Mary Kelsey: I want to welcome everyone back to the second day of our two-day series of workshops on a publicly searchable Consumer Product Information Database. I am Mary Kelsey, and at this time I'd like to introduce Commissioner Bob Adler who'd like to say a few words.
Bob Adler: Good morning. For those of you who are still reacting to the revelation by Mark McGuire yesterday. And feel stunned and shocked that he was actually taking steroids, and I don't know how to break Santa Claus to you. At any rate, it is a pleasure to be here and to welcome you back to our second day of workshops on the establishment of the Consumer Product Safety Information Database, which is a topic I'm very, very much interested in. Because as an agency with such small resources we hope that we can use technology to amplify those resources. So this is an incredibly important function that you're helping serve. I want to take a moment to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come here and have these conversations with us. Everybody I've talked to said yesterday was very productive. On the first two workshops your input was really valuable and very informative to the staff. I want to encourage you to continue to be candid and outspoken in your views as we finish out with three more workshops today. I know you heard in yesterday's meetings, but it bears repeating, these workshops are occurring because we value your input, and we truly do, in determining the shared opportunities and constraints before us. We are striving to make this a tool that fulfills the needs of all of our stakeholders. Thank you again. Have a great day today and thank you for your help.
[ Applause ]
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Mary Kelsey: Thank you, Commissioner Adler. At this time I'm going to turn the workshop over to James. Oh?
[Inaudible].
Mary Kelsey: We're going to. Oh, we're going to go directly to Melissa Hampshire this morning for the overview of these statutes.
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Melissa Hampshire: Good morning. I'm Melissa Hampshire. I'm with the Office of General Counsel. And I'm here to present a brief overview of the requirements in Section 6A of the Consumer Product Safety Act on the Manufacturer Notification and Response portion of the [inaudible]. I just want to restate for the record, we say once ever day that the views expressed here are those of the staff and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission. And I'm going to breeze through two of the slides that were presented yesterday in an effort to just get to the meat of what we're talking about here. And I just want to go back to this issue of contact information which is something that will start the process rolling. The statute says that the name and address of the submitter of the report shall not be disclosed in the database. But the Commission can disclose such information to the manufacturer or private labeler with the express consent of the person submitting the information. And that information provided to a manufacturer or private labeler may not be used or disseminated to any other party for any other purpose other than verification. There are procedural requirements as you know in Section 6A. And let me touch on those procedural requirements. The Commission shall transmit reports of harm, that's reports under Section 1A of, of Section 6A, that include the minimum required information to the manufacturer or private labeler to the extent practicable, no later than the fifth business day after the Commission's receipt of the report. The manufacturer or private labeler may submit a comment on the information of the report of harm. And may request that such comment be included in the database. Any comments received and requested to be posted in the database shall be made available to the public at the same time as the report of harm, or as soon as practicable thereafter. Reports of harm themselves must be made available in the database no later than the tenth business day after the date on which the Commission transmits the report to the manufacturer or private labeler. There are provisions with respect to confidential treatment. And I'm going to go to the second bullet first. And that is that the manufacturer or private labeler may request confidential treatment of portions of the report of harm. And request that such portions be designated as confidential and redacted from the public view. If the Commission determines that designated information from the manufacturer or private labeler is confidential business or trade secret information, the Commission must redact the information from the report before placing it in the database. If the Commission determines the information is not confidential, it must notify the manufacturer and publish it in the database. And the manufacturer or private labeler might file a lawsuit in district court seeking removal of that information from the database. That is a quick and brief summary which I think is enough to get our discussion going this morning. Thank you.
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James Deverell: Good morning everyone. My name is James Deverell. I'll be acting as the moderator/facilitator this morning. Good to see everyone back and welcome. Just a couple of brief remarks. I think most of you were on the, either here or on the webcast yesterday so I'll keep it brief. Just to, to give a little bit of context around this workshop and these series of workshops. As you know, here at the agency we're in the process of defining the, the requirements and the, the design for the public database. We've started a whole series of internal workshops around what that looks like. We also obviously recognize the value of, of soliciting public input on that. And so we very much want this to be an interactive forum, an interactive dialogue between CPSC staff, our panelists, and the audience members. Couple, couple quick points. As we're going through my colleague, Pat Dougherty, is going to be capturing notes. Looking primarily at things like decision points issues, those sorts of things. We've also got a number of folks here in the audience who are on the team who are working on the, the requirements and design for the public database. I'm part of that team as well. So, so be assured that you've got folks who are hearing it first-hand as, as we go through this. Pat's also going to be keeping a parking lot. If we do come off, get a little bit off-topic throughout the course of the discussion, I've been asked that we move that to the parking lot. We'll take that offline and refer it to a more appropriate workshop. Quick comment on the microphones in front of you. I know you all, most of you have worked with these before. In case you haven't, push the button to speak. It'll turn on a red light. Push the button again when you're done speaking. If you push the button and you get a green light that means you're in the queue, so only four people can talk at a time. So if you do get a green light, and it only happened once yesterday, I may ask everyone to turn off their microphones so that we can get it sorted out. But I don't anticipate that being a problem. In terms of timing this morning, we'd like to leave a little time for audience participation. We've also got an email address if you're watching on the webcast. Please send us any questions or comments you have via email to workshopquestions@cpsc.gov. We'll get those real-time here and we can include those in the comments portion. We've got. It's about 9:10 right now. What I'd like to do is run for about an hour for our first session. We'll take about 15 minutes at that point for audience comments. Take a quick break, come back and then we'll do another hour and another 15 minutes for audience participation. But I think that's about it in terms of, in terms of the ground rules. If we could, at this point I'd like to ask each of our panelists to give a brief introduction. Name, organization you represent, and try and keep it under 60 seconds. I'm actually going to ask both our outside panelists and our CPSC panelists to, to give an introduction here all the way around. And then we'll get going. Brad?
Brad Brush: Good morning. My name is Brad Brush. I'm General Counsel for Lasko Products out of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Lasko is a manufacturer of consumer products, primarily fans, heaters, humidifiers and things of that nature. Thank you.
Wayne Morris: Wayne Morris with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers based here in Washington, D.C. Thank you.
George Rutherford: George Rutherford with Ingle Consulting Group. And as most of you know I'm a 32-year CPSC vet.
John Datovich: Good morning. I'm John Datovich and I'm the Director of Product Assurance with Hamilton Beach Brands. Hamilton Beach is a manufacturer and distributor of small kitchen electric appliances.
Keith Cortell: I'm with Fishman and Tobin, Inc. We're in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We manufacturer wholesale and private label children's clothing. Thank you.
Ken Wittenauer: Good morning. I'm Ken Wittenauer. I'm the General Counsel of Britax Child Safety headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina where it was 15 degrees warmer this morning when I left. And happy to be here with you. Thank you.
Nancy Cowles: Nan Cowles with Kids in Danger, a non-profit organization based in Chicago.
Rachel Weintraub: Good morning. I'm Rachel Weintraub, Director of Product Safety and Senior Counsel with Consumer Federation of America.
Ami Gadhia: My name's Ami Gadhia. I'm Policy Counsel here in the D.C. office with Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.
Christine Hines: Good morning. My name is Christine Hines. I'm with Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a non-profit consumer advocacy organization.
Sean Cain: I'm Sean Cain with CQ Research and Strategies. We're a consulting, research, and advocacy on motor vehicle and consumer product safety based in Massachusetts.
John Boja: Good morning. I'm John Boja. I'm with the Office of Compliance. I'm the lead compliance officer for Regulated Chemicals.
Alberta Mills: Good morning. I'm Alberta Mills. I'm the Freedom of Information officer in the office of the Secretary.
Todd Stevens: Hello. I'm Todd Stevens from Information Management. And some people call me the Secretary among other things.
Ming Ju: Morning. My name is Ming Ju. I work in the office of Information and Technology Services. I'm the [inaudible] manager for the risk management system which includes this public database.
Tim Smith: I'm Tim Smith. I'm an engineering psychologist with the Division of Human Factors here at CPSC.
Pat Weddle: Good morning. I'm Pat Weddle [assumed spelling]. I'm the Chief Information Officer at CPSC.
Mary Kelsey: Good morning. I'm Mary Kelsey. I'm the Director for the Division of IT Policy and Planning in the office of the Chief Information Officer.
James Deverell: All right. Thanks very much. What I'd like to do is get going here. One thing I'd like to, to, for us to cover very briefly, we did capture a couple of parking lot issues yesterday in the course of our, our two workshops yesterday. Of course the topic for this morning is Manufacturer Response. We had three parking lot issues from yesterday that pertained to manufacturer response. I'll read through those briefly. What I'd like to do is weave these into our discussion today as appropriate. The first is what are best practices around manufacturer capture of customer safety issues? For example, detail on customer service lines, Web support, investigations, etc. The second, is there a way for manufacturers through the response process to help the CPSC identify products accurately? For example, load product numbers, etc. And the third, how do we make it easy for manufacturers to verify or match product codes, for example model numbers, when researching an incident report for comment? So I'll, I'll refer back to these in the course of the discussion. I think just. I have a hunch these are going to come up anyway. So with that, what I'd like to do is, is kick things off with our, our first topic. Everyone in their packet should have the list of seven topics or seven questions that were, were published as part of the public notification. And the first of those that I'd like to get going with is what means do the CPSC employ to notify manufacturers and private labelers regarding a report of harm within the five-day statutory timeframe? And with that I'd like to turn it over to our CPSC staff panel. And have them provide a little bit more clarification on that. Ming?
Ming Ju: Yes. Thanks, James. So this question the, the statute says that CPSC must notify the manufacturers within five days of the receipt of a completed incident report. So this question is how would you like to be notified? Whether it's through email, snail mail, Web services or Pony Express. Whatever that may be. And also I'd like to know, we've talked a lot about how CPSC is handling these instances. I would like to hear your ideas on how you plan to address what we see as an increased volume in incident reports and give communication to the manufacturers.
James Deverell: John?
John Datovich: I think, Ming, from our perspective as a manufacturer we would prefer to receive the notification electronically for a number of reasons. One, I think that that's the fastest method. And as you know there's a ten-day clock that starts ticking. And so, you know, we'd like to be able to get as much of a, a jump on that as we can. Second of all, I think from your perspective if you could do it electronically there's maybe an opportunity for you to automate that which could reduce the impact somewhat on the staff at CPSC. Yesterday we talked about the possibility of having, you know, boxes where, where the, the consumer could enter the, the brand, so to speak, of the product that they're making a report on. And that there could be kind of an auto-fill capability with that so that as the, the consumer starts typing perhaps names of known and existing brands start to become available to them via a drop-down list. And then also if the, the contacts, the appropriate contacts for those brands could register with, with the CPSC then, you know, I could almost foresee that if all of the, the five required pieces of information are filled in to make it a, a complete report that, that that notification could be automated so that, you know, an automated email could be sent out to notify the, the appropriate person who's responsible for those brands. And in fact I would think from, from our perspective we'd want it to be probably something that would go to multiple people in case someone is on vacation or traveling or what have you. So that, you know, we, we're sure that, that someone gets that and can take action upon it. And obviously there's going to be instances where that may not be, be possible. Or there might be missing information and that type of thing. But we also talked about yesterday that, you know, sometimes it may be hard for the CPSC or manufacturers or brands to know exactly who really the right person to contact is given licensing, who the licensor or the licensee, private labeling, on and on and all of that. And I think that, you know, the, the sooner we can get that process started by notifying someone who's registered for a particular brand, the sooner we can get down that path of identifying who is the, the proper person from the manufacturer and/or the private labeler. And to begin starting what, or commenting they want to make.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Thank you. We've surveyed our manufacturers. We have about oh, a little over a hundred manufacturers who belong to the Association. And, and there are some differences within them but, and primarily they all agree that they would like to have rapid notification. And probably, as John said, email or some automated system would be, would best. We do believe that the Commission is going to have to set up a registration page or registration knowledge [inaudible] to allow manufacturers and private labelers to designate obviously who. And when I say who I agree with John it's probably going to be multiple people within that particular brand or that particular company that would like to be notified. We, we also believe that in that registration process the company should be able to designate what methodology they would like to be notified. Although I would imagine for the most part today it will be by email. We also believe that there are going to be multiple people by brand. There will be multiple companies associated with a particular [inaudible]. One brand is not unfortunately exclusive to a particular company. If you take something as, as ubiquitous as the Kenmore brand from Sears, there are going to be a large number of companies that would be participating in that situation. And it will be broken down further by individual product lines. But then individual products within the product lines. And so we do believe that's necessary. Also we believe that that registration format, or whatever, needs to be publicly available so that the manufacturers can check back from time to time and make sure that the right person is in fact being notified and that they're listed on there. We do believe that it is the responsibility of the company to make sure that that is accurate and kept up-to-date. We have already alerted our manufacturers to begin that process, designating ranging how it is they're going to have that person and then notify CPSC as soon as that is put up and available. We do believe that, that to, to avoid problems or mistakes or other times the situations, it's going to be important that companies have access to who within a particular brand has been requested to be notified. Unfortunately it could be. I guess a mistake could be a wrong situation where a particular company would want to be notified about their competitor's products. And that obviously would not be appropriate and they need to have the list and say these are the right people. No, I'm sorry. That person, I don't understand why they would be on that list. They're not associated with that particular brand. Brands that are probably going to be the best methodology to, to get to a particular company or a, or manufacturer. It's what will be most recognized by the consumer. As we say this is a consumer's database. They are going to be filling out the information. And I think that they, those are the ones that we at least had identified as the most important in terms of the listing. Thanks.
James Deverell: Brad, do you have a?
Brad Brush: Yeah, I'm. And Wayne pretty much covered what I was going to say. But just to amplify a couple of points. Certainly the registration log should be made publicly available so that a manufacturer can see who else perhaps has registered to receive notice for a particular brand. And I think that's very important.
