's going to gear everyone towards the electronic one.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: Question for, for those of, those few or manufacturers who have been collecting information from consumers. Do you find more success with a form based input method, or is it a wizard, you know, where you ask a series of questions and depending on the answer you prompt them with a different type of question. What way I guess is more successful for capturing accurate and complete information?
James: That's, that's a great question. Anyone on the panel want to take a, take a swing at that?
I'll, I'll just take a shot, but I would encourage also that it be put into the parking lot for the manufacturer response because you may have some more people on that panel that can provide a good answer for that. I think people rely on a lot of different systems. You've got a, usually an 800 number. You've got people trained to, to ask questions, to receive information. They're obviously entering into, into a system. And then you also have online systems that people can, can enter into and follow up. And usually those are, I go through them where there's a wizard or there's just a set of, just a set of basic data, you know, given basic information, contact information so we can follow up and get back to you. You have to remember, sometimes you, there may be, it may be a quality issue. It may be a product safety issue. It may be a warranty issue. I mean there's a lot of different things that we deal with that may [inaudible] a different individual to contact that consumer. A price issue would, the way it would, the interaction with the retail environment. A lot of, a lot of responses. So if you get that basic information then you can go back and put the right person to follow up.
James: Anyone else want to address that point? Yeah Rachel.
Rachel: Yeah well I wanted to go back to a previous point which had to do with the required field suggestion. And I think what we're trying to do here is come up with the right balance. The right balance for a form that is accessible that gets the information that's needed to be as useful to as many people. And I worry that the required field it, it becomes too sort of inhospitable. So I think we have to tread really carefully. If we're, if there is a decision to go that route, because I think it could act as a pretty strong disincentive for people just to, you know if it keeps coming back, if they don't have the information, they're just going to abandon the reporting effort One way to minimize the impact could be if, to have, as people suggested and I don't know field. And that if they really don't know that information, that would count as an answer so that they can move on and then successfully submit the report.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: So yeah in that case, if a consumer puts in I don't know, would you obviously, I would assume you would allow at some point later if that information does become available that consumer to come back and put information. And we want, if we want to do that at what point do we want to say, okay, you can, this becomes a new case, or you can no longer submit information because this case is closed. Whatever reason that may be.
Rachel: Well I don't think it should be closed. I mean I think you want to make this dynamic and just as, you know, someone may see something in the media that triggers something that occurred, you know, numerous years ago that they never decided to report. I don't think you want to make it closed in any way.
Wayne: So would you, or may be this goes to the manufacturer notification process. But because it would depend on the type of information that you collect that you then want to send that back to the manufacturer. If you collect additional pieces of information from the consumer?
Rachel: Well in, I mean the statute prescribes sort of the relationship between the inputted information and then CPSC's role and the fact that the manufacturers could, you know, look at the information. It's really going over material inaccuracies. But if they have information that could fill in those gaps, then you know, I think that would be helpful.
James: Steve.
Steve: And actually, I think I'm the one who suggested the I don't know. And I still think that's a good idea. As I'm looking at this, I think there's probably only one of these where they wouldn't know, which would be the name of the manufacturer. Or they would know their name, I think there needs to be a verification, where they actually click off and say yeah I believe this is true. They would presumably, could describe at least maybe not using the state of the art description, but they could at least say this is a toy or a, a crib. They might have the right definition of toy or crib. But they could probably say that. And certainly I would hope that they cold describe the harm that occurred or their expectation of what their harm was. Again, they may not have the accurate description of what that is. Or that's just going to be a trigger for something else. But so I would think that, I don't know, probably only in that one might be acceptable. The rest if they leave it blank then it's an incomplete one. And it's like, you know, we can't do anything because you haven't filled out the harm box. Or you haven't filled out the contact information box.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: I think, I was speaking even more broadly than these five categories. So you make a great point. But I also think you need to have an I don't know option for the model number and all these other things. So that was, that was my point.
Brad: Yeah.
James: Brad and then Sean.
Brad: Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah I agree with that. I think that additional fields if you don't know, or even if you put the wrong information there it's still going to be populated and they shouldn't be required fields. But the five areas that are required under the statute I think should absolutely be required fields. I mean that's, under the statute, they're required before they can be posted on the data base. So if one of those five is left blank, maybe, maybe the report can be used for something else. But it will not appear after the 10 days database itself.
James: Okay. Sean.
Sean: Yeah I think in response to Steve too, I tend to agree. I think there's that one category of the five that's, that may not be populated, because you're not going to know. And the way, as an alternative to populating that field will be maybe an image of the, you know, photographic image, or a product description of it in some level of detail that we'd be able to at least provide some meaningful information that could come back.
James: Brad.
Brad: Well I think the problem with that is that one of the things that the statute contemplates is the manufacturer being able to comment. And if you, for example, if you don't have the name of the manufacturer or importer or distributor filled out, then, then that opportunity is lost and so even under that scenario, I don't think would be appropriate to post the report on the database anyway.
James: Liz.
Liz: Someone mentioned this morning the possibility of having prompts next to fields to give, to give people some assistance. Kind of a question box. And I think this is an area where the database should be as helpful to the consumer putting in the information as possible. I know that in the area of toys and children's products, nothing gets separated faster from it's, from it's box and it's model number on Christmas morning than a toy. And so I would worry that if we saw a report as incomplete without the model number, or, or just the model, we would miss a lot of reports of, of toy incidents.
James: You had mentioned having, sort of a question mark or some sort of assistance there, does anyone have any specific thoughts around the sorts of things that could be put in that question box for say a manufacturer field. What kind of, what kind of advice would you, or what kind of text would you put in there to, to try and help people along as it were? And I'll open that up to the panel, so not necessarily just as.
James: Amy.
Amy: I'll answer that question, but first I just had one question of clarification for Brad. You mentioned the five required fields if, when you said you know if they're not completed that the report wouldn't get published. Do you mean if one of them is empty? I assume that's what you meant? I mean what if you go to the idea that Steve proposed of the I don't know. Is that, that's, you know, that's, I think if the I don't know goes up, on the database, then the individuals who are reading that report would subsequently, you know, I think it's more informative that the person who reported that complaint, really, they don't know, they don't know what the model number is. So I, I think that's informative in it's own way to the person reading that report.
Brad: Perhaps I mean maybe the can go ahead and submit the report and maybe somebody in this building or even with limited information is provided like the manufacturer's name and the manufacturer will be able to contact that person and fill in those blanks, then perhaps that report builds some esteem and it can get included in the database. But I think that in the instance where any one of those five fields is not completed after the five, after the five or 10 days it should not be posted on the database.
Amy: So even if it says I don't know that that, you're saying that in your opinion, it shouldn't go up?
Brad: Well I don't know if it's my opinion. I think that's what the statute says. There are five required fields. And so I don't think it's discretionary. I think if those can't be completed then regardless of whether the information makes it to the Commission that they can use for some other purpose perhaps, that it should not be included. I think what we're really talking about what, what actually makes it on a database at the end of the day. And at the end of the 10 days if you don't have each of those five fields filled out, I think it just statutorily doesn't make it on.
Amy: I, I mean maybe that's something for the living database concept to, to address. I mean I just worry that with like the cribs example that we mentioned previously that you're, then potentially going to see lots and lots of complaints.
Brad: Potentially you know there are a lot of ways, mechanically to do this. For example, if when you, with when a consumer submits the information, each instant report gets its own ID number. And that might be archived for a while. Maybe it, in 15 days or 20 days the consumer finds out some additional information. Or is able to obtain some additional information. They can go back into that report and perhaps fill in those fields. Then it would be complete. And then the manufacturer would be notified. But again, like I said, I, I don't think it's discretionary if those five mandatory fields can't be completed. That just shouldn't be and I don't think it can be included on the database.
James: I'd like to, if we could, maybe get a few other opinions on this. So George your light's been on for a quite a while, I know. And then Sean.
George: I would just comment again, obviously as we get into the mechanics of it. As in, well what happens to that case otherwise. Is there a whole second level CPSC database that they've got that has those cases in it? Because one of the things I'd be interested in and I would wonder if perhaps GC could get us come kind of a spin on would be what's the intent of that field. If that field is that we want consumers to be able to find how many of a particular manufacturer's products are in mind, then having an I don't know is really not a harm. If we've had some other possible uses for it, because if I'm an analyst and I go into the file and I ant to find out how many cases do we have where the entire mattress support fell out of a crib, and I've got 15 of them that don't know the brand, if they're recent enough I can assign investigation s on those and get them and get that information into the file. But I don't want to lose that case just because the person doesn't know exactly the brand name. I mean, sometimes they would just tell us, well I don't know, but I bought it at, at Babies R Us. And it looked like this,. And then you know, I can have an investigator go to Babies R Us and see what they've got that looks like that. There's a way to get at that information. I just get real worried about, again trying to get the consumer to build our whole database for us and have a completely self-coded questionnaire going here. Because you, you lose information unless you put an awful. When you're writing questionnaire's that do studies and you want it self coded, you turn it eight ways from lose to figure out whether or not you're going to be able to get the answers. If you're asking Joe Public to turn on his consumer and, and do that, you're going to [inaudible] cases in my opinion. And so I guess the one thing I would put on the floor for the parking lot or whatever is if we can get some kind of a reading about what they meant by those five things that are a required fields.
James: Okay, Sean.
Sean: I, I tend to agree with George. I think we also ran into a problem where what encouragement do we have for manufacturers to label a product. Now you know there really is a, if the only way you can get populated in this database is if you have a manufacturer or labeled information, look at any number of the products that you handle each day that don't have that information on it. Are we saying we're not going to really, this database isn't going to serve that? And those are probably the product we most want to monitor. Those are probably the companies that are the ones that are not reporting and following the process. And those are the things that are showing up as the hazards in, in ways that many of the companies that are here today that label their products, their products may not be showing up in the same way. So I'm not sure. I think you know you're right, we need interpretation around what is that, what does that really mean. And I don't know and does a supplemental description of the product if it doesn't have that information, does that suffice.
James: Okay. Steve and then Philip.