James Deverell: Okay. Yeah, Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: Yeah. Just offer a couple of quick comments. I agree certainly what, with what John has said. You know, I would like to see at least the ability to give you three names or three email addresses to contact at our organization when you want to send us a report and information so that you're covered with individuals in the company that can respond to it quickly. And then to extent that you receive information perhaps over the telephone, it's not an electronic submission of information. It might be very useful to know is there a contact person then immediately that we could email or contact if we wanted to clarify some information. Or could get a little more feedback. I don't know if you'll provide that, but it would certainly be useful since we only have that ten-day window to respond.
James Deverell: George?
George Rutherford: And this is just a question actually. But from my recollection there were frequently times where for example the compliance office would be doing a recall or working with a company that was a maker of a component. I'm going to make one up. This doesn't come from memory. Let's say we're talking about bicycle brakes, and four different manufacturers buy their brakes from the same company. Who gets notified and how is the question. The consumer isn't going to call in and say oh, well, the brand X brakes on my bicycle failed. They're going to call in and say my bicycle brand so-and-so failed. So when I think about things like your timeframe, you notify the bicycle manufacturer. There's going to be time involved before he needs to get back to you and say well, no, it's actually, you know, we get the brakes from these. And then you notify them. And I'm just wondering, I'm sure somebody at CPSC has thought of that, but I just thought I'd get it on the table.
James Deverell: So it sounds like, you know, from what I'm hearing the, the interesting part of the question is not so much how you communicate. I think we can all. It sounds like I'm getting, hearing agreement around email primarily. The interesting question is more how do you, how do you determine exactly who it should go to in terms of who that, who the correct contact is at that, at that manufacturer. And then where it goes from there. I'd like to, I'd like to focus in on that question for a second, which is actually the next question on the list. In terms of the, you know, determining who that correct contact person is what, what would the registration process potentially look like? Do you have any thoughts around how manufacturers could register? Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, I think the best way to do this is to just have one point person. I mean certainly in our organization we're, we're not as big as a General Electric or a company like that. But within the organization I think the best method is to have a point person who can then serve as a clearing house, or a person who can then direct that complaint to the appropriate person. I think it may become unwieldy if manufacturers are attempting to register eight or ten people, and trying to parse out different product lines. It may become difficult for the Commission to get that information and may even delay receipt of that information by the company. So from, from our standpoint having a point person or two within the organization that can field the initial complaint and get it to the right person within the organization I think is the best way to go about it.
James Deverell: Yeah, Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: I'd also add, or suggest, that if we have a registration process where we as a manufacturer can register contact that it not be necessarily publicly available. So that the public can then take that list and probably tend to contact the company and maybe through an appropriate source than a customer contact service. So I don't know how you keep that sort of discreetly published, but we have a definite path for a consumer to follow if they want to contact us and have complaints. And we have trained operators to answer questions, and I wouldn't want them to assume they could use that contact for their own purposes, so.
James Deverell: Okay.
Brad Brush: I, I think just to follow up on that. The, the point we made earlier which is I still think the manufacturers need to know. For example Lasko, we would like to know if anybody else has registered or has attempted to register themselves or their company or their organization to receive notices of the complaints. Obviously that could give rise to some problems under the statute such as well, we notified the person who registered. And therefore, the clock started ticking on that day even though the appropriate organization perhaps didn't receive it. So I think that the, the owner of a brand or a trademark I think the, the Commission's going to have to police that to some degree. And make sure that if multiple parties are attempting to register to receive the notices for that company then at least the company that own that trademark or name should be notified so that they can comment on other attempts to, to register for that.
James Deverell: Keith and then Sean.
Keith Cortell: Thank you. To follow up on Brad's comment. I think we need to also address the issue of private manu, manufactured merchandise. Very often our products will carry a retailer's brand name and a retailer's RN number. That's a registration number that identifies the people if you don't know what the brand is or the manufacturer to go back into the FTC's database and find out actually made the goods. Very often we're required to use the man, the retailer's private label RN number for the product. The customer or the CPSC at that point may not know who the manufacturer is. They may identify a retailer. They may identify an RN number. It may not have been manufactured by them. Kind of go back to that question, when does the clock start ticking on that situation?
James Deverell: Okay. Sean?
Sean Cain: And with the, within NHTSA context there's a registered agent requirement with the agency so that the manufacturers register with, with NHTSA for notification purposes of compliance and so forth, something along those lines. But the issue of the private label also comes up in many contexts around things like tires. The same deal in ending up with multiple manufacturers of the same label, the same brand and so forth. And but having the brand, the brand name, the trademark owner be the essentially the registered agent, how it's been handled.
James Deverell: And just to follow up on that point real quick any, any thoughts, you know, from either of you on, on how we could go about doing that in terms of, you know, that verification process? Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, well again, I think that many manufacturers are known to the Commission. And if obviously the. I'll use our, our company for example. The Lasko name obviously is owned by, by Lasko and we have three or four other brands that, that we will register, assuming that there will be a registration process which I would assume will be the case. I think that there's going to have to be some communication with Lasko if in fact another company attempts to. And it may be appropriate. I mean we may, we may manufacturer a product under license for somebody. And maybe we will register that name and. But in that case the company who owns that, that name, if it's G.E. for example, G.E. should be notified that Lasko is registering to receive complaints of G.E. fans. Maybe that's, that's a good thing. Maybe then all those complaints should go to G.E. and let G.E. sort out who possibly made the product and issue in the complaint. And then internally that notification could then come from G.E. to the other company. But I think it also amplifies what we said yesterday which was what was discussed yesterday. Being the additional fields that there seem to be some resistance to having more than the five required fields. But again, the more information about a product that a consumer can provide on the initial complaint will certainly provide the manufacturer or the private labeler or the importer with more information. So that hopefully that report, if there's some confusion about where it should go, more information is better in terms of getting it to the right party because we are working under a very tight timeframe.
James Deverell: Christine?
Christine Hines: I just wanted to bring up the issue of small businesses. The bigger companies have much more resources. But this, the Commission may want to think about outreach to the smaller businesses so they, so that they are aware of the statutory deadlines, the ten-day deadlines. And the anticipate registration process.
James Deverell: Okay. Any other thoughts on, on that? Actually I, I think that, that was an interesting transition there to our, one of our parking lot items that I'd like to come back to. Which is if you could pull that up really quick, Pat? It's that first part. Got it? There we go. That first parking lot item around, what are best practices around manufacturer capture of customer safety issues? Wanted to, to maybe get some, some thoughts from the manufacturers in the room, the representatives from the manufacturers around what that looks like. What kind of detail would you typically look to, to get from those sorts of things? Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, if we're talking about the initial phone call for example from a consumer, we have a consumer service group that fields all the phone calls. And probably I, I'm certain most of the phone calls that come in on a daily basis are not necessarily safety related. But we have certain trigger points, certain words, certain set of incidents that if they reach a certain trigger point they will come to the legal department or the claims department. So we, we. We tend to filter out the information by way of the nature and the type of the complaint. If it's even marginal then the, the complaint will be sent to the legal or the claims department.
James Deverell: Okay. Anyone else with any, any comments on that? All right. I'd like to turn attention then to another question from the, the public notice. Which is skipping ahead just a little bit, going to question number four. What means should the CPSC employ to allow manufacturers and private labelers to submit comments regarding a report of harm, or to designate confidential information? What issues should the CPSC take into consideration when developing such a process? And I'll once again turn it over to our, our CPSC staff panel for, if there's any clarification on, on that particular question.
Ming Ju: Does anybody need to? I think it's pretty. The question itself is pretty clear. Basically, you know, like John said we are looking for ways to automate the process as much as, as possible. So with that in mind, you know, if it's a, it's an email then it's a little harder for, for, for it to be an automated process. But if it's a. If we provide a way for manufacturers to go back to the website, for example, through the, through their registered account to mark a comment as private, is that, is that a possible way to, to handle this? Or is it an automated machine-to-machine communication that you provide us with an incident number or a case number and you provide your, your comment? Is that a, a way that you see that would work for you guys to provide comments back? So just looking for, for your ideas on how to handle this.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: It's a difficult subject, because you're kind of trying to envision what kind of situation could be where a consumer would send in confidential information about a manufactured product. I mean we've, we've searched our brains and tried to figure out how that would happen. And it's, I would think it's going to be pretty rare, first of all. We can't really come up with clear examples where this would, would occur. But anything is possible and I'm glad you at least raised it. I do think that the CPSC needs to have some type of a clearly identified process when this occurs. And criteria which need to be posted for the manufacturer to be able to respond. In other words, what is the criteria that the Commission will be using to judge whether or not this is confidential information, confidential business information or not? I think that also there already is, you know, statements in the, in the statute regarding materially inaccurate. And we're going to talk a little bit about that later today and so I won't go into that. But to use that as an example with confidential or with materially inaccurate information, when a manufacturer contacts the Commission and says I believe this information is confidential, or I believe this information is materially inaccurate, we, we've suggested that there be a flag system that flags that particular item at the time that that response is coming back from the manufacturer. So that in the adjudication process during the time that the Commission is investigating it further or contacting the manufacturer, trying to get further information as to why it is confidential or why it's materially inaccurate, there'd be at least a flag posted on that, on that particular comment waiting for further information, waiting for further adjudication. So I think that, that would leave an option open to, to come back to that situation later and then it can be then closed out. And either the comment would remain. The comment would, would be allowed. Or, or if there are further information that needs to come into that particular item and it can be added as a comment later on.
Todd Stevens: The scenario that I've thought of when that, when that, when it happened would be a whistle blower. An employee. Or it could be someone who has received the claim from the company and has agreed to confidentiality but then writes us a complaint. And I've found in the years that I've processed confidential information and claims from companies that they frequently just say everything is confidential. And they don't pick out the real parts that are confidential which is what we would prefer. To just say this line and that line are confidential. The rest of it we don't care about. But companies tend to say the entire letter is confidential and we don't want this.
Wayne Morris: I'm sure you've run across that, Todd. I mean I, it's, it's the nature of many businesses to, to try that. That's why we were suggesting specific criteria. What is it that the Commission's going to look for from that manufacturer to decide whether that part of that comment from the, from the consumer, or in the case as you mentioned a whistle blower, is in fact really confidential. What do they need to provide back to the Commission? Do they need to provide, you know, trademark/patent information? Do they need to provide some type of a legal judgment situation? What is it that the Commission's going to be looking for so that it isn't just so wide open? We agree with you. We don't need it wide open to where everybody just says oh, well, it's all confidential. They need to be able to say that. And then if they have that type of criteria easily spelled out, we think that it would make the Commission's job a lot easier. Because you'll be able to say does it match the criteria that we said? If yes, maybe it is confidential. We'll make a certain decision. No, you haven't provided enough information for us to even make that determination. Then it's not confidential. I mean you. I mean now there's always the adjudication process through the, the federal system that is allowed. But I think that the faster we can make this the better that these, these comments can get back up on the, on the public website.
Our rules on 6A provide a description of how, what the claims should be and how they should be made and we use that. Now when our notifications when it involves potential confidential information, you know. I'm seeing this probably wouldn't be much different than that.
If the Commission decides that that's what it wants to say, then say it and let everybody know that up front.
James Deverell: Ken, do you want to jump in here?
Ken Wittenauer: Yeah. It may be just a little more difficult. I mean at Britax we're also, we manufacturer car seats and strollers so we've been regulated by NHTSA for a long time. And as you might be aware in order to make a submission that's confidential to the agency, it has to go through the office of Chief Counsel. It can take frankly some period of time before you get feedback on that request for confidentiality. And you have to submit redacted versions of the information to be examined. As a lawyer for the company I could imagine for example we receive a report of injury, and we anticipate litigation surrounding that claim. And so we're going to be very reluctant to provide comments that are public, put on the public docket. Be very careful about that. We may want to so that we can communicate with you and give you some context of the claim and reasons why we might want to delete the claim. And so we would need a, a mechanism for submitting that information confidentially in that setting. And frankly, in today's environment most claims involving injury allegations result in litigation filing as well.
James Deverell: Anything further on, on that? Ming?
Ming Ju: Actually as the IT guy I'm really more interested in, in the, in the means of I think the question before really has to do with how. Has to do with how you would like to get information across to us, and how basically the, the mechanics of that communication. How you see that working. So I'd like to get your, your thoughts on the question is how would you like. How do you think CPSC should allow the customer or the manufacturer to submit comments? And submit requests for redaction?
For example by email or.
Ming Ju: For example by email.
By Web form.
Ming Ju: By Web form, exactly. I think the form is a, is a great idea where, you know, that might instead of referring to the entire email or the entire report, you can actually maybe call out sections where you would, you would like to be redacted versus the entire report.
I mean I guess we would envision if, if we get a report that requires a comment for materially inaccurate information or confidentiality. As Wayne suggested that that can be flagged and, and we can assume that somebody at the Commission will actually be reading that and making some determinations as to whether there should be some edits, redactions. Or the, the report simply shouldn't go up on the database for other reasons. I think that's probably the best method, is just a simple flag and/or comment that then actually has to be read and, and analyzed by somebody on the staff.
James Deverell: Okay.
Yeah. I would, I would imagine your challenge is going to be how much can you automate the system. But then it's going to require interpretation if we ask for confidential [inaudible] to submit. And that's where it's difficult. And if the system could be set up so that we get some kind of return message, even if it's automated, to know that it's been received and it's going to be reviewed and a decision made on the confidential treatment, that would give me some more confidence that I could submit electronically. And, and see what the decision is that the agency would release or not, so.