Steve: I just was going to say I think this really gets to the heart of, of one of the things that I have looked at this whole database issue is, you've got sort of a mechanism to acquire information and a mechanism to publicize information. And I think this whole concept of I don't know kind of gets to this where you don't want to discourage people from reporting incidents. But at the same time, you want to make sure that whatever is out there is publically out there, is verifiable, is validated and, and accurate. And I think again the statute speaks to that as well. So maybe Brad this gets to the point you'd made, it's just to say, you know, get the information comes in and it, the field is left blank, or you leave it with that, that question mark, then, then the first thing is the CPSC analyst or the recipient of that, whether it's again, it's telephone, paper or electronic, then it has to contact that consumer and say okay you've got some information, but it's not, we can't do anything with it, or if you want us to do something, you've got to give us some information. And, and you could perhaps put on information on the instructions. Again, not in jargon because when you talk about private label or manufacturer, you, even people in this room will disagree exactly on what you're talking about. So when you get out into the broad public with the third grade reading level I think somebody mentioned before. People aren't going to know that or they're just going to put the name of the retailer on and that may not be the information that you're looking for. So clear information but realizing that if, if it's incomplete, I don't think you want to discard the incident report. But you clearly want to, you know, again, go out with it because you've got a lot of information that you've got to, you've got to hunt down to make it more accurate.
James: Okay, Philip.
Philip: Let me ask a question first. I think we're talking about section B2 is that correct? I just want to make sure that I'm not looking at the wrong section.
2B.
Philip: 2B.
2B2.
Philip: 2B2, it's. Okay. As I read the description of, of what's, the required fields. It appears to me, particularly in items one and two which we've been debating, Congress gave this agency some flexibility to not require just the manufacturer's name, which may, and again, I'm not an expert with regard to how hard it is to identify manufacturers. But it, it seems to me that at least by the language itself, it gives the consumer the option to identify the manufacturer by the product, which is largely duplicative, duplicative of the first item. I think, and again I guess I'm guessing, but I would guess that a reason for that type of flexibility is that while it would be ideal for the consumer to identify both the product and the manufacturer, it seems to me that a consumer reporting a problem with a product, even if that consumer's unable to identify the manufacturer is still submitting a report that has to have some value. So that this agency can track which products are causing the most problems. The second thing, and I wanted to go back, I'm sorry George left the room. But I want to clarify a point that I made earlier. My agent does require consumers to input data. But we don't rely totally on the consumer's demarcation to identify how the complaint is going to be coded in our system. I think that I agree with what George said before if, if you introduce too much consumer discretion into the process then you're going to have terms that will have multiple meanings, because the same, because the same agency isn't going to be setting the meeting for those terms.
James: Okay. At this, at this point I want to have a few last comments here where we're pushing up against our break. And I also want to leave some time for audience questions. I, I actually have seen a few people in the audience who have some, some comments they'd like to add. So Nancy and then Wayne if you've got a comment, and then let's, let's take a few questions from the audience.
Nancy: Sure I can be very brief. I just wanted to clarify we're talking about here is, is the manufacturer themselves. There's a, there's no requirement in those five required items from model numbers or specific identifying information. Because that would certainly cut off most of your complaints, since consumers either, as you mentioned apparel doesn't have a model number, and so I think that it's the manufacturer that we're talking about. I think there has to be some effort made if you have an I don't know category to help the consumer or for CPSC if they do upload a picture. CPSC may be able to identify immediately who the manufacturer is because they've seen it before. So I think that that piece of information should not be required to submit the report, and then efforts should be made to get it so that you can upload it within the 10 days to the database.
James: Okay. Wayne.
Wayne: Again I'm not an attorney here. And I don't try to think about what goes in the minds of Congress when they, when they wrote the law, but as I read it at least, it does, it does describe as Nancy pointed out the, some identification of the manufacturer. I think what we have to deal with here is, is one is, the report that is being made to the Commission in some form or fashion. And then what goes up on the database. They are two different things. The report that's being made to the Commission has some minimum level of information here and presumably and that is going to be acted upon. Even if, in the case of [inaudible] the manufacturer that doesn't necessarily discount the report. Today the Commission received presumably thousands of reports. I don't know whether there are thousands per month, or year, but they receive lots of reports. I'm sure they don't ignore a report just simply because it says I don't know the [inaudible]. Some follow up is definitely given, especially if there's a severe risk of injury or, or death according to that. So I don't want to discount, because I am sure that the Commission is diligently following up on, on those as the case may be today. So I'm sure that there can be some follow up to that situation if the, if the harm or the, or the injury is severe enough that it requires follow up. I'm sure that the Commission will do that. And I would imagine that, that in, if we read down through the, the section of the law under 6A, section C, it says procedural requirements. There are four of those procedural requirements. I don't think Commission feels that it has the latitude not to do any of those four, especially for instance reporting to Congress. So I would say that the, the one that is included in there is the, is number one, transmission of the reports to the manufacturer. I would argue that it's pretty difficult to report to the manufacturer if the manufacturer's name is I don't know. So I would imagine that there's going to have to be some follow up there in order to do that situation. Because the Commission is required to do that. They are required to report to that manufacturer. To give them the opportunity to comment on that. It's not a luxury. And it's not an option. It's a requirement. It says it right there. At least the way that I'm reading it. So I would think that having the name of the manufacturer, an identification or some means to get back to that manufacturer, is a requirement in this. Thanks.
James: Rachel, do you want to make one final comment here before we.
Rachel: Yes one.
James: Turn to the audience.
Rachel: Final thing since we're being so tactual right now. I want to make sure that everyone's clear on the distinction, and I think we might have completed the two during some parts of our conversation of section 2B and section 4. Section 2B, what Phil clarified, are the requirements that the report should have. A description of the product, identification of the manufacturer or private labeler. A description of the harm. Contact information of the person. And a verification by the person submitting information, that information should be accurate, versus section four of 6A, which has to do with the organization of the database. And there's also a list of five categories which seem similar. But it's actually for a different purpose, it's for how the information could be categorized. And ultimately searchable. And sortable and accessible by. So those are a different set, which some of them overlap, but they are different, and which are not required.
James: Okay. I think at this point we'd like to turn it over for some audience participation. This has been I think a very good dialogue back and forth with a couple different perspectives here. A lot of good ideas. We're certainly capturing all of that as part of the process. And we'll, we'll certainly move forward with that. If, at this point, if anyone in the audience would like to come up and pose a question or a comment for anyone on our panel, or CPSC staff, please, there's a microphone right there. Please feel free to come on up and if not we. Yes sir.
John: Hi, John [inaudible] with Hamilton Beach Brands. Just three quick comments. We heard some talk today about what kind of feedback we can give the users who are reporting these incidents in terms of if they are missing required information. I'm sure you've probably already considered this. But just as a best practice, from what we have seen, I think at the end of the process, once they've submitted it, there needs to be a confirmation page that is fed back to the, to the user so that they have, they have that feedback and I have completed the forms successfully. And that leads into my second point, which is we've also heard some talk about unique identifying information in terms of like a UD identifying number for each report. Again, we see that as a best practice. That's something we do within our own consumer affairs group. And that's something that we always give back to the consumer at the very end of whatever communication we have with them, whether it's by phone, or by email or by letter. We let them know, this is your reference number so that if they then contact us in the future, they can have that information if they're able to retain it. And that, that just facilitates any future communication that takes place. You know I think we all want this to be kind of living database, and it helps ensure that, that that information gets mended to the correct report. And then the third thing is, I, I haven't heard anybody mention this and I didn't see it in the report to Congress, but it may be something they're already considering. And that is giving them the option of whenever they fill out an online electronic report that they can create a user account with a password. You know, and optionally they, the benefit there obviously is that if they have that then if they do later get some of the information that's required, for instance if they figure out who the manufacturer is, they've made the report, you know, or they figure out the model number, they made a report, and they don't have that, they can then go back and put that model number in and, because of the, the user ID and password, there's, there's validation that it's the correct person going back and, and making that, that change to the report. So those are just the three comments that I had. Thank you.
James: Thanks John. Anyone want to respond to that at all, or? Any other comments from the, the audience? Yes sir.
Brian: I had one. My name's Brian [inaudible] from Dell. So with respect to the five required items in fields, there's been a lot of discussion about manufacturer identification. It seems to me part of the challenge also is whether, how you identify whether an actual harm has been required, reported I mean. So that's part of the challenge, because we've talked earlier about distinction between reports of harm or risk of harm. And versus general quality issues. And it seems to me, part of the challenge in the database in assessing those reports that are eligible for inclusion in the database is assessing which one s have reports of harm. So I was wondering if, you know, A we can discuss that a little bit more and what thoughts we have with respect to either some internal validation in the database, or other means that we're going to try to figure that out.
James: Does anyone have any thoughts on, I suppose a mechanism or a filter, or a process that could be used just to separate out potential reports that are harmful from those that are perhaps say just say warranty based, or something that, that might not fall into the preview of the agency. Nancy.
Nancy: I would just say first of all that it doesn't have to be actual harm. It can be [inaudible] for harm, or potential for harm. SO that the person can observe a fault with a product that maybe didn't hurt it anybody but they realized could in a different situation. So we're not, it doesn't have to be that harm has actually occurred for the person to report it. And secondly, I think that, you know, while I think there should, I'm not sure if you can do it through key word, I'm sure programmers would know how to do it so that complaints about totally unrelated things like the color, it isn't the right size that they ask for, things like that can be weeded out. But warranty related things, so you know if you have a product that quits working during the warranty you want to replace it, you could see that as a warranty problem, but if you find that you have 50 of those reports on this same product, then clearly it's a bigger issue than simply an individual warranty. So I don't think that you want to completely rule those out. And not allow them to be in the base, because you're miss that data then.
James: Michelle.
Michelle: Well I think, if at all possible, maybe you know we can add one more field, just serve as a trash box kind of thing. So we, the study require to report to capture incidents for both the actual harm and the [inaudible] of harm. Whereas, no matter where these, for CPSC as the porthole is going, you may encounter increased quantity of reports fighting your way from the end of the consumer point of view. They may, if they are [inaudible] something or they may see many, many reports coming up. So how do you set the priority if we can, looking at something like the potential severity so people can guide through no matter [inaudible] CPSC and the consumer they can see based on the consequence of outcome, you know, which other things that may or have lead to fatality. Which lead to serious injury versus other, you know, complaints, some related to [inaudible] not necessarily feature, that can help.
Nancy: How would you suggest that, I mean obviously if there was a fatality, we would capture that and be able to report that. But how would you suggest we would go about having that consumer or us assessing whether or not there actually was that risk of fatality?
Michelle: I think just given example. Some of, obviously, obvious [inaudible] was needed the attention. Whereas other things depend on a hazard. For example, when you're looking at a suffocation, strangulation, it's either the victim would be fine, you know there is a greater risk of fatality. But either the victim would more or les be fine when the rest of it comes in time, or it would be a near miss, or just a little fatality. So I think, looking at a specific hazard, maybe that can [inaudible] through to see which are a potential type of hazard that can lead to this too by nominal kind of mode, whereas reach out was, is more [inaudible] like a gradient kind of scale, and maybe that can help.