John Datovich: And Ming, if I could just add, you know, in response to your question. I think from a, just from a purely technical point of view, having some type of a portal where we could go in and respond to, you know, these individual incidents would be probably the most convenient. You know, that way we. You know, and I know a portable something that, that so far at least in your report to Congress, something that you envisioned having for, in place for industry. That way we could, you know, upload any files or attachments or pictures or any supplemental materials electronically that, that, you know, we would like to include in our submission without having to just send an email and have all those as attachments. You know, it's something that would I think be more convenient for us as a, as a user, as a stakeholder. And probably more convenient I would think for the Commission in terms of receiving that information.
Ming Ju: So it sounds like what you're looking for is an electronic notification. And then you would have somebody humanly log in to our portal and then, you know, submit the, the request for redact or providing the comments through that portal.
John Datovich: Yes, exactly, you know. And, and in the process of going through and, you know, I imagine it would be itemized by some time of an incident number or something like that. As you're, as you're formulating your response, you know, and hitting Submit there could be, as, as my colleagues have indicated, places where you could, you know, check a box that would indicate that, that this is considered confidential or trade secret information. So that someone, you know, at the staff could get I would imagine some type of an automated alert to, to take action on that. And, and then, you know, and also then we would get the confirmation back after we hit Submit that it has been received and processed.
Yeah, I agree with John. I like the idea of a portal. I think that we had discussed yesterday the possibility of all the comments being in the same field as the initial narrative of the [inaudible]. One of the dangers perhaps is that if there are a lot of candid comments or even a dialogue begins between the staff and, and the manufacturer, they don't want all of that being captured in, in the text box. I mean even though it may get taken out there's still some possibility that that ultimately gets posted. So having that adjudication process, if you will, done partially through a portal so you can submit the information. I can always envision that there will be some dialogue at some point. That, that there is going to be some human interaction at some point about the issues that are being raised. But I think that that's a great suggestion. Is having the submission of additional information and comments done through a separate portal would probably insulate that process from the actual posting of the, of the incident once that occurs.
James Deverell: That's actually a perfect lead-in to the next question and I'll just read it off of our list. If a manufacturer or private labeler requests that a comment associated with a report of harm be made available in the public database, what if any circumstances should prevent such comment from inclusion in the public database? We've heard a couple of our panelists talk about potentially the possibility of commenting back non-publicly. Are there any other circumstances under which a comment back might not be included in the public database? Open that question up. Yeah, Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, I think it cuts both ways. I think that if we haven't already discussed we will discuss the narrative that consumers may post that go beyond a description of the incident. For example, opinions or conclusions or, you know, determinations of the, on their own that, you know, products are defective. Or it's dained to know that person may not necessarily be qualified to make that comment by the consumers that go outside of the description of the incident to probably be viewed or, or commented on by the manufacturer. But I think it cuts both ways. I think if a manufacturer makes a statement that is inappropriate or perhaps more opinion-based that that should be looked as well. So I think it, it's a fairness type of an argument. That if, if consumers are going to be limited in the types of comments they're able to make within the narrative field, then so should manufacturers.
James Deverell: Okay. Yeah, Nancy?
Nancy Cowles: I was just going to add I agree with that. That I think any, any comments that are opinion about how, you know, the consumer or anything that would identify the consumer since they obviously were trying to keep their, their identification confidential as well. But, you know, I think that the, the comments should address specifically the, the facts that, you know, that's not the model number, we didn't make that. But comments that kind of try and contradict the consumer's own experience, this is a consumer complaint thing. So I think that all you're doing is no, that couldn't have happened that way. That's not the kind of thing that, that I think is intended by the manufacturer response.
Brad Brush: Well, but, but I also think that in, in the instance where everything runs smoothly and, and the investigation can be completed within the stated ten-day time period, if the manufacturer has actually done an investigation and has some factual information that could rebut the incident report factually, I think that's exactly what the comments are there for. Though I, I'm not sure I agree with the comment that you, you shouldn't be able to contradict what the consumer said because I think that's exactly what the comments are there for. I think my point was to the extent that opinions or, or perhaps even insulting remarks are made by consumers to the manufacturer. I think likewise, and I wouldn't envision most manufacturers doing this. But I think the same thing, the same standards should be applied to manufacturer's comments. But I think factually if an investigation is done I don't see any reason why a manufacturer can't post the, the findings of their own investigation with respect to the complaint that they're replying on.
James Deverell: George?
George Rutherford: Just I agree with most of that. I'm just thinking that not all manufacturers that the CPSC deals with are perhaps as reputable or forth, and forthcoming as the people that are around this table. And that possibly also just the same standard of inaccurate or misleading information would be applied if the staff recognizes, based on other things they have seen or whatever, that conceivably the same criterion could be applied to the manufacturer as is applied to the consumer comments.
James Deverell: Keith?
Keith Cortell: I, I know you'll be handling the materially inaccurate information in the next workshop. But I'm very concerned that a customer, a consumer advocate group. We used the example of the Zhu Zhu Pets yesterday where there was some very bad information that was made available to the public that potentially could have really damaged that company business. They responded to it very, very quickly and were able to prove that the information that was provided was incorrect. They were able to salvage it. I don't know that most companies would have the ability to react that quickly. And a lot of damage could have done on really inaccurate information. Again, I know you're covering it in the next workshop, but I absolutely think if there's a claim made that it should be able to be responded to quickly.
James Deverell: Yeah. I think, you know, in terms of kind of scope of this workshop versus the next one, I think that the discussion points around kind of how the back and forth works. How that conversation happens and what the timing is around that very much open game for this particular workshop. I'd like to focus on in the next workshop on materially inaccurate information is more the nature of that inaccurate information itself. So Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Well, the question that I believe you were alluding to is in the statement, rest of the comment associated with the report of harm be made available. And what, if any, circumstances prevent that comment from inclusion? I think that, that the most important thing about this database is that it be, be accurate and therefore having integrity. In, in addition to the law though, the Congressional record from Mr. Dengold [assumed spelling] said that it, it requires the Commission to provide a public access to a database of serious injuries and deaths caused by consumer products. But it does so requiring that the information be truthful, correct, and properly verified. And I think that that those are, are very important to us as a mission that, that we have to, to look to the information in this database and make sure that it is truthful. That's, that's the part about the verification and follow-up and, and so forth that requires the consumer. And it be correct. If the consumer makes a mistake then we need to correct that situation. And we have various avenues to do that through either follow-up investigations commission realm, or the manufacturer conducting investigations or others. There are going to be a number of other parties involved in this situation from insurance companies to investigators, private investigators and so forth to deliver a report showing that there is an inaccuracy and it needs to be corrected. And it says also that it be properly verified. Verified to me means some independent source. Somebody other than that particular person making that allegation has the correct information. So I don't think it, it is a, is a barrier to us to correct that information. And I think it's more to determine how we're going to correct that information. So thanks.
James Deverell: Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: Just to amplify some things that have been said. I completely agree with what Nancy said in terms of, you know, that you should not be allowed to, or a manufacturer should oppose any information that would compromise the confidentiality of someone who had submitted a report. But I also agree with, with what Brad had said. And that is. I mean these, these are intended to be comments and I think part and parcel with that there, there may be instances where there genuinely are opinions, you know, that are expressed by the manufacturer. And I think that, that is appropriate. And any time you conduct a technical investigation there can be at the end of the day differences of opinion among reasonable people in terms of what the, what the root cause may have been of a particular incident. And a manufacturer may have one particular perspective on the matter that may differ from what the consumer is, is alleging or claiming when they file their report. And I think that, that that's purpose of having the comments there. Is to have a forum and have a place for, for manufacturers who have, you know, conducted a, an investigation which responsible manufacturers should do when receiving this information to, to put their conclusions and make them publicly available so that the public has access to them.
James Deverell: George and then Ami.
George Rutherford: Just a correction. I happened to look up at the board here. And the comment that I made earlier was, was specifically in response to what circumstances could prevent inclusion in this specific database. And the only thing that showed up was my comment that not all manufacturers may be as reputable.
James Deverell: Yeah.
George Rutherford: And while that might portray my opinion of some things, yes, my, my point is that the question is under what circumstances could something not be included in the database. My point was that you apply the same standard that we've been getting to talking about accuracy. That is if a man is seen to be materially inaccurate or misleading or flat out incorrect, that that could be a reason not to include the comment. Just like you would apply that standard to a consumer. So I'm not just trying to paint manufacturers with a, with a bad brush. I'm just pointing out that the standard should be the same in both cases.
James Deverell: Now, and thank you very much for the clarification, George. And it's probably a good time to point out if at any point we, your views are not accurately represented in our, our real-time notes and, and Pat's. So far done an absolutely job. I, I've been in his shoes and it's almost impossible to take real-time notes, so. But if at any point that does happen just, you know, light up your mike. We'll get it fixed. So Ami?
Ami Gadhia: Just going back to the question that was raised about what comments associated with the report of harm, under what circumstances should they not go on the database? There's been situations that I've heard of where a consumer will complain about something they've encountered with a product. And they will be told this is the first we've ever heard of a situation like this. And the truth of the matter, and again this is, you know, not by any means all companies. This is one, you know, outlier company. But the truth of the matter is that that company has numerous complaints about that very same problem. So the discussion earlier was about factual issues. Sticking to factual issues and sticking to things that really sort of help the process, the information process on the database. I think if a company is, a manufacturer is to reply, you know, in response to the consumer's complaint on the database this is the only time we have ever heard of anything like this. One, I think that goes into the area of non-factual information. And two, I think because it poses potential problems of inaccuracy on that end, that that should be guarded against and shouldn't be posted.
James Deverell: Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: Getting back to the question about, you know, what should, should not or should be prevented from being included in the database, I think at the end of the day really is just those that are out-and-out fraudulent. I mean where you consider, you know, so far outside of the [inaudible]. And not, but nothing related to where a consumer comes in and reports their experience. I think that's where you start getting into the real slippery slope about second guessing about what the consumer experiences. They may not be as articulate or as accurate as we would like to see in terms of the complaint. But having a situation where somehow, you know, we, the manufacturer has the ability to say look, this is a. This should be prevented from being put into the complaint because we don't believe it can happen this way. That's really troubling, particularly when you get into electronic areas. We've seen this, you know, where, you know, our design can't happen. The electronic to do prevent it, you can't duplicate it. Well, you know, that's a whole area that creates a lot of problems.
James Deverell: Brad?
Brad Brush: Yeah, I think it goes back to the original question. Which is what types of comments should not be [inaudible]. My original point was there are certainly comments from the consumers that should not be on there. If they want to report an incident which they believed happened in a certain way that's fine, you know. It may turn out ultimately the, the product or the appliance, that issue did not cause the harm they're complaining of. I mean that's what subsequent investigations are. And I think that even in, in the early stages if a manufacturer wants to post a comment that they don't agree with the position of the consumer, and that an investigation is, is underway. Or if in fact the, the product has been received back in that short timeframe and analyzed, and the company firmly believes that the report was inaccurate. Whether or not we're getting into the realm of materially inaccurate information or not, I still think that those types of comments are really what give the database some integrity. Because the public will know the consumer reported a certain type of incident, and the manufacturer had an opportunity to follow up, look at the product, analyze the product and determine that that's not what happened. Is that opinion? Perhaps. But I think that's an appropriate type of a comment. You're allowing the consumer to put his or her position, and you're also allowing the manufacturer to respond. I think I was thinking more in terms of going beyond the factual content so a manufac, or a consumer who's very angry might make additional comments that the manufacturer is irreputable or should be put out of business or should. You know, all these types of comments which, you know, we, we see from time to time, you know, in customer service type complaints where somebody's just angry and they're trying to ratchet things up. Those are the types of comments I think that, that don't add to the factual content of the database. And likewise should a manufacturer try to fire back in, in a similar way, I think that would be inappropriate as well. And I think that really the point I was trying to make in terms of the same standards should be held on both sides of the fence.
James Deverell: George?
George Rutherford: Just a quick thought again from an analytical point of view, or from a consumer analytical point of view. If I go into the system and I pull everything on Brand X widgets, and I find that I've got 15 complaints in there of the same hazard and ten comments from the manufacturer saying it can't happen that way, it puts a question in my mind about their credibility. And I think that would be a reasonable application of the database. That gee, if they keep saying it's not true but I've got ten cases where it's [inaudible]. Unless I can find out that they were all submitted by the same person, or they were form letters or something else that would indicate that it was, it was a fraudulent submission to start with, I think there's valuable data [inaudible] too in seeing the manufacturer's comment.
Brad Brush: Well, this is an incident database, and I think that that's what we have to look at. That a, a consumer may report an incident and the circumstances under which that incident occurred. If the consumer says and I know that five other incidents have happened just like this because my brother-in-law told me he knows of four people in his town, you know, that becomes pretty attenuated. And I don't think that is really what the types of comments we need on, on the database. Again, putting aside whether that's accurate or not, I don't think it relates to the incident that's been reported. So, you know, again the, the danger of this becoming a blog I think is, is a problem if, if we allow comments that go beyond the, the incident that's being reported.
James Deverell: John [inaudible].
John Datovich: What about professional opinions? Let's say you've got a professional, an electrical engineer who writes in and said a certain gauge of wire that was used. And it [inaudible] too low and that could cause harm or, or it did cause, was responsible for an incident.
Brad Brush: Well, I think under the, the statute that electrical engineer is, is not a consumer. And I, I also don't think in that situation he's reporting any harm. And he, he may have an opinion. He may want to bring that opinion to the attention of the Commission. But I don't think that is, that falls within the parameters of either the appropriate person to be reporting under the, the statute. And is he actually reporting an incident of harm?
John Datovich: Well, I, I was thinking more of the incident. Of the situation where harm did occur and the person just happened to be, you know, a professional.
Brad Brush: Yeah, I was wondering when would start getting into more hypotheticals here. But, you know, the, the same thing holds true with the manufacturer. The manufacturer may put the same type of comment on, on, on the incident report. We had had a chance to look at the product. A professional engineer has analyzed the mode of failure that's been alleged. And it's been determined by, if, you may want to choose or may not choose to identify the name of the expert. This professional engineering has determined that the incident or the accident did not happen in this way. So I guess it, I could conceive of a manufacturer posting a comment like that. And otherwise if, if in fact the consumer at that point has an opinion like that I guess it would be posted. But everything I get, I think is subject on a case-by-case basis to an analysis and a comment by the manufacturer. And again, there is going to have to be some process by which ultimately somebody on the staff is going to have to look at that flag or that comment and determine whether the content of the complaint should be edited, redacted, or, or not posted at all.
James Deverell: Ming, did you have quick comment on that?
Ming Ju: I have a, actually a follow-up question. So moving away from the comments for a minute, do you think it's useful for consumers and also I guess for the manufacturers instead of, so instead of comments provide a general status how they're. You know, what they're doing with that case. Or they're, whether they contact, contacting the consumer. Or they're, they're following up doing an investigation. Do you think that will be helpful?
Brad Brush: I do. And I think that's probably going to happen from time to time because of the tight time period. If, if you can't contact the consumer, have been unable to get the product back or look at it within that time period, the first comment I, I would envision the manufacturer making is this incident is currently under investigation. We have contacted the consumer and are making arrangements to have the product sent back for analysis. But again, as Wayne pointed out yesterday, this, this database really is a, is a living database. So that you can continue to put additional information and it could be resolved, it could be determined that there was another cause or that the product of issue was not this. If that incident report stays on the database at least by the time it's resolved, maybe it's 30 or 60 days later, at least you'll have a full chronology of all the things that happened and the ultimate resolution to the claim. The value of that claim may not be as high as, but it's still on there. But at least it, it, it has been mitigated to the point where there has been some determination or resolution.
James Deverell: If I could ask everybody to turn off their mikes briefly so Ming can respond. Thanks.
Ming Ju: Actually that's another follow-up question. So do you think it's, it's useful to have a standardized list of statuses. Or I'm sure your businesses handle cases differently. Do you all sort of follow the same type of statuses? You know, like if there's a list of status codes that all manufacturers use for, for response or first.
Brad Brush: Perhaps for generic things like investigation continuing. I mean there are going to be some standard ones. But I think. I mean again we're, we're in the very early stages of this so we can't all envision what actually is going to happen. But I think there still needs to be a, a narrative field. Because if, if what's going on isn't one of the standard responses, then I think you need the ability to, to fill it in with some, some text. But sure, I think that [inaudible] more on in the early stages there if you have five or six standards responses, investigation underway, investigation continuing, things of that nature, that might be appropriate, yeah.
Ming Ju: Right. Because what I'm after is, you know, comments bring up a lot of questions, you know. What, what's confidential. What needs to be redacted. But I think it would be, you know, that may take a few days. But it may be helpful to the consumers who know right away where is, where is my, my incident, you know. How are they, how is it being handled, you know? Where is it in this black hole, you know?
Brad Brush: To answer.
Ming Ju: If somebody's look at it. Exactly.
Brad Brush: If you answer the question I think that's a great idea to have maybe a drop-down of six or seven or eight standard responses that are pretty much understandable. You, you won't look at those as something you have to read and, and look at. If, if a standard response goes in it, it gets posted.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Yeah, I was. I would agree with Brad. I think that there could be some standard response code kind of situations to anticipate some of these. And I would think that, you know, we could work together on developing some of those that would meet them. But I think some of this is going to be known as we get into this and we actually process some of these and find out what the, what the standard codes are. They need some flexibility in the, in, in that particular area of the, of the model would be helpful. Would be very helpful. I think that also it's important for us to just remember this is not the only avenue that consumers or experts or others have to get back to the Commission. At least I'm not envisioning this taking the place of all other responses and, and abilities of people to report things to the Commission. If they see a hazard, even if it doesn't, it isn't associated with a harm or that type of situation. If they feel that it's important enough to, to contact the Commission, I would imagine the Commission would still maintain open lines and open lines ways that they, that the consumer can get back to the Commission. And that they would then be followed up by compliance or by SWAT teams or other investigations or whatever to determine if that's in fact the case, and then move accordingly. We didn't envision this taking the place of every other avenue. I think that, that what we had envisioned for this particular situation is an incident database that, that is tracked back to its situation where a consumer has been harmed or risk of harm from an actual situation that we can point to and then follow up on. As opposed to expert suddenly discovers that he believes that because of the electrical design of a product that it could be harmful. Even though that may involve a risk situation, I think that it's more generalized and I think that should be followed up in another manner given the credence necessary to follow up. And then obviously as is the case today, manufacturers or others can then comment when the Commission contacts them further as well. Thanks.
James Deverell: Nancy and then Ken.
Nancy Cowles: Yeah. I just want to say I'm a little troubled by all the, the, the talk of the manufacturer investigating the status of the manufacturers. People are reporting to CPSC because they want you to investigate. So we're talking about the manufacturer getting the product, doing the investigation, posting their status on your database. That's not why people are calling you. They probably either already called the manufacturer, or they're calling you because they want you to investigate. So suddenly through your process the manufacturer's getting the product, you're not seeing it. You're putting their status on. If you're going to put a status on you should put your status on, you know. What's CPSC doing with it, you know? Where's the, where's the thing? So this, this is very troubling.
James Deverell: Guys, if I can everyone to turn of your mikes so I see who's, who's in the queue. Ming if you can respond to this?
Ming Ju: Actually I was going to ask the consumer groups for their take on this. Because I think Christine earlier brought on, touched on the point of small businesses. You know, what about small businesses who have, who don't have as much resources. But to answer your question, Nancy. The reason why I asked that question is we're dealing with manufacturer response. That's the context.
Nancy Cowles: But the whole conversation of, of, this ten days is supposed to be allow them to investigate. It was really never the purpose of the ten days. The ten days was for them to correct factual inaccuracies about the report that they know about their product. Not to do a full-fledged investigation which again is why the consumer is calling you. Not so that the manufacturer. They'd call the manufacturer if they wanted them to do the investigation.
James Deverell: Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: On the other hand from the manufacturer's perspective, I would say it's not uncommon to have consumers contact Attorney Generals, CPSC, NHTSA as a way of leveraging the claim that they're trying to process with the manufacturer if it's a threat because they've contacted the agency. And so in the communication or in the information that you log in from my standpoint it would be really important that if the consumer has contacted the manufacturer that you note that in the date of contact. That would certainly help me. As a manufacturer though the danger of this ability to post comments it is a dialogue that's oc, that occurs back and forth, I'm not going to do it if I'm also trying to manage a claim with a consumer who then may be dissatisfied with the dialogue I had as a manufacturer and use the CPSC, you know, database to post comments about their dissatisfaction. So it, it'll be a little bit of a difficult balance at times to achieve. But it would certainly help me to know in the database that the consumer has contacted me and the date. If you could capture that information it would give me some more ability to feel whether or not I needed to comment on, on the CPSC database.
James Deverell: Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, I, I guess I'm at a loss to find out why anybody would be troubled that a manufacturer is doing an investigation. I know from experience that the CPSC really does not have the resources to do an in-depth investigation on every claim it receives. And I think the staff would probably agree with me on that. The manufacturer is typically in the best position to take a look at its own product to make a determination as to whether the product has a problem, or whether they've seen that problem before. And it's just additional information that may be brought to light by a consumer. But I think that it's very difficult to post a comment or to make a determination whether something is materially inaccurate or not if you don't have the ability to contact the consumer or take a look at the product. You know, again with as many attorneys as we have here I, I'm again surprised we haven't used more hypothetical situations. But when we were kicking this around yesterday we were picking on folding metal chairs. If you have a folding metal chair and a consumer sits in that chair and it breaks and the consumer sustains an injury, and it's reported to the Commission and ultimately to the manufacturer within five days, I think without more information the manufacturer can't make any determinations on what may have been the problem with that chair. So the consumer may post that I bought this chair at, at a certain retailer. I sat in it and it broke. I sustained an injury. I think it's in the best interest of everybody that the manufacturer be able to contact that consumer and find out the problem. The follow-up may reveal that there, that the chair was clearly labeled. That it has a 250-pound weight capacity. And that perhaps the consumer weighed substantially more than the weight limit. And that would be an appropriate comment to make I think by the manufacturer. That we took a look at the chair and we determined, we were able to determine that the, that the consumer weighed substantially more than the posted weight limit of the chair. We don't believe the chair is defective and it broke because of, of exceeding the weight limit. So again, you know, investigating a claim in a timely manner is really the best way to get accurate information out to consumers. I mean if I were a consumer and I were trying to buy that chair I would then understand that this is what happened. Or at least there were two sides to the story. So I, I'm just not sure why anybody would want to villainize the manufacturer for being proactive and taking proactive measures to investigate a claim and, and try to figure out what, if anything, had gone with the product.
James Deverell: Actually I'd like to take it back down. Nancy, if you'd like to respond to that?
Nancy Cowles: I was just going to quickly say I, I didn't. I don't mean that the manufacturer should not be investigating, because clearly I think they should be. It's just not the focus of the database is the manufacturer's investigation. And certainly that information should be put up when it, when it's, when it goes up there. But again, you know, the status I would think that would be most important to the consumer is what CPSC is, is doing at the time. And if what CPSC is doing is waiting until the manufacturer finishes their investigation, then that's something that you can put up there that I think the, the consumer's relationship to the database is with the CPSC, not necessarily with the manufacture. And if there's information you need on that chair, and the consumer doesn't agree to release their name, then that's a dialogue you can be having with CPSC who does have the contact information and can get it from the consumer.
James Deverell: George?
George Rutherford: Two thoughts on some of the questions. And again the first thing I just, and this is what you already wrote down. I would remind that not every manufacturer is as responsible as the people in this room. My second thought would be speaking of the folding chairs and the hypotheticals, how many people here checked the labels on your chair before you sat down today? You know, maybe this chair is labeled not for over 150 pounds, in which case I'm in trouble. But I probably wouldn't know it if there was a label hanging from the underside. My third point is as far as what this database is about the question of the what, what it's for. I think there's, there's a lot of value in having that manufacturer comment, and in having that included in the database. But I guess I want to say too that, you know, I, I promise I won't use any hypotheticals that, to the extent that I can do it without [inaudible] that don't come from my own experience. And I can recall cases that would have been useful to consumers. Again, without getting into brands, but specific to a crib where there was a consistent pattern of the bottoms falling out of cribs. And the reason they were falling out of cribs was because they weren't being properly installed by the consumers. And I perceived at the time that many manufactures would have said well, that's a problem with the consumer installing it. But if I go into that database and I figure out that 30 other people have had the same problem installing that then I have to conclude either that all the other people buying cribs are stupid. Or that there's something wrong with the instructions or the intuitive nature of how to put that product together that can lead to a problem. And I think that's valuable information that belongs in the database, even if the manufacturer can say it was improperly assembled by the consumer. Period. End of discussion. And I bring that up just because there's been mention of things like redacting information, removing things from the database. And a case like that is something I certainly wouldn't want to see removed from a database just because it happened because of a consumer error. Because sometimes there's a design reason for that.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: I don't disagree with George in, in what he said. I think that the, the important thing for us to remember though is that, that probably out of the 13,000 or so reports that come in to the Commission today, a fraction of those are able to be investigated by the Commission. And that, that. I don't know what that fraction is. I asked yesterday. I don't have it exactly, but it's probably under 50% I think that the manufacturers have the ability to go out on the serious situations and do the investigation. And what we're after at the end of the day is public safety. That's, that's really the name of this. So whether the Commission investigates it or whether a manufacturer investigates it, or a private investigator, an insurance company or whomever, the important thing is that something is investigated and promptly handled. And I think it's to the manufacturer's benefit to get that done as rapidly as possible. Because if there is a problem associated with it, and if the manufacturer finds out about that, the manufacturers for the most part are going to want to get that product out of the hands of the consumer as rapidly as possible. Immediately. And I think that waiting for the Commission to get around to do an investigation, I mean today we see that typically it can take six months easily for the time from a consumer today when they report something to the Commission to the time that an IBI investigation is completed. I, I think we don't have six months to wait on, on some of these situations. So if a manufacturer can be dispatched to do a [inaudible] on this situation and to investigate that, all the better for the consumer safety. I think that, that, that to me is the, is part of this whole idea of materially accurate, and we're going to get into that in [inaudible]. I think that's why the statute reads that way. Is that, that they envision that there's going to be lots of people that are going to be investigating this in order to make sure that we get the facts. Because that's going to help us all at the end of the day. And it'll help ensure greater consumer safety. Thanks.
James Deverell: I'd like to take a few more last comments before we open it up to audience participation. So Sean?
Sean Cain: Yeah. If one takes the, the comments back it seems the comments are best served from the manufacturers coming in with information about the actual product itself. The identification. The, you know, is it accurate with respect to the actual product? Is it our product? Those kinds of things. When you start getting into the commenting on the substantive matter of what the consumer reports, I think you're changing the very nature of the database. And I think as Nancy kind of alluded to as well [inaudible] you, you're really the nature of what you're trying to do here. You're simply giving a form for consumers to report information. If this becomes a back and forth, you know, a tit for tat between the manufacturer and the consumer. I think most consumers who are also reporting here to the agency have probably gone to the manufacturer already. And I think Ken's comment that, you know, having the ability to, to know whether that they have contacted the manufacturer is very valuable. Because that eliminates this need for even having to comment on a subsequent piece. They've had their, they've had their, their ability to do that. But there's an automatic conflict. [Inaudible] automatic conflict between the manufacturer and the consumer in many instances. And there's just no way that the agency become the arbiter of between those two.
James Deverell: Christine?