James: Steve.
Steve: I was going to say, I think, I think the point raised by the gentleman from Dell is excellent. Is that you really need to make sure this stays restricted to, you know harm, injury, illness, death, risk of harm, injury, illness, death. I think when you get into quality issues and while I think the company may want to hear about those quality problems have all, a bunch of quality problems come in. You know the, the consumers, I don't know if they're necessarily going to focus or consumer or product safety. They may see consumer and go gee this is the place where I report all of my consumer issues. And, and you're going to see the, the database being populated with a whole lot of stuff that's not product safety related. And I think you really want to avoid that situation. Where that's taking me is that if consumers reports something, I think you want to avoid sort of the black hole context where they report something and then kind of disappears and they never hear anything from it again. Especially if it's not product safety related. I think if people feel that they've sent something in, there, there needs to be some kind of follow back up to them that says, yeah this is being processed. Maybe it, maybe it, it gives you the, the receipt or something to indicate that you know we received your information and here's what the next steps will be, or here's what the follow up might look like. And that can always be different if different pieces of the, of the, of the query form are filled in differently. It could be, you could be program to give them different information. If it's not product safety related then maybe a human's got to look at that and figure that out. Then again, there needs to be follow up to say, I'm sorry you gave us a, a complaint to, that's better [inaudible] at Department of Transportation for example. If they fill out a tire complaint or something like that, that's, that's going to go to, and I don't know how you do that. But I think there's going to need to be that follow up, back to the consumers.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: I didn't want to interrupt this train because it's a very good series of discussions. I've got some questions when you get done with this, so I'll wait if George had, or somebody else had a, one to follow up on that particular train.
James: Okay George, did you have a direct follow up?
George: Yeah, just a, I mean the question we wind up coming back to here is how you deal with that with an electronic report. Because I know they do that now. I know people call the hotline or whatever, and get told well you know what, that's not us. You need to call so and so. They're getting that feedback. So really where we're going with is how do you do this when that person involved answering a letter or whatever you've got it electronically. I don't have the answer, I just wanted to clarify that, that that's the box we're getting ourselves into. Because I know they do it now. And if somebody calls up and says this is a piece of garbage, I'm going to say well, what's the hazard. And because I think that point, you know, the risk, and a long as we don't lose that, in looking for the risk, because you know you can, the bottom can fall out o 10 cribs before the 11th kid gets killed by it, and I still want to know even if there was no actual pain involved that there was the risk of a hazard there. So our definition of harm needs to include risk. Other than that, like I said, I think they're doing that other part already.
James: It looks like we've got another gentleman here who'd like to pose, so if we can get to that.
Tom: Yeah, I'm Tom Parks with Bell Supports. There's been a little bit of discussion today about comparing company, company B relative to the number of complaints. And I think we've got to be really, really careful while it won't be part of the database to recognize that some companies are simply much larger than other companies. And are hence going to have far more complaints. The, the best example I know is the old days when the Ford Explorer was a very large percentage of the SUVs that were sold. And there were far, far more complaints of Ford Explorers overturning than Isuzu's or Mitsubishi or whatever else was out there at the time. But most or perhaps all of that was accounted for by [inaudible] larger numbers. And bigger companies are going to populate, especially in, in generic type complaints. For example the, the battery in my laptop got too hot. The big companies are going to have far more complaints or the battery got too hot than smaller companies. Even whether or not a defect actually exists. So we got to make sure that we recognize that even though I don't see it being a direct part of this, because I don't think asking for manufacturing numbers of all these different kinds of products makes any sense. But we've got to b clear that, that the best example I know is, is bicycle tires and, and [inaudible] probably sells 10,000 tires a year. Some companies may sell millions of tires a year. Well if [inaudible] got five complaints a year, and a huge company got 50 complaints a year, [inaudible] would be the one that would be [inaudible], not the bigger company that had 50 complaints. So statistically that's another issue that we'll want to, that you will want to keep in, in mind as you review the numbers.
James: Okay. Turn that over. Anyone have a response to that from the panel? If, if not we've got, we've got a question that's come via the internet apparently. I'm sorry, sir, go ahead.
Rick: Yes hi, my name is Rick Lawker [assumed spelling], I'm general counsel of the Toy Industry Association. And, and this inquiries really directed more to the CPSC staff. I was listening to the conversation, discussion of the panel. And it does seem clear to me that there's merit to both, what Rachel said in terms of the intent of Congress having two, two slightly different requirements under the act in terms of searchability of the database. But also as to what Wayne has said, which is that you need to have those five criteria. And those are set as a minimum by Congress because what Congress was looking to do, it seems to us was to trigger a systematic review of that information as well. Not only by the CPSC staff but to provide manufacturers with that same opportunity. Without those five elements, as a minimum, they face difficulty in meeting that burden. In terms of the, and so I was interested in what the CPSC staff view was. Your, as much as there's a desire to build something, like many other things in this legislation, you're not going to have a one size fits all approach. So you're probably going to be, try to build something that's useful in other context, but recognize that it may, to meet the statutory requirements that Wayne had talked about, it may be something, you know, less than what you would have in an idolized world for your own use. And it doesn't mean that you don't follow up on complaints or information. It doesn't mean that you don't continue to gather as much data as you can that's useful to you because you have whole divisions whose focus and purpose in being is to do just that. But it does mean that for the purposes of constructing this, you have to meet those Congressional mandates in a relatively tight timeframe. So I'm wondering if the staff has thought about that distinction and recognition. On, on the other issue, which was this concept of verification. Clearly to us it seems that Congress did not require statements of submission under penalties of perjury and the like. But nevertheless they care under section 212B to B5, very specifically that the consumer report must include a verification by the person submitting the information. The information submitted is true and accurate to the best of the person's knowledge. And that the person can sense that such information be included in the database. So they're looking for verification of the information, and the consent for inclusion, a part from there [inaudible] as to whether their information could be disclosed in a [inaudible] box to manufacturers [inaudible]. And in that regard we've looked, you know, elsewhere other government agencies. I mean you don't have to look very far, far to find systems that have been put in place, by forms that are being used by other government agencies. That do try to capture that process. Whether it's an I9 that every business knows it has to, has to file in terms of the Department of Homeland Security, or whether it's the FTC with the Fair Debt Collection [inaudible] by consumers of the existence of a death or a non-death. So there, there are templates that exist. It shouldn't be a debate really about whether we're going to include it or not because it seems to us you have to include it because Congress has dictated it. The question is, what's the verification. We believe their Congressional minimums and then there are solutions that exist that that would not necessarily discourage consumers. But I think it does have to be on the form because you do want to discourage false information which is a subject matter for tomorrow's session.
James: Thanks for that, the comment. I see we've got quite a few people on the panel who have responses. I believe we have a CPSC comment here as well.
Mary: Yeah I want to go back to the quality control issue and the risk issue. I was wondering if the panel could help us understand if it's possible to distinguish between quality control issues and risk issues. Because aren't risk issues inherently quality control issues?
James: Would anyone like to respond? I know several people have their lights on and probably to respond to previous things, but, anyone prepared to respond to, to Mary's question? George.
George: Just a quick comment. A risk issue could be a design issue. It's not necessarily quality control.
James: Anyone else?
Yeah just, I mean you could have a quality control issue could be to take a piece of clothing. A risk issue could be that it's flammable. Quality control issue could be that the seams not put together well and the sleeve falls off a lot. And that's just this one example I'm going to come up with lots of different ones in terms of different standards. So.
James: Christine you've been waiting patiently there.
Christine: I just wanted to mention one thing about the five requirements. The good thing about this, the five requirements, and, and what [inaudible] is submitted to the database is that when the consumer submits the report it's not published immediately. And, and that's for a reason. 10 days, the Commission has 10 [inaudible] submitting the report. And that 10 days decides in a giving notice to the manufacturer will also allow the Commission to assist the consumer in obtaining more, more information for the incident report. Which is why, besides the consumer's name, which I agree they should know their name. And, and a basic description of the harm that their reports should be, there shouldn't be some sort of a rejection of them submitting their report. The 10 days allows, gives the Commission an opportunity to assist the consumer in , in making it's, in filling out the five requirements to get it on to the database.
James: Wayne you've, you've also been waiting very patiently. Did, is this the, the questions you wanted to ask. Would it be okay, since we're running up against the break to, to table those until after the break, would that be all right with you? Okay. Charlotte, do you have a point you'd like to make?
Charlotte: I was just want to add on to what George and Steve said in response to Mary's question, very briefly.
James: Okay.
Charlotte: Basically there are two types of product, if that's Wayne's design defect or are these manufacturing defect. And one way to clarify that is if it's a design defect based on all 100 percent of the product manufactured through that design would be defective. Whereas if it's a manufacturer defect, that means we, the same design if it's a quality control issue, some of the product may still turn out to be fine, whereas others will be defective.
James: Brad.
Brad: I think the question was, how do you define the risk of harm. I mean it's pretty subjective and I think people's imagination sometimes can get the better of them when they're describing the batter got hot, and could have burned my house down. That may or may not be true. But kind of I think sifted out.
James: All right. Anyone, George did you want to make a point here?
George: Yeah, just a couple, in response to Rick's question. Again the verification, I mean they've got, they've got boilerplate they use for that now. They see if the consumer submits a complaint, they get a letter saying do you verify that this is, that hasn't changed has it? Do you verify that this is true and accurate. Again, I, I don't think there's any question about that, that's even from a data collection point of view, that's harmless. You're not going to intimidate somebody with that saying you just told us this, do you mean to tell us that it's true. I mean you just wrote it. You're going to say it's true. One other thought. I just wanted to toss out. I'm looking at this again, I'm definitely not a lawyer. I was a data analyst type guy. But I'm looking at these other sections, and the wording of this paragraph says transmission of reports to manufacturers and private labelers, not later than five business days after the Commission receives the report described in subsection so and so, which includes the information required by subsection so and so, the Commission shall so transmit it. There's nothing there that says you, I don't want to put it. That you have to, you don't have to send it to them if you don't have it. Or if you had an I don't know, you would conclude well it doesn't include the information that is in that place. So I don't have to send it to them. Because I don't know who to send it to. I don't have an I don't know brand to send it to. But there was an earlier comment that suggested that well if you don't have that, if, if we made a more relaxed interpretation of the manufacturer name that would be in violation of this statement requiring we send the manufacturer. This paragraph specifically says, if it has that information you have to send it to them.
James: Let's take one final comment before the break.
Very quickly and just to go back to the difference between quality and risk of harm. And I think it can be the opposite of what you were saying. And that's that consumers often don't understand that it's a risk and if you put in a lot of language about don't report quality issues here, consume, you know I talk to consumers all the time who continue to use cribs whose drop sides don't work because they just assumed it's an inconvenience, that it won't stay up. They don't understand that it is indeed a risk of harm. And children have, have died in the same thing. So I want to avoid any language that convinced parents that, that oh what I have is a quality issue ,not a risk issue, because that is clearly a risk and would take an engineer maybe to figure that out. So I think the more information you get the better. And then you can figure out whether it's actually a risk or simply a quality issues.
James: Brad if you've got a quick direct.
Brad: I think the question becomes who makes that determination. You put something in a report that is, is a quality issue, I mean I'll, I'll go back to Dell Computers since it was a gentleman from Dell who raised the issue. If the, if the cue button is sticking [inaudible] and it's, it's an annoyance to the consumer, and that gets reported, it's pretty obvious that that is not likely a risk of harm, even though maybe the button might come off and somebody might choke on it. But it take some imagination to get to the risk upon that particular quality control issue. And I think that was really Mary's question which is, what's the threshold and really who makes the determination whether there is a risk of harm there. Somebody at the CPSC will certainly recognize that if a consumer reports a problem as you've, as you've described with the crib, they're going to understand that that probably presents a risk of harm. But you know there is obviously that gray area in there somewhere where somebody is going to have to make a determination. And, and this is for another panel discussion. But again, you have a manufacturer's commenting on these things. And I think that that might help the Commission on, on a close call determine whether albeit a very small risk of harm, there might be a risk of harm or yeah, we'll adopt that the manufacturer is saying that this is a quality control issue and it has, presents no risk of harm to the consumer. So I think it really becomes a question of threshold and who has to make that determination. So I, I agree with you in part.
James: With that, I think that this has been a great back and forth discussion. I want to take a short break. We'll pick this back up. I'd say, I think we had scheduled 15 minutes. Let's try and keep it to 10. We've run a little bit over and we've got a lot of good topics to go through. So if we can be back here in about 10 minutes or so.
[ Background noises ] Please take your seats here we'd like to get going again.
[ Silence ] So I'd like to, like to kick back off here. I think we had a lot of good interactive discussion. We've got a number of questions that we still need to cover. We've got fairly limited amount of time, just about an hour to get through them. So I'd like to, to start to go into some of these specific questions, and I'll, I'll really pose the questions to the CPSC staff for clarification for the panel. Before we do that though, Wayne had, had very patiently waited before the break to ask a couple questions. So I'll, I'll turn it over to, to him at this point.
Wayne: Well, well thanks. I actually have some questions for the Commission staff. I was just wondering if you could tell me, currently you all get reports. About how many per month? What kind of level of average?
We get, I don't know if you're familiar with our database systems, but one of them is called IPI, Injury or Potential Injury, and just incidents. And, it includes a number of sources. Practically, actually everything except for NICE [assumed spelling] and death certificates.
Yeah.
And, I honestly don't remember the [inaudible] last year there was about 52,000, but that includes news clips, MECAP [assumed spelling] reports, internet, hotline, consumer complaints from other sources, referrals from other government agencies. I think internet might be about, I'll say around 10,000 or 12,000, but that's probably going to be wrong. I'm not sure.
OK.
Is that, that's right.
Pretty close.
Yeah.
OK. And, out of that, I don't want to take away anything from the people that are doing this, but of, about how many are actually followed up in any fashion at all. I mean even a phone call, or further contact, or anything.
I think investigations we do, and this includes NICE investigations, which are a little bit
Yeah, it's a little different. Yeah.
But, I think it's under 5,000 a year.
Yeah. OK, OK, good. And, in terms of the existing situation, you have a form that you use now, is that a form that we all see and have available to us?
I'm sorry, the form for the
Well, you've got a consumer that contacts you either bylet's use telephone for example. Do you send them out a form to fill out, or try to fill one out when they're on the phone with you?
Yeah, most telephone contact is with our hotline staff and they have a computer application, which ends up with a form, CPSC170 [assumed spelling] which looks likes an old printed form, and actually was the basis for setting up the original internet form, and is very similar. It's not identical, but it's very similar.
Now, I presume, of you, you probably get some letters in from the public as well, with long narratives. Somebody must be making a decision as to how you can input from that into the computer.
Right. We have data entry.
You must go through and make this about, this is
Based [inaudible] size [inaudible]
Yeah, it would have to. I mean I would assume that you'd anticipate, you'd have to do the same thing with this.
I don't, I don't under discussion, but I think there is some utility, ideally, I think we capture whatever we get, but in addition maybe we want to do a synopsis as well, that's useful for reporting sometimes.
Now, have you all made an estimate of what you think after this is up and running for, say, a year, or two years about how many reports you think you'll be getting under the new system?
I
Oh, come on. Somebody's got an estimate.
Not me.
[inaudible]
No. Company once thought about it.
No, we actually, there's no way at this point to really determine how many reports we're going to get through this new database.
OK.
Could I do some follow-up on this?
Yeah, of course.
So, do you envision that what's being created now is going to entirely replace all of this, or will that still exist in some other format? All of the
I assume the old internet form goes away, but I think that's the only thing that goes away.
And, again, we haven't decided, we haven't gotten that far at this point. That's still undecided.
OK. A related question is, and just came up when somebody was talking about estimating how much time it's going to take to fill this out, does this all get subject to the paperwork reduction act? Do you have to come up with those estimates? Does this become part of that whole process?
We have involved our general counsel office, and we are looking at that, and this probably will fall under the paperwork reduction act. So, we will address that along with the rule-making at that time.
George?
So, will this replace IPI? Is this going to, this isn't just a freestanding all new thing, right? I mean we're talking about a database that's going to include the incident reports that we've gotten wherever, whenever, however, starting at some point in time, right?
That, again, that still hasn't been decided.
[ silence ]
Alright. Any other follow up questions on this vein? [inaudible]
Yeah, and I do just want to clarify [inaudible] what we're doing is gathering requirements and that's the phase [inaudible] is the requirements gathering phase.
OK. Go ahead, [inaudible]
Yeah, please pick on me this time.
[ laughs ] Actually, I wanted to ask a question about a topic from, prior to the break. I didn't want to hold up the break, but we were talking about the five items, you know, the statues are pretty clear on the five required things, that's in the report. My question to the panel, is outside those five required fields what, in your opinion are the next five things that we should be asking. Or, the next five fields that we should be collecting that may help, you know, really manufacturers to follow up the incident, and for CSPC to do the investigation?
Shal [assumed spelling] ?
Shal: I would like to get it started, and if I have, kind of, wish list. I would add on hazard, because I think that would give people the firsthand information and a very, hopefully [inaudible] manner to see exactly what is concern regarding the product. And, then secondly, I would like to see somehow, in some format sort of what is the activity engager [inaudible] occur. Basically a scenario to describe, and it can be in the free-tax format, or whatever, but as long as the idea is collate to the people who is going to be [inaudible] at the form, to say we would like to know what is the activity of the victim during the occurrence of the incident, and if there is any window, or caregiver, what it is they are doing, and what is especially the product's features, characteristics, functions that you think attributed to the incident. I think that would be grateful. And, as a reference point if we look at IDP [assumed spelling] data, which is the database that put out [inaudible] commission. It also talk about two things [inaudible] involved and product cost injury. So, base, I think we heard some of the comments earlier talking about electronic device related incidents, which tended to involve other products as well. So, I think that would also help you to see [inaudible] incidents, and they will require people to, not require people, they also have a field in the data talking about an activity of incident.
[inaudible] and then George.
I agree a lot with what you said. We actually kind of did this exercise ourselves, as well, and kind of came up with some other things that we would like to see. If possible, I mean speaking to our industry with small appliances I think it's very helpful if we know the model number, or the specific name of the product. A lot of products have a specific name attached to it. The serial number, in some incidences, electronics and appliances do have serial numbers. So, if they've got that, that can be offer a lot of additional information, it can tell us when it was made, who manufactured for us, a date code if that's applicable. We also would like to know the description of the injury, or the property damage, and whether medical attention was sought. We'd like to know where the product was purchased, when the product was purchased. Also, we'd like to see an inquiry as to whether the manufacturer, or private labeler, was contacted prior to the submission of the and that's important to us because in the situation that we've discussed earlier where perhaps the consumer doesn't wan that information released [inaudible] the website. At least we'll know that we've already been contacted, and we can go back through our database and maybe try to match up what little information we have and can say, yeah, that's probably the same incident. In that regard we're not looking at what is really one incident, and looking at perhaps analyzing it as two separate events. So, that's important to us as well. We want to know whether the product is still available for us to look at, where it is, was the product sent to, the commission for analysis, or it is [inaudible] can we perhaps contact, you, the consumer and make arrangements to have it inspected. And, then as we've already mentioned we'd like to know whether any other product, or device was being used when the incident occurred. I think Wayne touched on that earlier. With electronics, and electrical appliances it's sometimes important to know whether they were plugged into a surge protector, or an extension cord is being used. So, that type of information, obviously, isn't even applicable in some situations, but from the standpoint of the appliance industry I think those types of things would be important to us.
George?
George: Back to beating the same drum. I want to start with a lot of space narrative. As Rachel said, unlimited characters, leave as much as they want. Maybe give them some things at the top, you know, try to tell us this, and this, and this, and this. If you want to add thirty more structured things at the end that will be useful to somebody later, that's fine, but, again, the point of the whole thing, I think, is so that people can look for common hazards, common brands on the product they're thinking about buying. So, a lot of these other things are interesting to CPSC, interesting to manufacturers, they may not be all that interesting to a consumer who wants to use this database to decide what toy they want to buy, and so, again, I would just say however you choose to do it in other forms make sure you get that big, broad open ended narrative at the top, and encourage them to run off a keyboard as much as they'd like, because that's where you're going to get a lot of information. Some [inaudible] is going to have to read it, or code it later, but in terms of not losing information that's your best shot.
Shal and then Rachel.
Shal: I'm glad that the property damage was mentioned and I do have a question. As defined by the statue, that harm means basically illness, injury, or fatality, or death, or the risk of leading that. So, in most, let me paraphrase, in some of the property damage the incidents actually no personal injury was involved. So, my question is if that's the case, let's say a candle caught on the window drapes and leads to the house fire. Nobody was ever hurt, but burned down blocks of houses. In that case is that still under the scope of the incident portal, or it has to involve any personal injury?