Christine Hines: Yeah. I was just wondering if there would be a way to have a type of form for manufacturers like there is for, for the consumer? The instant form? To possibly limit an ongoing dispute between the, the manufacturer and the consumer. And to limit any potential for intimidation and things like that, you know. If the, if they're restricted in the types of issues that they can [inaudible] regarding the product.
James Deverell: Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, first of all let me respond to Sean's comment. I mean I, I don't believe that there's a, a conflict between the consumer and the manufacturer defacto, just because a consumer posts a complaint or an instant report on the database. But the statute specifically provides for the ability of the manufacturer to comment. And I think that was contemplated in the statute, and that's exactly what it says. So to curtail the ability of the manufacturer to make a comment I think just limits the amount of information that's out there. Nobody's suggested that, you know, in my hypothetical with the, the folding chair that that, that instant report gets taken off. It's there. People get to look at it. It can be analyzed by companied like yourself for statistical purposes or whatever. But at the same time there was some additional information that should be very important. Whether or not it was an adequate warning, that's not the issue. The fact of the matter is the manufacturer did go out in that instance, and in my hypothetical did do an analysis of why the product failed. And determined the product failed because the consumer who sat in the chair significantly exceeded the weight limits of the chair. That's the comment. Take it for what it's worth. The instant report is still out there. It can be analyzed and, and I don't see a conflict between the consumer and the manufacturer in that situation. It's just they posted what they determined to be the cause of the harm, which was the chair broke. The manufacturer said this is why the chair broke and that's the end of that particular report. So I, I don't agree with your assessment that, that there should be some limitation or curtailment of the manufacturer's ability to comment in that situation.
James Deverell: Ami?
Ami Gadhia: I would just offer by way of context, the NHTSA database doesn't have any kind of space for manufacturer comments and rebuttals and all of that. It's simply the consumer's complaint goes up. Sometimes the VIN number's there. Sometimes it's not. Make and model of the car, year, that kind of a thing. And then it's the free-form narrative of, about the complaint. So just by way of context that there, in all the databases out there, there isn't always the space for manufacturers to give a response. And, you know, I think we should keep that mind when you're talking about purposes of the database, utility of the database, and what's necessary.
Brad Brush: Right. But we're talking about this particular statute which specifically provides for that ability. That's I think what we're here to do is not debate whether we should be able to comment or not. That's part of the statute. I think the questions here, if we get back to the core issues, are how are we going to implement this database? The database is here. It's going to be implemented which I think is a good thing. And I think what we're really here to do is help the staff determine what, what's the best way. What's the nuts and bolts of this thing? What's the best way to [inaudible] you guys want to see this done? So, you know, as you would expect these conversations sometimes get a little more analytical than that. But I think we're, we should get back to the core issue which is this statute allows for manufacturers to comment. The question is, how are we going to do that. And what, if any, comments should not be permitted on both sides.
Ami Gadhia: And I'm not disagreeing with that at all. That this, that's what the statute allows for. Absolutely. Not arguing that in the slightest. I'm just saying that when we start talking about this plethora of response are back and forth between the manufacturer and the consumer, there's a database that works just fine with that kind of back and forth.
James Deverell: All right. At this point I'd like to open it up for audience participation. If there's anyone out in the audience who would like to pose a question or a comment to our, our panelists, please step up to the microphone at the back. Yes ma'am?
Robin Ingle: Hi. I'm Robin Ingle with Ingle Consulting Group. And I'd like to go back towards the beginning of the conversation. You were discussing items that might be redacted or adjusted perhaps in the comments that consumers had made. I used to work at the Commission. I'm a statistician and I've read literally thousands of consumer complaints about products. And I just wanted to put out there just a hypothetical consumer complaint, and ask the panel how they would deal with it in terms of redaction or adjustment. Let. If you'd imagine a, say, a cleaning product that's acid-based perhaps. And a consumer writes in and to the best of their ability describes the incident. And, you know, they are not so much concerned about what types of words can be used, or types of words that might be acceptable to, to manufacturers or in a legal sense. So they write in, the product tipped over and poured all over me and caused terrific burns because it had a defective cap. So my question to the manufacturer is how would you deal with the words caused and defective without loss of information? Because the sentence does convey quite a bit of information to both CPSC and to other consumers. And we don't, wouldn't want to lose that information in, in our, our making the sentence acceptable. And also the question, do you propose that CPSC has every record of the database in much the same way? And then I would like to hear from the consumer groups to ask them do you think that this type of thing is in the best interest of consumers?
James Deverell: So two part question. We'll, we'll start with the first one which was presented to the, the manufacturers on the panel. Anyone has a, a response they'd like to make?
Brad Brush: Well, I don't think every complaint needs to be redacted or edited just because some descriptive words are being used. And I think again, going back to the comments, that's, that's the appropriate place for the manufacturer to respond to what happened. Assuming the manufacturer can take a look at what occurred. The comments should be able to address to the best of the manufacturer's ability what, what the consumer is saying. If in that hypothetical this consumer doesn't identify herself or himself, or that information has been made available to the manufacturer so that follow-up can be made, maybe the only comment the manufacturer can be made is that the consumer did not consent to being contacted. And therefore the, the instant cannot be investigated by the, the manufacturer. And that may be the end of it. But I don't think anybody's taken a position that every descriptive or something of that nature be, needs to be redacted. Certainly from a personal standpoint I'm not speaking for any associations or even my employer. But personally I don't think that should be subject to redaction under that scenario.
James Deverell: John?
John: Yeah. I, I would echo what Brad said. I don't, I did not find anything in that hypothetical particularly troubling in terms of, of how it was written. And I would expect that that would be probably somewhat typical just based upon, you know, my review of, of other consumer complaints, complaints in the past. And I agree with Brad that, you know, the appropriate response will be based upon how much information can be gathered. And maybe something like Brad said to the effect that, you know, we were not able to conduct an investigation. And, you know, if. I don't know for caps what kind of standards, you know, may be in effect or, or things like that. Industry standards. But, you know, the reply might be something that, you know, the design of this particular cap, you know, complied with such-and-such standard and was tested by such-and-such independent third party.
James Deverell: Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: Yeah. Excuse me. The only thing I'd add is it might put the manufacturer in the position if we haven't looked at that particular product and been in contact with that consumer. Are you going to relay something like this is the first record we've ever had of a reported injury of this nature? Or we have no other reported claims of problems with this product. I mean that's the sort of subjective opinion perhaps. But the only context I can put as a manufacturer to that report is something like that if I haven't really seen that particular product and inspected it. And I don't know if you'll let us put that comment on. It sounds like more opinion. And it sounds perhaps self-serving to make those comments, but that's the only perspective I can offer as a manufacturer at that point.
James Deverell: So if we turn to the second part of the question which was directed to the consumer groups about whether or not that was approp, would be an appropriate response. Rachel?
Rachel Weintraub: Well, I think I'm gratified and happy about what the manufacturers are saying. Because I think this sort of report that Robin laid out is a typical kind of report that consumers would most likely report to the database. And there will be terms about causation and types of harm because that's coming from the consumer's experience. So even if it is making sort of conclusions that's, that is the consumer's perception of what occurred. So I think it's definitely in, the intent of the database and to the benefit of consumers to allow. And it was designed to, a form for those types of comments to be reported and viewed for others.
James Deverell: Any other comments on that? All right. I'd like to turn to our next audience question.
Allen Korn: Allen Korn from Safe Kids USA. A question for the CPSC, maybe the compliance staff. And then depending on what the answer is maybe hearing from the manufacturers. Could a consumer report through the database, depending on the nature and characteristic of that report, also and ultimately trigger a Section 15 report? Required Section 15 report to the CPSC, even though that the CPSC already knows about the incident? In my view it probably would. But I'd like to hear from the CPSC and then to the manufacturers what's their relationship between the database report through the CPSIA and a Section 15 report as required by the original law?
Rachel Weintraub: As the risk of not answering any legal questions at this hearing, I would just mention that the, the database provisions specifically exclude Section 15B reporting. And that's in Reports Submitted Under 15B. Now I think your question is whether a consumer report would trigger a Section 15B report. And that I, as a lawyer, I wouldn't answer as a hypothetical. But there's always the argument that it would I think. But of course those are my views and not the Commission's. And we do have to be conscious of the fact that Section 15B reports themselves are excluded from the database. But certainly the information in the database is something that we're going to be looking at in a broader way as well.
James Deverell: Any, any comments from the, the manufacturer's side in terms of the, the relationship there? Okay. Next, next question please.
Walt Sanders: My name is Walt Sanders. I'm with Van Cleet Associates, and I'm here on behalf of Zippo lighters. And when I say Zippo lighters most people know what a Zippo is. It's a flip-top lighters with a wick that's refillable. But the problem with Zippo lighters is they're oftentimes sued and brought to the mat because of fire or an incident involving a lighter that looks like a Zippo and it acts like a Zippo, but it is not a Zippo. And there are a lot of counterfeits. There are a lot of look-alikes. And I think this applies to a lot of products. And my question to the staff is how do you exercise due diligence in making sure that a reported incident that might say Zippo or it might say some other product is in fact a product of that manufacturer? Because there's all, there's harm to the consumer. But there also could be substantial harm to the manufacturer if, if a product is misidentified as a particular product. So before something is posted, my question to the staff is what sort of, what sort of process are you going to go through to make sure that that in fact is a, the product that's been reported?
[ Silence ]
Robin Weintraub: That's also an, an issue that we're going to be dealing with in rule-making and we'll address. Well, we'll review that during rule-making.
James?
James Deverell: Yeah. Wayne?
Wayne Morris: I think it's an excellent question that Walt's raised because these days consumers very often know products in some cases by a trade name. As, as a, as we all do in our life, you know, we refer to Kleenex instead of say that it's a tissue. Or we say that we're going to make a Xerox instead of a photocopy. And we, it's a, it's a way of life. And in our appliance industry there are a number of occasions when, when consumers know the action or the product by, by a particular trade name. The company maybe have been one of the first ones to have identified that product and brought it to market. Or they may have a fairly substantial amount of share, and so it's a problem. I think that I'd be looking for an answer from the Commission how they're going to respond to that as well. Because certainly if the consumer says in their narrative, you know, I was injured by an X. And in fact, if you look at the, the manufacturer, the model number or something along that line, it may in fact not be that case. So consequently then that gets to, to something that Ami brought before and, and I think it's a very valid one. How do you go in and redact a consumer's actual comment? We don't like to tread there because obviously we want to preserve that comment as much as possible, and their right to say what they are. On the other hand, is it possible that that company could be harmed if their name is misused in that kind of situation and in a ubiquitous type of product designation in place of the actual name of the company? And that's one of the dangers that we get into with a public database. I don't have an exact answer for that. But I do think that we would be looking for the Commission to come up with some criteria by which it may be. Because when they've gone in and looked at and they've matched the name of the manufacturer or the product name or something along that with what is said in the narrative and the two don't match at all, maybe the manufacturer's gone back and said well, you know, it's obvious because of the way that the consumer filled this out that in fact they're not talking about my product. Please remove my name from the consumer's narrative. A question? What do we do in those kinds of situations? We know that it's materially inaccurate. Now what do we do? Good luck.
James Deverell: So I, I see we've got a number of comments here from our, our manufacturer panelists. I would like to say that we do have the, the next forum on materially inaccurate information. And I think a major component of that will be the misidentification of the manufacturer. So if you have comments on that I'd ask that we hold off on those until that forum. If you have other comments let's go forward with those. Keith?
Keith Cortell: I have a question about confidentiality. Actually it's to Walt. Zippo is an iconic American brand. There are literally probably millions of count, maybe billions of counterfeit Zippo lighters in the world. Do you put, and I'm not asking you for any specific information. Do you put any identifying marks in your products that would enable you to prove that it is in fact not a product that you manufactured?
Walt Sanders: Yeah. Usually [inaudible].
Keith Cortell: That I may not be able to as a counterfeiter be able to identify and put them into my counterfeit Zippo lighter?
Walt Sanders: Without, without giving away proprietary information.
Keith Cortell: Yeah. This goes back to the confidentiality.
Walt Sanders: The manufacturer does. That's why it's important for the manufacturer to look at that lighter and examine it, because they will be able to tell this is our lighter or this is a counterfeit lighter. And, and they are. They make all the lighters in the United States and they do pride themselves on responding to consumers, responding to complaints and incidents. And basically promoting the safety of the product. So this is why brand name with a manufacturer is so critically important.
Keith Cortell: Correct. But you may not want to divulge exactly where and what those marks are.
Walt Sanders: Yep.
Keith Cortell: And that would go back to the confidentiality, that I'd want to be able to divulge where those, those markings are in your products.
Walt Sanders: Okay.
Keith Cortell: In the event of a counterfeiter. Thank you.
Walt Sanders: Right.
James Deverell: Yeah, Brad and then George.
Brad Brush: Well, I think Walt was echoing what I said earlier, which is there, there is significant value in manufacturers being very proactive and responding to these incident reports. And again I, I know that the Commission does not have the resources to go out and send somebody in within two or three days and investigate each and every incident that comes into the, into the Commission. So it, it's not uncommon for our company to receive notice of claims that don't involve our products. Somebody says they had a product which is of the type we make. They may go on our website and see one that looks remarkably similar and say oh, it's that one. It's, it's a product made by Lasko. When we go out to a scene or we go out to look at a product that was alleged to have been involved in an incident, we can tell right away that that's not our product. So I think there's a significant amount of value in, in manufacturers taking very proactive measures to quickly look at and evaluate a product. And again you're, you're absolutely correct. That that then segues nicely into materially inaccurate information, which that would be the comment that the manufacturer would make in that instance within that five-day period. We went out and we looked at the product. It isn't ours. Might even be able to identify whose it is. And therefore that report should not go up as posted.
James Deverell: Okay. George?