I think that's a risk of harm, pretty clearly.
Did, is there a response here, Harry, or? No? OK. Rachel?
Rachel: One thing I just wanted to focus on, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but when Ming [assumed spelling] even asked the question about what other factors we would like to see, he asked for manufacturers and for other, and I think we just need to keep focused that this website is actually a consumer compliant database. The goal here, among numerous ones, but I think one of the most important goals is providing a mechanism for consumers to report information, and also a mechanism for consumers to find out information, where currently none exist at all. There are many instances where the commission has information and the manufacturer, the retailer may have information, but it's the consumer who continuing to use the product, continuing to potentially expose themselves or their family through risk of harm that is in the dark. So, I just want to keep that in the background because I think sometimes when we're so in the details, sometimes we lose sight [inaudible] larger focuses. In terms of the other fields, I mean, I think all of those that have been discussed and those that are contemplated are, are important to have. I mean the way that I look at this is through a lens of what makes it easier for the commission, and ultimately for a consumer to identify, you know, at the receipt end whether they have the product that could, or has also posed [inaudible] harm. What are the pieces of evidence that the commission needs to take action, if in fact there is a potential pattern and a potential hazard. And, what for a consumer is information that they could have access to, they may need assistance in obtaining that information, but what's reasonable. [inaudible] that they would be able to, to convey, even with further prompts that may be necessary.
Omi [assumed spelling]
Omi: I would echo what Rachel said. It's important to keep in mind that this is a for use by consumer and commission database. It's not a for use by manufacturers database. As to the quote/unquote wish list that you mentioned, I go with the caveat that this not to try and discourage consumers from reporting of too much information as asked of them, but I think what's useful when the commission is trying to determine what type of steps to take, the nature of the individual's injury, and for example with children's products, but not necessarily with children's products, the age of the injured individual [inaudible] useful and the final disposition of the injury, I think, Brad or somebody else mentioned that. You know, hospitalization, what have you.
Don?
Don: I would just add that date of incident is really critical, both for, all users, particularly consumers and everyone else as well. And, the reported [inaudible]
Wayne?
Wayne: I wanted to agree with both Rachel and Omi about the situation, but maybe in a slightly different way. I don't disagree at all with what you said, Rachel, or Omi, about let's keep the focus on the consumer. It is a consumer database, that's what Congress has said to us and it's very plain. But, I do believe that accuracy is extremely important, and so by asking for the information that I think Ming did, in my mind it was how can the commission get greater accuracy with the information? What kind of information can they ask for that would assist them and assist manufacturers to get to the heart of what is the issue with the exact product involved? So that we have an accurate accounting in that database. So, that if there is a harm, we can zero in on exactly the right product so that we can either get that out of the market if that is necessary, get a corrective action underway, get a stop sale underway, do whatever is necessary, but how can we get to the exact product? And, so I think that in my mind, the more accuracy we can get to the situation, the more we can actually enhance and serve the need and serve the use of the consumer database. I just wanted to make sure that, it's not a wish list for us to have some big enormous database so that manufacturers have all kinds of information, the purpose is to make sure that we can get to the exact product that is causing the harm situation.
So getting back to Ming's original question of, OK, so there's the five fields, what else would we like to see? Phillip, do you have a comment on that question?
Phillip: Whether or not the incident has been reported to the retailer or manufacturer.
Any other thoughts on other fields? So at this point then, I would like to go back to some of the original questions that we posed as part of the public announcement. There's a couple, I think we've touched on quite a few of these in the course of the conversation this afternoon. There's a few things I would like to go back to though, in particular and I am actually going to skip around just a little bit on these questions. One of them is what contact information must be provided at minimum to meet statutory requirements for inclusion in the database? So, one obvious issue the question of anonymous report. And, so I'll turn it over to Chad Tompkins [assumed spelling] for a little more clarification there.
Chad: So, I agree, let's talk about the consumers for a little bit. And, to answer this question at the minimum what contact information must be provided? It is something we want to understand. Currently, on our website we allow anonymous reporting and I believe through the hotline as well there can be anonymous reporting, and that is important for whistle blowers, a nurse at a hospital or something like that. And, I would like to talk around that idea of an anonymous report, an authenticated report like someone who logs in with a user id and a password, or an unauthenticated where someone says 'Here's my name and email address', but that's it, they just hit 'OK', and you may have seen similar models on websites where you buy something sometimes you put on a user id, sometimes you don't. What are your thoughts around those kinds of authentications and identification of who the consumer is?
Open that question up to the panel, Wayne?
Wayne: Well, we have thought about this one as well, and certainly in 6.A.B.6 it lists both the name and the address, it give us that to begin with. But, we also understand that there is a very short time frame here for both the manufacturer to be notified and for the report to be back up on the actual public website. And in many cases that is going to mean that either the commission or manufacturer, somebody is going to have to follow up very often with these situations. So, I think that we feel that a phone number where the consumer can be accessed is very important, because we are dealing with a very short period of time here. I don't think we can deal with the US mail, or other types of situations to get back to the consumer. I think email, where it is available, would be very helpful to have, an email address for the consumer so we could do that. And, if the report is being made on behalf of a child, for instance, if the person filling out the form describes an incident involving a child, invariably there is going to another adult, a guardian, some parent situation that an adult that is going to be in charge of that and is actually filled that out. I think that is the person that you want to try and talk to, obviously the child, or if a person has been severely injured is there another person within the family that can be contacted to get follow up information? Respecting what was said earlier by Nancy that in a fatality situation that may be something that we have to be very cautious of and take special arrangements for, but in these situations some other responsible person that could give us information, so maybe it would be keyed in as, is there another person that can give us additional information beyond the actual person involved in the incident. And, allow that situation. Thanks.
Nancy?
Nancy: Yeah, I think that actual person, the person filing the report may not be the actual person injured, and so I think would meet your criteria, because obviously if it's a child or the adult is harmed, they are not the person filing the report, so I think the contact information for the person filing the report is what's needed, whether it's the actual person harmed or simply the person reporting it. And, I think a phone mail, I mean a phone number and or an email, I know that we have people who sign up by email for our stuff and often there's a mistake or a problem with the email it helps to have phone so you can reach them either of those two ways. But, you know I think the least information possible, and then again, you are going to need that check-off to say whether that information is just for the CPSC or whether they agree to have it submitted, you know, given to the manufacturer, I think that has to be stated very clearly. They have to opt in to have their information sent to the manufacturer, if not then opt out of that.
Mary?
Mary: Nancy, actually I want to go back to you and ask if you could clarify, or anyone else on the panel, what you think the minimum contact information should be, should it be address and phone number, address and email?
Nancy: I actually think phone and email are must more useful than address when you are trying to get someone within these certain amount of days. So, you know, I think that if you want to, you basically need a way to contact them, so one of the ways is effective, if you want to ask for two of the three just to make sure you have a backup, but
Steve?
Steve: I would encourage all of that, but if you go back to the statute and they anticipate submission of electronic, telephonic and mail. I think the assumption is that there are some people who will only have one of those three, they won't have a phone number or email. I mean I imagine most people do have all three of those, but you may not, you may find you are in a situation where you can't actually require someone to include an email address or a phone number for submitting it through the mail. So you might not want to put that requirement in that they have to have all three of those. Obviously, the encouraging information that would lead to that, but not something that would kick it out just because they don't have it. That said, then that messes up the five day reporting and things like that if you've got something, and it is simply an address and that is all you've got, then that five day reporting before you can get the response to the manufacturer, then that may, you may need to play around with those, that time period a little bit more. To follow back up.
And, I'd like to come back to that topic, that's actually another question on our list. Do you have a quick response, or a quick follow up on that?
Well, to go back to the original question, we are trying to attract as many folks as we can, we still need to authenticate and at least the idea of an anonymous report seems like it does not fall in the category of something you put into the public database, but we could use it for other purposes. Are there any thoughts about the authenticated or non authenticated, requiring someone to have a user id and password versus just putting their information in? If they are going to come back later with a picture to upload, you know, it would be easier if they had a log on, and if not, it may be harder to connect those dots together.
George?
George: I am kind of, I am lagging behind, I was still going to comment on the last one but I think it will tie into that. We ask them for a place to contact them that's the way they contacted us. If you send us an electronic report, then you give us an email address. If you send, if you call in by phone, then you give us a phone number. But, I know there's a lot of people out there, most of them considerably younger than me, who don't have any kind of land line telephone. And, people are a lot more protective of their cell phone numbers than they are of the land line number, and you may not be as able to get them. Plus, there are still populations relative to income or whatever who don't have a phone, might be writing to you in which case, you might only get an address. Probably if they don't have a phone they don't have a computer, but who knows, but if they send you an email message, you get an email address from them.
Liz, do you have a comment on Chad's question about authenticated versus unauthenticated, or?
Liz: I think that, as I am understanding the authentication proposal I, I think that might have an impact on people participating, if I have to register with the CPSC in order to provide input into the database. The gentleman from Hamilton Beach earlier was suggesting a system where someone submitting data could get an authentication page, or essentially a receipt like I get when I bill travel with the airlines on the web, where I would have my incident report so I could, if I then found the model number, or had a picture that I wanted to upload, I could just enter in as a returning submitter, I could enter in that case number, or however you would want to do it. And, then I could amend my earlier, I think we could do that easily.
Sean, and then Omi.
Sean: I think you know, if we are looking at electronic submission, certainly submitting name, address, phone number and or an email is a pretty minimal level for folks to report. And, on this authentication issue, the idea of auto-authentication is kind of a nice way to go back as you have heard here from others to be able to go back to that complaint and report a resolution to a problem, or a change in information, or additional information because one of the things as you are filling this out you may not have all of it. Again, I will give you an example of vehicle stuff, if you are putting in all of the information to NITSA, but you don't have the VIN number for your car, you have got to go get the registration, or you have to go get the VIN number off the car, but you don't want to stop what you are doing, so you complete that and then you have the ability to come back with some kind of auto authentication number and then recognize who you are, I think that makes an awful lot of sense.
Omi: I think I agree with what Liz said that, I think you do have a chilling effect, I think you lose a lot of complaints if you require the user id and password, and plus a lot of folks may be one time reporters, and so they may not have a need for a user id and password.
Any further follow up or questions from CPSC? Ming?
Ming: Today we don't require user account for reporting, but do you see any benefit in allowing a consumer to set up an account, so in case she or he reports multiple incidents, or whatever that their purpose may be to have them come back and have that tailored page, for example, to communicate and have the information all in one screen.
I think if it's optional, it definitely could serve a purpose if you have a child care provider, for example, who obviously have a lot of child's infant durable goods coming through, they might be a more than one time reporter.
Sean, did you have a comment as well, or? Any further follow-ups there? Next question I would like to get to- Oh, yep, sorry Christine.
Christine: Oh, that's OK. Let me mention the child service providers and that I had another question regarding the categories that are listed in the law that would help who ever if submitting the information and maybe help the commission to in terms of how they weigh the information. For example, in a consumer's, the government agencies, the health care professionals, child service providers and public safety entities, if there is, those just more feels, but I don't know if that would be helpful in weighing of the validity of the information, or whatever other questions individuals may have about the data.
A follow up? So I think that, as I mentioned earlier, another topic that we would like to get to that kind of plays on something that Steve brought up a few minutes ago, this idea of reports submitted either via phone or by regular mail, and the question is, and I will actually read it verbatim so we get it exactly right. Should reports of harm submitted by telephone or paper meet the same statutory time frames for submission in the public database. So, I will open that up, is there anyone from the CPSC side who would like to add or clarify that at all? If not I'll open that up to the panel. Steve?
Steve: Well, there's, if it comes in from telephone, or by mail there's an obvious extra [inaudible] someone's got to take the data and add it to something else that's going to be electronic, presumably [inaudible] because I don't know how the communication thing goes to the manufacturer to access, validate, or respond to comment. Coming in electronically it's probably going to be a lot easier to turn into a format that can be sent to the manufacturer. If it's coming in by phone, or by mail, I think you have an extra step that's implied in there. So, you may need to figure out when that five day period starts. Does it start at receipt? Does it start when you then turn it into a format, that it's sort of equivalent to, the stuff that comes in electronically? So, that's just something to consider.
Nancy, and then Wayne.
Nancy: I would say that, I'm not, in reading I'm not sure why you would need extra time. As you said there is the additional step of typing it in. You have five days for that, just to get it to the manufacturer and then an additional ten days. So, I'm not sure you need more than five days to type up a report. And, that's [inaudible] given, whether it comes in by paper or mail, that would slow the process down.
Ming?
[inaudible] elaborate on that question. So, take the scenario of the snail mail. Of, if somebody's typing us a letter and mailing that to us. They [inaudible] the form of the CPSC web page. They may not necessarily have a statement to say I certified the, you know, what's it? Disclaimer, right. So, they send us a letter and then we would have to, you know, send a form letter back to them. Hey, sign this. Send it back to us so we can certify your report. Just, thinking about that delivery time. You're basically using up your five days. So, that's a scenario that
But, is there a reason that the manufacturer can't get the information before you have the verification. You're not posting it yet.
Could you guys, since we've got CPSC folks who want to talk, could everyone undo their mics for a second. [laughter] Go ahead, Ming.
Ming: But, I was just going to say that's the reason we're sort of asking the question with you guys. What are your thoughts on this subject?
So, I know that we had Wayne, and I think Rachel you had your mic on as well. So, Wayne.
Wayne: Well, the reports submitted by telephone do require consideration, I think per the 6AB2B we think that all reports for inclusion of the database must include verification that is called for. And, there's really two things here. One is the verification that the statement is accurate. And, the second is their consent situation. And, I think that we believe that both of those need to be done in a written format. And, so we do belief that the person taking that information on telephone would print out that information of what was said, send it to the person and have them sign it and send it back. To your point, Ming, does that require then that would cut into, if you will, that time period. It doesn't necessarily have to. If the information is available with the required fields, particularly the manufacturer's name, and that could trigger, that information could be sent off and you could have a special line that says this has not yet been verified, but we're alerting you to this situation, we're waiting verification to come back. Or, something along that line so that it doesn't, doesn't trigger a long waiting period of time, and so that we're also in keeping with the ten days to try and post the information on the website. But, we do believe that verification is important, is one large reason why I think it's actually in the law. We also believe that currently the commission has some experience in this situation, and though you're not under a timeframe situation there, I would imagine you have some experience with, you know, gathering that information by telephone, sending that information out. I'm assuming that you do in some for, or fashion to the consumer and say to this, is this what you told us? And, then get it back. It would be interesting to know, kind of, what percentage of the ones that you actually get the first back, you actually get our verification back from. I think it would be fairly high since the consumers' are concerned about a hazard.
I don't have the number exactly, but it's something around 50%.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's about 50%.
You lose a lot of consumers with that requirement, because I talked to them and they don't understand about sending the, they don't understand why you never followed up. That they need to send the form back before you even look at the case. So, 50%, I think, might be even high with this, in talking with consumers. I know you lose a lot.
Rachel?
Rachel: I don't think there's any reason why the verification, or the consent has to be written as opposed to oral. I think if the commission takes, inputs a report over the phone, that there can be a question and an answer about verification that the information is true and accurate as well as the consent, as to whether their personal information could be communicated to a manufacturer, or private labeler. So, it could be sort of simultaneous, with the input of a report over the phone, and also if a report is received through snail mail, hopefully they'll be, there's another way to communicate with the person [inaudible] phone. I think the issue that I think is the biggest sticking point is if someone sends in a report over snail mail and that's the only contact information that there is, but I think that it's that small universe of imputed reportees that is a problem. But, I think overall there's no problem in getting it over the phone.
Steve?
Steve: I think the flexibility the commission has here is trying to define when the clocks start ticking, what the definition of a report submitted. You know at some point, you know, is the report submitted, one of the questions answer, five of the questions answered. You guys ought to come to a conclusion on when you believe a report has in fact been submitted and that starts the clock ticking. And then, you know get to the answer of whether, how much of it's written down, and if it is coming over the phone whether or not, you know, the assurance that, you know, the phone operator's saying, you know, I have to ask these two questions. Please tell me yes or no. And, then you know, yes or no. And, then does that constitute submitting telephonically that question.
Anyone else? So, moving on, another question from our, yep. Go ahead. Sorry, Wayne.
I think if I remember right, in terms of the required information, doesn't the required information say that one of the elements is the verification? So, it really isn't a report until you have the verification?
Yeah, it doesn't say that it needs to be written. But, it is a verification. That is one of the five elements in 2B; 6A2B.
Philip, did you?
Philip: I'm just going to mirror the point that's been previous made and that is I think that when the consumer picks up a phone and calls a government agency they expect to be able to conclude their business with the government agency when they hang up the phone.
George?
George: Yeah, just a remark, I think I've got to make. When we send a complaint to a manufacturer and the manufacturer sends back information in response to that complaint, do we send him a paragraph that says, I verify that my comments are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge? Or, do we believe him? Because, frankly, I'm very concerned with our concern about the verification. That we're dealing with an entire population of liars out there, but we're to assume because somebody's a manufacturer that he's telling us the truth if he says that's not right.
And, conversely, I would be concerned about the opposite. [inaudible] consumed, concerned that the manufacturer, or assume that the manufacturers, I mean the fact of the matter is somebody may not have correct information, and I think there, especially since the statue spells it out, if it's written, or if it's asked orally, say, and they can say, I'm required by statue to ask this question, you know. To have, do you say to the following yes? Do you say the following yes? And, then you eliminate that extra step of sending the piece of paper back. If you make the decision not to do it in writing. And, you may have to do it in writing because of the way, you know [inaudible] may look at this and say jeez, maybe this needs to be done in writing. I'm not telling you that one way or the other, but I do think, you need to be able to establish for each report that's going to eventually make it onto the database [inaudible] five pieces of data requirements. I think it's very clear. And, then you know, how that information then gets used, and forms the basis of further investigation, obviously will be subject. But, I think that's pretty clear right there. So
Anyone else want to comment on that? Moving on then, another question that we had on the list that I'll throw out there for CPSC is should any category of persons be excluded from submitting reports of harm for inclusion in the public database, and if so, by what means? Anyone want to elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, Cathy.
Cathy: I just want to add kind of two related questions. I know one of the things that we've talked about is minors. How we should handle minors making reports. And, then another question would be people, I heard about an incident, and telling us about that. If you have any thoughts on either of those categories, or any others, some of this
And for the first time all day our panel has gone quiet. [laughs]
I can talk on that.
Nancy?
Nancy: I think with minors, obviously you're going to need to get a parental, a parental unit or guardian to speak with. I don't see that a government agency can talk to a minor without their parent's understanding. Hopefully, if you get a phone number, email, you can contact an adult. It doesn't mean CPSC can't follow up on it. With regards to other people filing, from my own experience, many of the contacts that I get are initially from a person outside the family. So, it's, you know, especially there's a fatality, or a serious injury, the parents are still at the hospital, it's a family friend or a relative who calls, and I know probably calls you as well with the initial report. Doesn't mean that you can't talk to the family later, but I think you still need to take those reports seriously because they could be, you know, it could be a product that you need to act quickly on, like, the Aquadots [assumed spelling] with the date rape drug in them, where you have to act very quickly to get them off the market. So, I think you can't exclude those categories just without, you know, listening to the reports.
How about further away from the tree, like, read it in the newspaper about something happened in Arizona, and I'm now typing into the
Do people do that?
Yeah.
We do.
I don't know.
I can jump into this. We have a category we use for informational purposes, is the way we'll code that kind of a compliant, and then, or you could pick whatever other designation you want. And, then you can decide how you want to use that when you go mining through your data.
Wayne?
Wayne: I think that, you know, I'm sure that the commission is well aware that what we're dealing with here is two different things. One is the report that comes into you. And, the second is the report that goes up on the web. For purposes of the report that comes into you, I mean a report of somebody in Arizona that legitimately is concerned about something that happened in Maryland and they want to report that to you, I mean that's their public right to do that. And, if it's a sufficient concern, or if it happened to be, you know, a, let's say a brother-in-law or sister-in-law, somebody that they had, and they want to report this to you. You never know, they might trigger a realistic report eventually. Does it bear some follow-up? If it's serious enough [inaudible] feel that it should, I'd rely on the commission to do that type of situation, just as I would rely on you to look at it and say, that sounds funny. Their only source of information is a newspaper article. I'm probably not going to mount that one up on the database. So, I think there's the same judgment call that you would make when you get the report of the incident, and it's this horrific situation and then the manufacturer reports back to you and says, I examined the product and it just doesn't bear any resemblance to whatthe same judgment that you're going to use on that situation you're going to end up using in this situation where somebody's reporting to you something that took place far, far away from them and you make a judgment call that that doesn't bear putting it up on the actual public website. I think that's also covered in the laws. It says other sources. In that type of situation I think there is going to be a judgment call that members of the commission are going to have to make in those situations. And, I rely on you to do it just as I do with all the other reports that you follow up on now.