George Rutherford: Just it is a sticky issue obviously, but I would just want to add that, I mean that's an ideal situation for the manufacturer comment with the caveats that have just been mentioned. But the fact that you would have the consumer report up there, and then the statement by the manufacturer that says based on what we've seen in this report or in our review, this isn't our product. I'm not sure I would say as an analyst that I would want the report to come out of the database. But I'd want it to be there with the statement that says you know what? It's identified [inaudible] product. And obviously the hard part then is whether CPSC is involved and trying to figure out who's right there, because it's certainly possible for a manufacturer to just say that every time they get a complaint. But I guess where I'm going is yeah, it's sticky. But that's kind of a classic manufacturer response. You know what? It's not us. And rather than pull everything out in response to that, I'd like to see the report there with the comment included.
James Deverell: All right. Next question please.
Patrick Gauber: Hi. Patrick Gauber [assumed spelling] of G.E. Appliances. I had a couple comments to this. I'm going to be the, the person responding to a lot of the actual emails that I'll get from the CPSC, so I'm kind of really interested in the mechanics of how it works. One is G.E. would definitely like to receive it electronically. The second would be a workplace for us to go view the complaints, track the complaints, post our comments and so they're immediately available. Just a little side comment. You know, that sometimes websites go, do go down. If the website's down for two days I would hope that we had a two-hour period to and time to reply. It would be good to have a CPSC handler specifically for G.E., G.E. complaints that if we have a problem the contact on the website. It would be good for us to have the ability to download the complaints in Excel format. That would be very helpful to us. As far as contacts a clearing house would be okay with someone to contact. Ideally we would actually be able to say for appliances, and then say microwaves would be say Patrick. For refrigerators go to Birney. Because there's actually four of us at the appliances that do this. And on top that we'd probably want another person like administrative assistants who could help fan those out just in case someone's on vacation. So we would need at least five email contacts if we're doing kind of a clearing house thing. If we could actually specify it by product line we could actually put the actual person down, so it kind of depends. Maybe not this first revision of the database, maybe the second roll-out. And maybe you guys would have some functionality like that. As far as if we notify, say we have to notify a manufacturer to make something for us we wouldn't, G.E. We wouldn't G.E. to be bypassed on that notification. We would like to be copied on it. You know, we don't want anything with the G.E. brand. We'd always want to know about any complaint. We wouldn't want that complaint to go right to a, a manufacturer of ours or a subcontract manufacturer. We still want to know about it, so make sure we get copied on that. There's been a few comments about unit supply. We probably already know if they've already contacted the CPSC. This is from my experience. I've actually done the actual kind of complaints. Might say about a quarter of the complaints that we get we have not already been contacted yet. The first person like CPSC. So those are kind of like a cold call to us so we have to come and try to act quickly. And it would be very good to have some kind of tracking ability for the CPSC to notify the customer about it. Because many times, and I think you guys will, will back this up. You'll see written comments of the reply letter saying that what's going on with my investigation? I haven't been contacted by the CPSC. Nothing's been done about this. Because I think that consumers do think that if I'm going to notify the CPSC they are expecting a response. And unfortunately I don't think that. I don't think the CPSC probably has the ability. It probably would be about 10% I think was the number we talked about yesterday of the investigations you do. So hopefully that by the quicker response, the good feedback handler assigned, it'll enable the CPSC and the manufacturer to investigate more of these claims. That's all. Thank you.
James Deverell: All right. Thanks very much for those comments. Any, any response? Rachel?
Rachel Weintraub: I don't have a response to those comments. I think was very helpful for what a particular company, a larger company who has a good infrastructure for intaking these type of comments has. And I think that's useful to the Commission. But I wanted to make a comment about our, our broader discussion earlier. And I think in, in trying to think about it in real time as we're here on this panel, is that one of the, one of the, the main benefits of this database is it's getting information to the public that didn't exist already where the Commission may have had information, manufacturers may have had information. Consumers who use the products didn't know, and nothing happened to move forward in investigating the hazard and potentially identifying something that shows a, a pattern or that something could be prevented in the future. So that's sort of where we are and, and why this database exists. One of the [inaudible]. So that's the net. That's the important, important benefit of this database, to provide information to consumers. But this database can't be everything to everybody. It can't be the place where claims are adjudicated. It can't be the place where the back and forth, where the investigation actually occurs. Ideally the information will go up, the manufacturer will be able to respond and deal with specific model information. Verify that it was its product. If it wasn't, make those comments. And hopefully this will spur action outside of the database. You know, it will, it will per. It will encourage manufacturers to conduct investigations, and it will be a source of information that they may not have had. And, and hopefully, you know, if CPSC sees a pattern, perhaps they will pursue actions under Section 15. But the database itself, and I think that's sort of what may be what's of concern. And was of, definitely was of concern to me in some of our previous conversations, that the database itself can't be the place where these claims are actually adjudicated. So we do hope that it spurs manufacturer investigations as well as CPSC investigations. But it can't all happen within the dialogue of the database itself.
James Deverell: Okay. I think if we have no more audience comments. We have, we have one.
I do but.
James Deverell: No, please.
I can make it, but it's long.
James Deverell: Well, if it's. If it's lengthy we're, we're running.
[Inaudible] makes it like that.
[ Silence ]
James Deverell: So I think. I, I think that, that's a very interesting conversation and I agree with you that it could tend to, to spur a big dialogue.
[Inaudible] I could have that right [inaudible].
James Deverell: So if, if I could ask you if we could table that until the next, next audience participation session. Thank you. At this point I would like to take a, a short break. We scheduled 15 minutes. We're a little over, so if we could keep it to maybe somewhere between five and ten minutes, and then we'll resume after that. Thanks very much.
[ Silence ] All right. We'd like to continue our session on manufacturer response. We've got it looks like about another 50 minutes or so. I'd like to. We have a couple more questions we'd like to post to the panel. And then we'll reserve some time at the end for another session of audience participation. So the, the first question I'd like to, to get back to, and I think this kind of carries on from some of the conversation we were having right before the break. A couple things we put in the parking lot yesterday. Number two up here, is there a way for manufacturers through the response process to help CPSC identify products accurately? We touched on inaccurate information in terms of the manufacturer. I think that conversation is probably better served for this afternoon session. But in terms of product identification, is that something we can work into the manufacturer response? And then number three up here, how do we make it easy for manufacturers to verify or match product codes when researching an incident report for comment? If there are any thoughts I'll, I'll open that up. And actually I'd like to turn it over to Pat Weddle at this point on the CPSC side.
Pat Weddle: Yeah, let me make a, a couple of comments before we begin this next session. There, there, there's a lot of Commission staff at the table. And, and if we appear to be deliberately stoic it, it's because it's our nature. We're, we're here for two reasons. The staff. We are here to solicit comments from you, from the public, from whomever. You know, there's two things going on. As the IT guy in the room, the guy that actually admits that he's Ming, we have a very short timeframe to put a lot of this together. So when we start talking about things like portals, people coming in and protecting information, immediately we go to security and how are we going to do these things? You know, there, there's a lot there. So we're. There's a lot of us in the room on the IT side trying to figure out exactly what's the best way to go about this. And how quickly can we get it done because we do have a very tight timeframe on this thing. The other piece is that if we appear reluctant to go in to some places, the other reason we are here as staff is to collect information to give back to the Commission. You know, whether it's Commissioner Adler or whoever it's, it's everybody. Because we are going into rulemaking on, on many of these things. The act itself, you know Section 212, is very. There's a lot of discussion about intent. There aren't any two people in this room who are going to agree on what intent is. The Commission is going to have to, to make some decisions, and that's come back over and over again. This is up to them. We're trying to collect as much information, trying to get as many of these issues out on the table so that they can make informed decisions. What we'd like to see is that there's ample opportunity we think for, for more comment up until the 29th. Anything that comes up, you know, please [inaudible] before we go into that. Now I'm really speaking from the IT guy's perspective. Anything that affects design and whatever, Ming dyes his hair because he's turned gray since he's gone to work here, we're in a hurry. We, we don't want to be. We want to put a very, very good product out. That's one thing. The other thing I would ask on, on a personal level, getting back to something that Christine said, is that we as IT people tend to represent one, one perspective often. And my sense is that we're forgetting about, you know, some of the disenfranchised kind of people. There are some mom and pop kind of crafters. Those kind of folks that are out there. We don't want to come up with IT solutions that handicap them in some way. It's probably not fair in this day and age to say that people don't have access to computers. And yet I know a lot of people who don't. So when I retire I'm not going to. So the thing we need to do, you know, let, let your minds roam on this one and I'm serious about this one. Come back to the table or talk to people that, you know, it can't be a one-size-fits-all solution. That's not possible. We're also looking for alternatives, so whatever you can come up with please.
James Deverell: Thanks, Pat. And actually along those lines I'd also, I think Pat raises a very good point there. And if anyone has a, a response to that as well I actually would like to open it up to that as well. So again, I'd like to, to kick off our session at this point with the, these two questions. Number two and number three up here. Really have to do with in, in terms of the manufacturer responses is there a way that something can be worked into that to where manufacturers might be able to help CPSC with product identification. And on the flip side, is there a way that CPSC can make it easier for manufacturers to verify for example a product code? So with that fairly open topic anyone has a comment on that. Brad?
Brad Brush: Oh, I think I know where this conversation is going. If I were Ming I'd be twitching at the thought of having to create drop-downs and populate the database with enough meaningful modeled information that people could actually use drop-downs to identify it. I mean we're not a large company. We've got 75 perhaps models of fans in our current product line. Probably 20 heaters, and that changes year-to-year. So you have to go back ten years and look at all the models for each individual year. Look at our current models. I mean if we changed the color on a product for a retail we might give it a new model designation in the middle of the season. The point being is there's virtually no way in my view to help the CPSC with as many. I mean and they have alone, we've got I think a 100 different manufacturers constituting over 500 brands. I mean how do you work with that volume of information? That's just from one association. So I think that again the manufacturers are probably your best resource in terms of helping you or helping the incident report accurately reflect the product that was involved. And again, it goes back to some of the early issues we discussed, which is if you encourage the consumers to consent to being contacted by the manufacturer, the manufacturer can tell that person look, if you have this product turn it over. The label you want to look at isn't the label on the back. It's the label on the bottom. The number at the top of that label is the model number. The number below that's the date code. The Commission or, or any governmental body, has the ability to, to have that type of detailed information about the spectrum of products that are under the jurisdiction of the CPSC. So I think it's just impossible for manufacturers going into this to provide enough information. Or stated another way, there's so much information out there that I don't think the IT people at the Commission could, could reasonably integrate that into the database.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Yes. From the standpoint of my [inaudible] that I've talked to about this, we recognize that this is, this is a powerful difficulty that, that the Commission faces. You know, we've heard various suggestions that maybe everyone, every manufacturer turn in every model number to the Commission. Well, I think you'd break under the weight of that situation very rapidly. Knowing also that this has to be a living thing, some of our product out in the marketplace for 40 or 50 years and to keep model numbers. Some of the manufacturers even have difficulty keeping model numbers for very lengthy periods of time due to just mergers and acquisitions and other kinds of situations. Record-keeping and other problems that are associated with that. We've done some research projects, for instance looking at, at products and trying to identify old products after, after 30 or 40 years for various. Not, not safety reasons but for environmental situations. And manufacturers have the inability in many cases to be a, to identify that situation. So I don't that there's going to be a perfect way. Being that most of the situations are going to involve a fairly rapid turnaround, not all but most of them. In other words, from the time reduction and from the time of sale to the time of an incident situation is relatively short in most cases. I think you're going to find that most of the manufacturers have that information readily available to them, and they're going to be really willing to help you in any way. If you can identify the brand of the manufacturer with, with a couple of emails or phone calls or such, such a situation, I think you're going to find the manufacturer will do absolutely everything in their power to properly identify that as either being theirs or somebody else's. And even give you some clues as to who you might contact in that. Retailers also will be it, and that's why we suggested putting in the field where the consumer purchased the product. Because then retailers are going to know directly who are their sources of that particular product line or product identification. I agree that I think photographs, the ability to upload photographs or something along that line to help identify is going to be a powerful tool. And be able to help that with, with identification. But is it going to be some automatic means that when I put in C2101 then it automatically refers to, to a particular brand? No. I'm afraid that that's not going to work that easily. But there are overlapping model numbers. I know as a consumer I've tried contacting manufacturers and manufacturers get back to me rather rapidly. And in that situation no, that's you've got an incorrect character. Or that's the wrong number. Or, you know, can you look in this particular location? You'll be able to find that. Manufacturers place their, their model identifications or serial plates or those types of things in different locations for various reasons. And they, but they know where those are. And for the most part they can tell you look here. They'll be able to find where that, that model code situation is. Repeat that back to me and, and they, they were very helpful. Are there going to be some that won't be helpful? Yes. But I think by and large most of them, and certainly our members are. From small to large for that situation. Thanks.
James Deverell: Thanks, Wayne. Any other comment? Yeah, John.
John Datovich: Just one quick comment. And I wear a number of different hats at my company. On the one side, you know, I'm an engineer and I do technical investigations, particularly in response to complaints that are, or have the potential to be safety related. I also am responsible for consumer affairs at Hamilton Beach. The, the manager of our call center in the United States reports to me. And I know from talking with our consumer service representatives the thing that makes the calls go the longest, whenever consumers call in, is trying to identify the, the product. You know, that is, that is really honestly sometimes the biggest challenge that our agents face. Is, is getting the consumer to be able to accurately identify the product so that they can help them with whatever the question may be that they have about how to use the product or anything like that. So, you know, I anticipate that a lot of the information that comes in, at least initially when a report is filed, just based on my own personal experience is going to be very incomplete. And so, you know, I think that the key in all of this as, as we talked about I think from the beginning of this session, is to have the right point of contact for an individual brand. You know, that's, that's where the, you know, the consumer is going to be able to correctly identify things in most cases. And, you know, from there, you know, whoever owns that brand or trademark is going to have to be actively involved in investigating and trying to determine, you know, who the actual manufacturer is. Who the right person is to respond. And I think that the owner of that brand or trademark will have an obvious interest in doing so, and will want to be helpful. Because there's now a complaint out there against a product with their brand on it. And I, I would think that, you know, at least speaking from my own experience that most manufacturers are going to want to be able to respond to that as intelligently and as quickly as possible.
James Deverell: Thanks, John. Any other comments on that? If, if not I'd like to, to switch over to a different question here. That's the last question actually in the, the public list which is how can CPSC ensure that manufacturers and/or private labelers do not use a submitter's contact information for purposes other than verification of a report of harm? By what means can the CPSC enforce such a provision? And hoping that we might be able to get some response from some of our consumers groups representatives on, on, on this particular one, if you have some thoughts. I don't mean to put anyone on the spot here, but. George?
George Rutherford: Well, the first thing it raises in my mind is a question. Because I mean I'm sure what the question means is retaliation, intimidation, whatever. But the question that came to my mind is does this limit the ability of a manufacture to do further investigation? Because we're talking verification, and I wouldn't want to. If for example they did contact somebody and they were able to get a lot more information about the product, that goes way beyond verification maybe they are investigating. Does this preclude that? Are we precluding them doing further investigation? Or are we just talking about not using it for intimidation or harassment and that sort of thing?
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: I guess my mindset goes a different direction than yours, George. And, and maybe after 30 years at the Commission it's understandable. But I certainly didn't take it that way. I didn't take the question that way at all. I guess I was looking at it in terms of how do you prevent a manufacturer for instance from using the, the consumer's address and name when they contact them for say a marketing purpose? Put them on some kind of a list to, to identify them in, in that type of situation. And I guess my, again my mindset actually which says you don't. I mean it's, it's not acceptable to do that. And, and I think that manufacturers are going to. You know, some manufacturer may need reminding of that. But we certainly have done our part to, to tell our member companies that that's not proper and that's not what the law says. And so the information that you are allowed if, if you are allowed to contact that consumer if they agree to that, then you have to be exceedingly careful about what you do with that information. And that that's confidential information to that company and that they need to treat that [inaudible]. I think that most companies are going to respect that. And when you find that they don't there are means I think with at Commission to deal with that situation.
James Deverell: Mary?
Mary Kelsey: I just wanted to ask whether you would recommend a, a statement for the manufacturers right up front? The Commission stating that, you know, this information is only to be used for X, and that the manufacturers agree to that. Do you have any recommendation for how we could get the manufactures to agree to not use the information?
Wayne Morris: Perhaps it could be done during the registration process. When manufacturers register the contact people that receive the complaints, I think at that point there could be a, a statement or a verification by the manufacturer that any information received from these incident reports will not be used for any purposes other than the statutory purposes. And, and just one comment on, on verification. I think, I'm not sure George was suggesting this, but if he was I wanted to address it. Verification of a complaint may very well go beyond picking up the phone and just saying oh, are you really the person who called in? I think verifying the content of the complaint might also give rise to some additional proactive measures by the, by the manufacture. Such as sending a, a prepaid call tag so they can return the product. You know, if it's a serious property loss perhaps contacting the consumer and, and going to the scene and, and, and observing what may have happened. So I think an investigation may be fairly included in the verification process, depending on the circumstances.
Ami Gadhia: A couple responses to that question. First, the statute thereabout, the consumer needs to [inaudible] express written consent to have their contact information turned over to the manufacturer. And I think that needs to be crystal clear to the consumer that they don't have to turn this information over. And that turning the information over is by no means a condition of having their information go up on the database. Secondly, along the lines of what Brad mentioned, some sort of notice, Mary, what you asked about to the manufacturer about the use of that information. Rather than having the, the manufacturer agree to that one time at the registration process which is early on, and the person who's doing that registering may or may not be the person at the company who's actually contacting the consumer. I think similar to the verification and consent that the consumer gives every time they file an incident complaint, there should be a similar verification consent given by the actual individual who is being given the contact information, who's going to be doing the contacting of the individual each time that contact is made. Whether if [inaudible] and even if it's multiple times information is refreshed. And that, that company is reminded that they are very limited in the purposes in which they can use that contact information. I think it's an open question. I think, Brad, you opened up the idea of verification as to whether it can be something besides hey, is this just the, is this a real consumer who made this complaint? They actually had a, you know, problem with one of our products? Opening up that verification to something else and, you know, having it turn into hey, return the product to us. That kind of a thing. I, I think that goes beyond the scope of what verification is. What, what is meant by verification? And I think we get [inaudible] caution against which is a, turning the complaint database into somehow an adjudication of a complaint that's separately dealt with by the manufacturer.
James Deverell: Brad?
Brad Brush: Yes?
James Deverell: Do you want to give a quick response to that? Then we've got a few other folks who [inaudible].
Brad Brush: Yeah, again I think, you know, from the manufacturer's standpoint of course I, I'm looking at this from a different vantage point from, from yourself. But I mean it is imperative from the manufacturer's standpoint to have the ability to, to quickly and proactively find out what actually happened. I mean you can get some pretty skeletal information in some of these incident reports. And to the extent that this is one more piece of information that, that may in fact lead to a Team B report. I don't think anybody who is concerned about consumer safety would want to prevent a manufacturer from getting information which they may actually add to information they already have which, you know, may in fact be the tipping point in whether a 15B is, is submitted. So, you know, the, the suggestion that keeps coming up that manufacturers should be limited in their ability to contact a consumer and then take it from there if the consumer says it's okay if I'm contacted by the manufacturer. The consumer has a lot of discretion. If, if they don't want to send the product back, if they're uncomfortable sending the product back. If they don't want somebody from the company to, to visit them or come take a look at the product that's their choice. We can't make them do that and we're not eliminating a lot of people. But we absolutely reach out to consumers when we get reports of these types of incidents. And we want to know what happened. We want to gather information because it's important to our overall safety program. So I think that consumer groups may want to rethink protecting consumer groups from, consumers from contact by manufacturers because I think we have a real legitimate interest in, in obtaining information that could ultimately further the goals of, of the, of the act.
James Deverell: Actually I'd like to let John jump in here. He's been waiting very patiently.
John Datovich: Just to, to go back to the original two questions. You know, I like the idea of, of it's been suggested of, you know, when, when you register agreeing to, to use the information appropriately. The other thing I think that you can do is to, to put something somewhere on the Home page for this new database collection website that there's a link for consumers to report what they think are abuse of information that they have, they have previously reported. Now in terms of what can they do to enforce that beyond that after they've received that, you know, I'm, I'm not an attorney, you know. And I don't pretend to be one but I imagine there's all, there might be some legal, some legal recourse that the, the Commission could take through the court system to deny a, you know, a manufacturer the ability to comment in the future. [Inaudible] you know, have, have shown to abuse that, that privilege, that process that is given to them through this new law.
James Deverell: Ami?
Ami Gadhia: Just in response to some of the points that Brad raised. I, you know, again want to stress that the utility of the database is for a place for consumers to search for information if they're deciding to buy a product or not. And for the agency to, to receive aggregate information. So that if they're getting, you know, a 100 complaints on a particular product that product rises to the top when it comes to, you know hazards and things of concern. And so I wouldn't want consumers sending the product back to the manufacturer to interfere with the main goal of the database, which is the CPSC doing an investigation where necessary.
James Deverell: Ken?
Ken Wittenauer: Yeah, I would just offer the comment that this is a first notice that I have a particular claim because of something submitted to the database. It's sort of naive to assume to that if I as a manufacturer contact the consumer to verify simply the product, that they're not going to get into a dialogue, or want to, with me. They may even want to resolve the claim. They may want replacement product. They may. In the example of a car seat if they feel it's unsafe to use their car seat, they need a replacement product, you know, I, I don't know where you draw the line in managing consumer expectation or how you define that. Because I'm. As a manufacturer I'm hesitant to have any contact at all if I'm going to be subject to penalty because the conversation goes beyond just verifying you have this product. Is this the product number? And I don't know how to control that dialogue. So I don't want to engage with a consumer and disappoint them in their expectation perhaps of why am I contacting them simply to verify. I think if, if that's truly what you intend, then you need to make it very clear and the information posted to provide to the consumer that the manufacturer can only ask you to verify product, if that's your intent. Otherwise, I may not want to call the consumer because I'm going to get into a process that I may be penalized for, naturally trying to assist the consumer with a product complaint.
James Deverell: Nancy?
Nancy Cowles: Yeah, I was going to just add to that. I think that that there could be some way on the form, maybe when you're asking for the consumer for, you know, the consent to send their name to the manufacturer, indicating why they would be doing that for verification. And say, you know, if you want to pursue this matter if you have, you know, want the manufacturer to, you know, do more. Like you were saying, you know, replace the product or whatever. We suggest you contact the manufacturer directly outside of this system so that then you could. Or have, you know, you were saying before to have the date when they'd already contacted you so you could go back to that. You'd already have contact with them and you could be talking to them under those purview, and not from getting it from the database.
James Deverell: Brad?
Brad Brush: Well, I, I think what happens after the initial report is made it doesn't really have any effect on the information that goes into the database. If manufacturers want to be proactive and, and try to resolve a claim that as, as the gentleman said we get first notice of vis-a-vis the, the website, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, I've been doing this for five years for Lasko. I speak to consumers almost every day. I've never had a consumer seem disappointed or upset that they were contacted by the manufacturer. I think to the contrary. They're pleased that there's a live person out there that has read their complaint. Has contacted them and is trying to address it or resolve the complaint. So like I said maybe we're just looking at this from two different vantage points. But I've never had a, a consumer seem upset that they received a phone call from the manufacturer.
Nancy Cowles: I know. And my, my response was more to, to your point. That the manufacturer doesn't want to state, you know, this clearly says you can only use it for verification purposes. So if there's going to be a problem doing what you're suggesting consumers probably do want their needs to be a way for the consumer to give that additional okay to do more than that at that point, or to have some other process to do it. So it was more from the manufacturer's viewpoint of not, you know, the statute again clearly says that it can only be used for that one purposes.
Brad Brush: Well, I think it's how you define verification. I'd certainly define verification as calling the consumer, not only making sure that they are the person who in fact made the, the report. But that the manner in which they believed the product may have failed, the ability to look at that product. That's all part of the verification process in my view.
Nancy Cowles: Right. But is resolution of the problem or a replacement product, is that verification? [Inaudible]?
Brad Brush: Well, I, I, again I can't imagine a consumer being upset that they're getting a refund or an expeditious solution of their, of their complaint or a new product. I mean that doesn't affect the content of the database in any shape or form. It's perhaps an added bonus to the consumer that they're getting quick resolution of their claim without going through the customer service department. They're, they're getting direct access to, for example in our company, to the claims department. And they may get a very, very quick resolution of their problem because we've gotten such quick notification.
James Deverell: John, did you have a comment you want to jump in with?
John Datovich: Yeah. I agree with what, what Brad is saying, and I would just offer a, you know, that the recommendation or suggestion that, you know, we keep that check box as simple as possible and not have, you know, too many different options and levels of, of which consumers can, you know, agree to have their information used. I think the, the Commission has a working example today that, that works pretty well, at least from our perspective as a manufacturer. And that is simply, you know, when we get clearing house reports, you know, there, there's. That's always a question. And a check box that's on there, you know, do you consent to have your contact information released to the manufacturer? Yes or no? And if it's checked yes we get it. If not it's no. And, you know, I would suggest that, you know, that that might be a good model to emulate, at least in the beginning, you know, to, to try to keep things simple.
James Deverell: George?
George Rutherford: Well, I just to sum up in my mind, I think what. Somewhere along the line what needs to happen is there needs to be a clear definition of what CPSC means by verification. Because obviously there are different interpretations of what qualifies as verification and what doesn't. And I guess again when I look at it and sit back from the outside and look at it I want to make sure that we don't design a system that's meant to deal with the tenth percentile reasonable consumer. In other words, some kind of a fringe person who's liable to be doing everything he can to hurt industry. And a 90th percentile manufacturer who is reputable and conscientious and just trying to fix the product. We need to make sure we're looking at. We're setting our, our bars if you will at some kind of an equal level so that we recognize there are going to be well-intentioned, well-educated, well-informed consumers. And there are going to be manufacturers like that. And there are going to be people who are at the other end of that spectrum, and obviously this system is going to have to serve all of those people. Or be able to deal with all of those people. So with just as background, I think we've come back down to it's going to need a definition. It can't just be left for everybody who's participating to come up with their own individual definitions or there will be chaos.
James Deverell: Any further comments on that? If not I'd like to move on to the next question which is, I'm jumping back up to number five on the. I'm sorry, number six on the list. What, if any, circumstances may arise which restart any timeframes contemplated in the statute with regard to manufacturer notification and responses? John?