Omi?
Omi: Not to make a complicated balancing act even more complicated, but one other thing that I would mention on, aside from the parents and minors scenario, if there's folks for whom English is not their first language and they have somebody make the report on their behalf. I just throw that out there for consideration.
Any other comments? So, we've gotGeorge?
George: In response, well, first off what he said [laughs] Make that distinction, but the question of language, I know you guys have talked about this, but is the form going to be available in multiple languages, or are we just doing English?
[ silence ]
We're still debating that, discussing that. That's still under research at this point.
OK. We're at about, we've got about twenty minutes left. I'd like to leave a little bit of time for audience participation at the end. I will remind folks on the web cast that you can send in email questions to workshopquestions@cpsc.gov I will take those live, real time. There's one last category of questions. Ming, go ahead.
Ming: I just have one staff question, the user accounts. The question is should there be a timeframe placed on the user accounts for validation, or for updates of the information? The user accounts, should there be basically a limit on the life of the account? And, what period do we go back and ask for updated information on the user account?
Well, first of all, I like the idea better of [inaudible] having a user account, receiving at the end of submitting the form a specific number that could be accessed. But, I guess the question would pertain to both sort of scenarios. The authentication.
Ming: Right.
Or, the, I don't think there should be a life to it. Especially, at this point because I think we, the commission and everyone else needs to see how it works. How, I mean at this point I think it needs to be open-ended so that a consumer, the other reporter sending in the information has time to verify the information, or look for information, or they may find something later as they're thinking about it, their memory's jogged by another mechanism.
Ming, anything further you want to follow up with her?
Ming: A clarification. So, then say if there's no limit on the account itself, what about the complaints underneath the account. The person filed the complaint, do we place a time, or limitation on how long that person has to go back and update information on it, reports that have already been submitted?
I don't think so.
Did you want to add something?
On the user account [inaudible] to voice my comment, because, you know, I don't mean to sound discouraging. I think there's obvious virtues of having that, but just with some personal experience I often times forget my user name and password and I constantly need to have IT support to help me to revive those information. So, probably before you're concerned about, you know, whether you want to set how long [inaudible] of time. People would have forget it before it becomes an issue. And, another thing is, you know, if we really allow a user to set up a content, or to update information, because I believe that was one reason to consider that as an option, then you can introduce another layer of caveat because every time we use updated information, you needed a system to automatically set out and alert, so that a CPSC reviewer noticed they should be looking at this updated version instead of an original version. I just wanted to voice those cautions I had of time.
Steve?
Steve: And, the other, I was going to say a very similar thing, the other thing is if you update [inaudible] one of the five elements does that then retrigger another five and ten day report back to the manufacturer? I don't know the answer to that, but it seems to me that if you do that then you do create that opportunity. One other thing too, just to kind of go into in terms of interface the consumers, is does, is this an opportunity also to encourage them to sign up for recalls too? In other words, when they exit the reporting do they get like, a, please sign up, you know, you know, on the email address system or something like that?
That's really one of the key reasons why we're thinking about this user account. How do we make it more user-friendly. So, if this person is, I'm interested in baby products because I just had a baby, then I don't need to be going in every time I go to the CPSC web page to be searching for baby products. I log into my account there are all the baby product related recalls. Here are all the incidences we've received on baby products. That's really the driver behind user accounts.
There you're really looking a whole other thing with, you know, do you want to create like a My CSPC.gov kind of a thing, where they want to go in and create it and set it all up. And, sure, that would be great, but that's a whole lot of work. I think it's much greater than the scope of the database. And, it gets into your basic, you know, setting up and updating the way the CSPC.gov website even works. I think that's whole interesting question.
Really, a different question, but it's a question that I wanted to ask for probably an hour or two now, and that is if I file a complaint on this database to generate a report, and then whomever is the manufacturer of the product I'm reporting response, sends some information in response to my report, will I as a consumer be notified of that response, so that I'm both aware of how industry is responding to my report, and can then sur-reply [assumed spelling] if necessary? I can tell you in my office when a consume complains about a business and the business response, now I should give you the caveat that we're involved heavily in mediating these complaints, so there's a need to communicate information, but even when we get a complaint purely for informational purpose where somebody's claiming something about a business, and the business responses we, generally speaking, I can't say in all cases, but in most cases we'll inform the consumer.
Try that with maybe the way we currently work. There's not a lot of communication back and forth between CPSC and the consumer. And, the law changed and lets you do more of that. What kind of status updates would you expect a consumer would desire? And, what should it include?
Well, presumably if this is going to be public information, to the extent that you're only required to notify the consumer, or you're not required, if you notify the consumer, the consumer can access the information, just like everyone else. If it's not public information, and I can only speak to my office's practice, we would send the consumer the response. I just simply brought it up because we've talked about, at varied levels of detail, the desire to respond the consumer in some way, and let them know that the agency is involved in the complaint. And, one thing, I, as a consumer would like to know, is if I'm complaining about a product, I would like to know how the manufacturer is responding. And, so I'm not necessarily suggesting that it's an agency priority. I'm just throwing it out to you as something to consider.
Manufacturing perspective, any thoughts?
Yeah, I'll, I'll hazard something in on that one. In regard to Phil's question and I think it's a very good one that you raised. I'm glad you did. I didn't see it in the questions that the commission raised, so it's a good one, with the exception of the section that's covered in the law under 6AC2C on confidential material I don't see that we would have a problem with response from the manufacturer being sent to the consumer, but won't they see it anyway in the database? And, so I guess I'm, I mean maybe not. Maybe if it's a more expansive comment and there's only a synopsis of it or something along that line, but
And, I thought of that same issue. Not every complaint is going to become public. And, not every public complaint is going to be responded to. And, so
Good point. I'd like to answer also the question that Steve raised a minute ago, and that has to do with the triggering of the time period. The, I guess, if the consumer were to get back to the commission with further information, a product, particularly zeroing in on, say, a model number, or giving further information allowing greater access. I think that in our opinion, yes, the clock would restart. That before that re-upped information appears back onto the public database, yes, we need to go through the steps that are necessary. We need to allow the manufacturer time to then recontact, because presumably in the initial phase maybe all they had was just the manufacturer's name. They didn't have a model number, they didn't have a description of the product. We don't even know what the product was, maybe, in that regard other than some generic form. So, with further information, particularly zeroing in on the product itself, it would be our opinion that, yes, the clock would have to restart, and you would have to just start over again in terms of allowing the manufacturer sufficient time to then do the investigation and the time period to post that information on the website. So, I think it's relatively clear in my mind, and in the statue on that one.
Cathy: I guess the question I would have, and I'm not an expert on this by any means, but there is the requirement that inaccurate information in the database be updated no later than seven business days after that determination. So, how would you reconcile that?
That's a tough one.
[inaudible]
Couple of different conversations going on, so, I wanted to answer first, Ming, your question about whether there should be a limit to how long the consumer can go back and update their initialI think if we do the unique, the unique identifier, or report number that's mentioned previously, I think if there's that, then there should be no limit to the length of time in which it can be updated, because, you know, folks are moving and they pack boxes and they find the packing that had the model number on it. You know, it's all useful information, because it's a distinct report, I think it makes sense to leave that. And, the question is how many people will actually go back and provide that additional data down the line anyways. Your suggestion about triggering at the end of the report a way for folks to sign up for recalls.gov makes perfect sense. And, maybe if folks are loathed to do a user id and password, or if they're just a one-time reporter, perhaps that confirmation page at the very end can say, you know, one line on the merits of recall, signing up for recalls.gov and just a box where they can enter their email address to sign up for recalls.gov And it's done. It's done on that one page, they never have to come back, that they are signed up. And, then the retrigger issue that was discussed as to whether a change to the information would retrigger the timeline, I think if, it makes no sense for that timeline to be retrigger if that model number can essentially confirms that the product that was identified the first time was correct. In other words they described the product, but they didn't have the model number the first time, then later on they find it, and put it in, and it simply confirms that they had the right product identified the first go around, it makes absolutely no sense for that to retrigger the timeline, because that doesn't change anything the CPSC was doing. And, there is the ten day timeline for the information to go up, and the seven days in which the commission can add information indicating that it was inaccurate in the first place.
OK. Let's take a few more comments, and then I would like to open it up to the audience at this point. We've got about ten minutes left. So, Steve, and then George, and then maybe a few comments from CPSC.
Steve: [inaudible] question on the retriggering in the seven and ten days. I think, again, just a question of when the commission makes the determination that it's inaccurate information. If there's a retriggering there's another, you know, conversation with the manufacturer and it comes back to the commission and then they can make that determination. So, again, there's clocks starting, and stopping, and starting kind of repeatedly through out this process. I think you want to make sure they start and stop as quickly as possible, but you do, you do control a little bit of when that stopwatch starts again after that process happens.
George?
George: Just a, I'm sorry, I'm going away from the clock, timing, days it makes my head hurt. But, some of the things that we kind of dropped the issue, I thought of the question of whether the consumer hears back after the manufacturer comments. And, again, just [inaudible] that comes to mind, one of the most frequent comments that I could remember seeing on some of the products [inaudible] among children's products was, you know what? I looked at the picture. That's not my product. We never made one that looked like that. So, it's not me. That really is the sort of thing that would need to get back to the consumer. To bring up a nasty subject that goes with it, especially if the consumer is getting ready to call a lawyer. It would be nice if he didn't get his lawyer all fired up and get you involved as the manufacturer and it's not even your product. So, the sooner we get that information back, if a manufacturer looks at, let's say he uploaded a picture and says, you know what? We never made one of those. Then the consumer needs to know that, I think.
Christine?
Christine: Yes, the retriggering of the timeline worries me a little bit. And, so I just want to make sure that when there's new information, that the information already on the database is not removed during this whole time retriggering. But, you know, that the information originally submitted on the database remains until the new information is confirmed. Just that we don't want to remove valuable info.
Anyone want to comment on that? Well, if not what I'd like to do is ask our CPSC staff if there's anything else, any other outstanding questions that any of you have at this point that you'd like to pose to the panel before we turn it open to the audience?
I think just on that last question there's another workshop [inaudible] information, which is the best place to cover that.
Anything else? If not
One question. I don't know, it's a technical one. Are you envisioning including that little, sometimes you've got to fill out a word to make sure it's not an automated response that goes in, a human being is actually doing that? It's that?
Recapture.
Is that what it's called?
[inaudible]
Yeah, you got to, like, you got to type in a word that kind of looks kind of goofy, just to make sure that, like, a bots not doing it.
I think, like, the spam thing.
Yeah, it's an anti-spam thing. I just, I'd encourage you to do that. I just don't know if you are thinking about that or not. But, your technical people should [inaudible].
That's actually a great piece of, or a great idea. We'll make sure we get that captured, make sure that gets filtered back to the technology team. At this point, I'd like to open it up to the audience. Anyone that has any questions, comments for the panel, please step up to the microphone.
Hi, this is Leah Way [assumed spelling] from the Illinois Attorney General's Offices. Someone briefly mentioned other languages. And I know, at our office, we have all our forms translated and we have hotline operators who speak Spanish. So, at the very least, I would hope that some of it would be available in Spanish. Thank you.
[ Silence ]
[ Tape skips ]
[Inaudible] from Econometrical [assumed spelling]. I just wanted to say a little bit about the existing incident database of, for this thread running through this, that we shouldn't ask too much from consumers. In the incident database now, the website complaints and the hotline complaints, we do have capture some very valuable data. And, I think, all of its been mentioned. The type of hazard, there's about 12 types of hazards, which cover most everything. The disposition with an injury, it was serious enough to be hospitalized. Or there was an injury that was treated in the hospital or there was no information about it and the age of the person, which turns out to be very critical. There are a lot of products, toys and stuff, where the age profile is very, very sharp. And the risk to a 4 year old and a 6 year old is substantially different, something like playground equipment. So those things are valuable to keep and what I can say from analyzing these things is its well and good to say we should have the reports without them, but in practice, what you wind up doing is you toss all those cases very quickly because you're missing an important part of the puzzle. So, while it should be a required field, there are things that are within the realm of most narratives and most telephone and web reports now and it would be very reasonable and valuable to keep them. And I'm not saying this just as a data analysis, a consumer, a would want to know, for example, the ages of the kids who fell off swings. To be able to tell whether a 3 year old or a 9 year old is the person who might run into those certain types of problems. So I encourage you to at least use the [inaudible] standard now to say these things are sometimes frustrating by not being enough. But at a minimum, they give you a lot of valuable information.
Thanks, thanks for that comment. Any responses from the panel? Any other questions or comments from the audience? Yes sir?
[ Noises ]
Brian: Hi, its Brian Falbow [assumed spelling]. Again, I'm council at Dell. I think, remembering from some of the early guidance which affect the database, I think there was guidance that multiple reports of the same incident would be considered for inclusion. I think that may have been early thinking. But, what's the current approach? Are we still looking at multiple reports even if it's the same incident? Or is it more of a one report, one incident inclusion in the database?
[ Pause ]
We're still looking at that. We haven't made a decision on that yet.
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Patrick: Hi, I am Patrick [inaudible] with GE Appliances. I had a couple comments. I've actually been reviewing customer complaints the last, almost, three years. So I have reviewed thousands and thousands. And the most frustrating part of getting customer complaint is when I don't have all the data because it is [inaudible]. The other gentleman said it, I can't go anywhere with it. You know, we talk about the database being a live thing and evolving. I would love for the complaint to be the same way. A complaint comes in, my appliance had a fire, I don't know where to go with that. I don't know what part of the appliance. I don't know what appliance it was. So for me not to be able to follow up with that customer, I can't take that and try to root cause and find out oh, it was the capacitor on this circuit board and that goes in this factory and it was assembled by this person during this shift. And then I found out that this is, you know, what happened and I can segregate that population, I can do something about it. So it is important. I don't want it to be too much of a burden, but that data, that raw data is very important. So if we could get a way for that to be like a my CPSC [assumed spelling], where I could go in, I could see, hey, these are the ones I submit.
[ Audio skips ] They're under review right now, they're in manufacturer, ok, they're posted. I'm going to go back in and update it. That would be really amazing, if we could get that kind of integration. And also, for the manufacturers, if we could have a [inaudible].
[ Audio skips ] We could go in, we could see all the complaints against the GE products or other surprises are. We can respond to them on the website. We could communicate with the CPSC to that website, maybe upload our model numbers, things like that. And we can, when it comes down to it, the best people to really do this analysis is the manufacturers. We know the products. We know where it was sold, who bought it and the CPSC really needs our feedback to really figure out what's going on. So that was one.
[ beep ] And the last one was, we talked about a lot of the analytics in the very beginning and I don't want to get too wrapped around the axel because the most important thing is the raw data. The narrative field is absolutely the best place to get all the info. So, I copy George on that, but to be on follow up is also critical. And then, the last thing is, when you look at that, the trend analysis, it's a tool to get it done. You'll see an up take, but it could be a new store, it could be an ex version. But also, the really critical thing is like maybe things like cribs, you may have something three years apart. So you wouldn't see that, it'd be lost in the noise of the overall [inaudible]. And so statistics analytical tools will not capture everything. I really encourage the CPSC to try to get people on the staff of those reviews who have engineering background, have the product knowledge background because they're the people that will do that first run through to really see what's going on and hopefully understand what it is. And then actually be able to go and do something about it. Thank you.
Thank you very much for those comments. I see we have a few responses here on the panel before we get to the next question. I did want to just follow up. I hope you'll be able to make it tomorrow morning. We're doing the workshop on manufacturer interactions tomorrow morning and I think your first comment, in particular, would be very well taken in that workshop. Wayne, you had a response?
Wayne: Not a response to that, Patrick, but one of the things that I guess called out in the law is section 681A, which list those people who may submit reports. And while it's a very interesting list, consumers, locals, state, federal government agencies, healthcare professionals, child service providers and public safety entities. I'm hoping that when the commission does the NOP [inaudible].
[ Audio skips ] For the data base, that they will further spell out what they mean by those because those are sort of broad generic categories. And I think that it bears having some understanding of what is meant by those categories so that we're sure we're getting to the right people that are making these, and that those people have equal access into the system. So, I'd encourage the commission to look at that and spend a little time and give us some definitions, thanks.
George?
George: Just a small clarification here. I'm sorry if I keep coming off as kind of obnoxious, but just a quick response and that is that all these things that we can get in the data are going to be important for CPSC to analyze. And might be useful for manufactures to analyze at some time. The purpose of this database is to provide a tool for consumers. CPSC has got engineers and statisticians and all kinds of other people on staff to do the kind of analysis that was mentioned a couple minutes ago. And its encouraging to know and think that industry would want to get those data from us, from all of our databases and to look at them to figure out what the issues are. But, back to the bottom line of what we include or don't include. Again, the point of the database is to be a convenience for consumers to use before they buy products.
I do have a quick comment. I want to make sure we have enough time to get to the rest of our audience questions.
Yeah, I think, ultimately, it comes back again, to that balanced [inaudible]. So on one side, we want to say we want a whole database, make it [inaudible] user friendly and [inaudible] encourage in participation. On the other end, I think we want information that we gathered, we [inaudible] to be actionable information. And that means we really want to, may not be required, but we want to, want people to put in as much actionable information as possible so that consumer can make the judgment when such an incident occurs on my case. The manufacturer can make the decision. Should I recall? Should I make corrective actions? Or this should be regarded as an isolated incident.
You've got a question?
Carrie: Yes, thanks. Carrie Campbell, here in the Washington DC office Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips and I represent manufacturers and retailers for many years. I wanted to circle back to the topic of the contact information because there was a lot of good discussion about, with the online website, whether we should use telephone numbers and email address and I feel like we skipped over the address, the physical address part, a little bit. And just wanted to talk about that for a minute because the actual geographic location is very important for a couple of reasons. One is, if you have a geographic trend for any reason, in terms of the geography, a hot state, a cold state, east, west, or whether there could be a distribution issue or a time production issue. So that's very informative information. And another reason that its important is because sometimes, that's the only way the complaint can be married up with information that's actually in the companies records. So that's very helpful too. So one question I have for the staff is, even though the statute says that the contact information is not to be posted, even now, with the clearinghouse process, when we receive complaints, or incident reports where the consumer has not authorized release of the name, we still get the geographic location, which is very helpful. And so my question is would that be available, even when the consumer opts not to have the name published?
Thank you.
[ Pause ]
We haven't discussed that yet, but that is something that we will take under consideration and we thank you for bringing that up.
Any other questions for the panel from out audience? No, did we get anything?
[Inaudible].
The email?
Mary: We did get one email question and its rather long. I'm going to go ahead and read it and given the amount of time that we have left, we'll address it as much of it as we can. This is from Allen Schem of Marsh USA. Allen starts with, as a long time former employee of CPSC, I disagree with the suggestion by Rachel Wyantrob [assumed spelling] that it is sufficient that consumers verify the accuracy of complaints orally. And agree to disclosure of their names to manufactures.
[ Audio skips ] For problems unless the calls are recorded, maybe I missed the part that said that they will be recorded and the recording will be maintained and retrievable.
[ Audio skips ] Consumer denies that she, he agreed to disclosure of their name? what do you do when the consumer later complains that their complaint was written down inaccurately? Under section 6B of the CPSA, CPSC is required to take reasonable steps to assure information is accurate. The reasonable step for verifying the accuracy of consumer complaints has been to send the complaint back to the consumer for verification. To my knowledge, consumers have not been offended by receiving a letter asking them to verify the accuracy of the information submitted, particularly where the complaint was made by phone and now the consumer is asked to verify the accuracy of the written record of their complaint. With respect to minors, CPSC has rules under section 6B provide that in the case of a child, the confirmation is made by the parent or guardian, or the person to whom a child is entrusted on a temporary basis. By sending information back to the consumer for verification, my experience when I was at CPSC, was that consumers [inaudible].
[ Audio skips ] Or correct information once they see it in writing, or once they receive back information they submitted in writing and have had time to reflect upon it. I encourage you to read the existing rules under section 6B and 16CSR part 1101. Many of the issues being raised are discussed in that regulation.
Okay, thanks Mary. Briefly, does anyone want to respond to that email? No, ok. Any, at this point, any last clarifications or questions from CPSC staff, before we break? No, all right. Well, I want to thank everybody for coming and for participating today. I think this has been fantastic. I want to thank everybody for being so well [inaudible].
[ Audio skips ] As well. I've done a lot of these and this is about as good as it gets in terms of people not talking over each other and so forth. So thank you very much. And just want to let you know as well, tomorrow morning we have the next workshop, which is going to be on manufacturer response, that starts at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, right here, same format, same process. So, look forward to seeing you all tomorrow and thanks again.