John: I think a simple one from our perspective would be, you know, if within that window of time between when the consumer files the initial report and the, the ten-day. And then the manufacturer received notification and then we're in that kind of ten-day window for commenting. If the consumer comes back and amends their, their report and provides new information, I would think that, you know, when that new information gets forwarded to the manufacturer is, is part of the reporting to the manufacturer that, that that should restart that, that ten-day window.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Yeah. I, I think that I agree with John that we list, look at a list of things that we could contemplate might occur in a situation notification going to the wrong manufacturer or private labeler. The, the. Then the corrected situation comes back to the Commission and I think that the manufacturer, the real manufacturer or real private labeler then should have the full opportunity of the time period to, to respond to that situation. If incomplete information is, is reported and then later corrected, especially if it involves identification of the, of the product or the, or the manufacturer, then they think that, that resets the clock situation. Again if the, if the consumer or person that, that makes the reports. And again it isn't always the consumer that's making the report. The law specifically allows for a number of, of public groups to con. You know, a children's provider or providers and other physicians and other governmental authorities that can make reports as well. And there could be mistakes made along that line as well that then could, could be, need to be corrected in that situation. I think if an error simply is made somewhere along the line, someone at the Commission mistakenly, though fully well-intentioned, sends the notice out to the wrong manufacturer, the wrong private labeler, then that, that situation has got to reoccur and allow the manufacturer to, to have the full opportunity to comment on that situation. I think that it is difficult in the case of if a, if a private labeler or retailer is notified, and the retailer then gets back to the Commission and says that's fine but, you know, we'll now manu, notify the manufacture. And the manufacturer then, for want of a better situation, it takes several days for that retailer to get back. The manufacturer may in some cases feel that that was their first notice, when in fact it went to the private labeler. And I, I think that that's, that needs to be explained. That the, that the law does say the manufacturer or a private labeler. And in the case of branded product or private label product, the Commission has the duty to respond to the private labeler, not necessarily always to the real manufacturer, the person who turned the screws and put the product together. And so I think that there needs to be that, that working relationship. But I think that's all part of also the relationship between the manufacturer and the retailer. That they need to develop the systems that are necessary so those are instantaneously transmitted down to the right person. But that's not the Commission's duty to, to do that situation. So I think that there's going to be some, some fits and starts on this one. And I think that we'll learn as we go through this exactly how to do it. But certainly we do believe that, that the manufacturer needs to have their opportunity to, to respond. It shouldn't hold us up. But it should, should certainly allow for that situation to occur. Thanks.
James Deverell: Thanks, Wayne. Any additional comments? Rachel?
Rachel Weintraub: Well, I'm glad, Wayne, that you ended with your last clause. Because I think what CPSC is going to have to find the balance for how to figure out these rules, is that in fact this, this back and forth. And if information is found to be incorrect and then verified, what it. What can happen and what I think the goal of. One of the goals of this statute is to prevent from happening is that this process would hold up the process. Or that this back and forth. And what we don't want to happen is that this information is in fact holds us hostage for, you know, days and days and days and days and days. The idea is that the information will go up and there can be a comment given the parameters of the statute. But we just. You know, and I think ultimately you agree, but we just need to make sure that the discretion of the agency is used in such a way that it doesn't unwittingly create a way to hold up this information.
James Deverell: Ami?
Ami Gadhia: I think if the initial complaint is incomplete, John I think alluded to that. If the initial complaint is incomplete and then subsequently that information is filled in. But if the initial complaint wasn't incorrect, it identified the product code correctly and the additional information just sort of further helped that process along, I don't think that should restart the clock. Because at that point the manufacturer has gotten the notice. It's still them even after the additional influence, information has been submitted. So there's no question of what you referred to, Wayne, with the wrong company getting the initial notice.
James Deverell: Anything further on that? All right. At this point we, we actually have a few minutes left. We're for the first time running a bit ahead of schedule. We've gone through all the questions that were on the, the public notice. I'd like to actually ask our CPSC panel if they've, in the course of this discussion if there are any other sort of points of clarification or questions that have come up at this point? If not, I'd actually like to take the opportunity since we have a few minutes to get back to something that, that Pat brought up a few minutes ago. While not strictly on-topic I, I, I'd like to get back to this idea that he brought up of people who don't have access necessarily to a computer. Most of the conversation that we've had over the last day-and-a-half has revolved around things like email and Web portals and stuff that we're all very familiar with. But obviously that, that may not be everyone in the country. So I, I'd like to actually open it up on a very open topic. But particularly for our consumers groups if, if you have any thoughts on ways that the, that the Commission might be able to better serve those individuals who don't have access to a computer, or if there's anything you've seen in terms of work you've done with other agencies, other groups. Again, I don't mean to put anyone [inaudible]. Going off-the-cuff here. So Sean?
Sean Cain: You know, [inaudible] for, from the NHTSA side you can use what's called the Vehicle Owner Questionnaire. And it's a form that's a shortened version of essentially what's on the website. But again it captures the critical information. And that form can be obtained of course on the Web. But, but it's also. But it is also available in a paper format and can be mailed and it is, it can be mailed if some contacts. The hotline thing that, you know. And it's made available when the agency does various like auto shows or things like when they're doing promotion for the consumer complaint database and make that form available.
James Deverell: Okay. Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Well, the, the act specifically addressed the situation. And it says that the, in implementing the database the Commission shall establish the following electronic, telephonic, and paper-based means of submitting. So I think it, it certainly speaks to the fact that, that the consumer needs to have available to them multiple pathways of getting the information. And we totally agree with that situation. And I think that, that the, the other thing that is contemplated in the act is that the Commission is responsible to, to advertise and publicly make this information available that this database does exist. Where the consumer would request something in paper form instead of having it accessible on the Web, I think that the Commission needs to have some mean of responding to that situation. I think that's going to be very difficult. For instance, if a consumer says to me get, get back to me with my, with whatever your response is going to be by telephone. But I'm, unfortunately I only. I work, you know, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. And, and that's going to be very limiting in terms of how the Commission is going to respond back to that consumer. So I think that it, it will be a judgment call in a few cases. But I'm sure that the Commission has already faced this. I mean you already have situations now where consumers feed you information in other means other than by already I'm sure responded to consumers in this way. I don't think that this is necessarily all that drastically different. I think the Commission goes out of its way now to make sure that consumers are well-known and well, have access to information. And I don't contemplate that there could be any difference here. But I do think that it will, in the report to Congress it would. A fairly extensive amount of that report to Congress was delivered last year dealt with how you plan to advertise the database and make it available and so forth. And I think that all of those were, were excellent ways that were mentioned in that. And I would imagine in your next report to Congress you probably deal with that as well. So I look forward to it. Thanks.
James Deverell: Ami?
Ami Gadhia: Riffing right off of that I would agree that that report that was delivered to Congress last fall really did a very good job of laying out the public awareness campaign. And the entire report was, was very good. I think in the outreach, I'm probably stating an obvious idea. But in the outreach to notify consumers that the database exists, that outreach should include both whatever the URL is, safer products or whatever it is, as well as the 800 telephone number. Suggests that the telephone number be some sort of acronym like safer products as opposed to digits. Generally easier to remember. And the notification of that database and submissions to that database should go out not only on things like Twitter or Facebook or other social media that were mentioned, but on the evening news. Folks have mentioned that a lot of, a lot of the times they found out about recalls through reports on their, on their local evening news broadcasts. So that's another good way to get the word out if you still watch the evening news.
James Deverell: Nancy?
Nancy Cowles: Yeah, I was just going to add to that. We actually just did a survey of consumers in Illinois. Families with children. We were looking specifically at children's products, and still over half of them say that they get that recall news from the TV. Which with the internet and your, your email alert and our email alert thing we, we always think that, you know more and more people are using those. And maybe they are, but still most people, which might account for why they very rarely hear of your recalls, still get that from the news and TV. And the other thing I was going to point out is new research that shows that while there is still a very large digital divide in terms of who has computers, that divide is not present in the use of cellphones. So that minority communities, urban communities, cellphone use is very high among low-income communities. And that using text messages or ways, you know, to respond to via text or via phone can help reach those communities much better than things just on [inaudible].
Yeah. Not to co-opt Apple's advertising, but should there be an app for that?
Nancy Cowles: There should be app for that.
There should be an app for that. Maybe there could be.
James Deverell: All right. Ming?
Ming Ju: Actually I've got two questions. One is with so many manufacturers, especially you know for toys and apparel, that's located outside the country, for brand owners such as, you know, Britax what is your strategy, or what do you have plans for making sure the manufacturers, let's say in China, are, are included? Are in your, in your plan? Or, you know, or that they're informed?
Brad Brush: That raises an interesting question because certainly a lot of the, I'll use strollers as an example. There's sort of a glut in strollers. They're sold all over the world and there's a very select group of mostly Chinese manufacturers that make everybody's strollers. And so it, it's a problem because trying to get information from China about the product, and getting feedback about the performance of the product from the manufacturer is very difficult. So for example, the ten-day window of time is not going to give me enough time to get any meaningful feedback from the manufacturer if there are questions that I'd like to see raised and answered about their experience with the product. The specifications for the product. It, it's just not going to be possible. So frankly, we're anticipating only dealing with our domestic experience with the product. It will take a longer window of time for us to get meaningful information from the manufacturer if they're not in the U.S.
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: But the Commission under, under its compliance office already sees that in terms of who the first importer is or retailer as being the manufacturer-of-record. I mean the statute already speaks to that situation in terms of Section 15 and other adjudication of, of issues there. So I would say that may not be as big a problem as, as we could foresee. Where in the world they're located is not as big a problem as in fact who brought the product into the United States and put it on the market. They become the responsible party in the eyes of the Commission, and in the eyes of the Consumer Product Safety Act. And I think that, that that becomes the person-of-record. So I think that, you know, while I, I totally agree with you and believe me, as a worldwide trade association we have our difficulties responding to, to situations with hours. And, you know, my Blackberry goes off all 24-7. And, and I'm sure it, it's like that with most people. And in even the compliance department at CPSC. But the, the fact is that your responsibility is to notify those people who are the, the responsible party.
James Deverell: Christine?
Christine Hines: I'm not a manufacturer so I don't understand the dealings with the Chinese manufacturers and product being produced overseas. However, the manufacturer can submit comments any time. So the ten-day window is, addresses the incident report going on the database, not the manufacturer comments. So there's no deadline for manufacturer comments. Those can be made at any time.
James Deverell: Okay. Ming, you had another question?
Ming Ju: Yes. The second question is with the global brands, for example, you have many, many manufacturers working under their brand. Is there any security or privacy concerns that CPSC should take into consider, consideration about protecting your information. For example, manufacturers may be potential competitors. What do we need to consider?
[ Silence ]
James Deverell: Wayne?
Wayne Morris: Sure. It, it is a problem. We foresee that to be an issue. And I don't know any other way around it. You know, if you are struggling to try and find a brand owner or manufacturer of a particular product, and all you have is the brand name and the general description of the product, is it possible that you would inadvertently notify the wrong manufacturer of that brand? Yes. But I think for the most part our manufacturers would say give me more information, not less. Don't be too restrictive. If you, if you. We would rather you notify too many people in most cases than, than not enough. And does that mean that you may be telling a competitor about a product? Well, it's going to run both ways. And so I think in the long-run it'll all even out. I think that, you know, Christine's point is, is well-taken. The manufacturer has no time limit on when to respond to that situation. They do have to be watching the situation constantly. There is that responsibility that they, they share in the database, so. But in terms of is it possible that, that that. I, I would say in those kind of situations where you're searching still for the actual owner that the, the release of information might be carefully done until you find the exact owner, that you may not need to divulge everything. And certainly then the manufacturer has the ability to say that that's confidential [inaudible]. But it, it is possible that that inaccurate notification could occur and, and that, that's probably going to be dealt with at some point in time I'm sure.
James Deverell: Rachel?
Rachel Weintraub: It sounds like there are some byzantine structures in terms of brand, manufacturer really monitoring this complex flowchart. And I think it's in CPSC, in everyone's interest if the manufacturers would give that information to the Commission, you know, if, if you can. I mean it's sort of, you know. In some ways there's a, you know, a manufacturer wants consumers to, to know the brand there's a lot of work that goes into brand identity. But on the other hand for a consumer to identify a product correctly, I mean there's all this information that consumers and CPSC may not know about. Who makes what and what the deviations may be. So if possible, I think it's really in everyone's interest for the manufacturers up front maybe as this sort of registry is being compiled to facilitate the Commission easily to give sort of flowcharts, if they exist which I assume they, they kind of have to, for who makes what and, and when.
James Deverell: John?
John: I, I think, you know, that, that's an interesting suggestion that Rachel has. I think from a practical standpoint that might be difficult to do just because it's such a, a living thing and it, it changes so often. And, you know, I'm just thinking of how complex that would be for, for our brands. And then multiplying that by the fact that we're just one company in, in one industry, you know. And one of the 15,000 products that the CPSC regulates. You know, that would be a huge amount of information. Which is why I come back to the fact that I think, you know, notifying the brand owner really I think is kind of the critical thing. The, the brand owner is going to be in the best position to, to figure out who really is that, the correct manufacturer. They're going to have that information readily available to them. Or not necessarily readily available to them. Available to them. And then to, to go beyond that level may just be too much complexity, you know. Taking on too much at least initially, you know, in the design of, of this system. And the other thing is in some instances that, you know, certain manufacturers may not want to divulge all of that information. You know, they consider their, their supply chains to be, to be confidential. And, you know, and who they're buying from and those types of things. And so, you know, they, they may not want to put that information out there. I foresee that, you know, if, if notification is given to, to the brand on the product or that, you know, the entity that owns that brand. Then really the only cases where information might go to the wrong people the, the consumer kind of got it wrong in the first place, you know, and put the wrong brand. Which could happen and, and will happen. But I think most of the time if you, you start out notifying the brand then, you know, and kind of from there leave it up to that brand, they will be able to eventually give that information to, to the right people. And I'm sure, like I said before, the brand will, will have an interest. They, they have a stake in making sure that any comments that they want to have placed up there do get placed. And, and they will take the responsibility for, for kind of chasing it down from there.
James Deverell: All right. Any. Any additional questions from the CPSC side? At this point then I'd like to open it up to the audience again. If anyone from the audience has, has any questions or comments they'd like to pose for the panel, we have an open microphone at the back. No? Okay. Anything. Oh, sorry. We have one. Yes sir?
[ Silence ]
Allen Korn: Allen Korn from Safe Kids USA. I'm always surprised that in only 300,000 who have signed up for the recall alerts that the CPSC has that we all get, there might be an opportunity to trigger or prompt a consumer to sign up for that recall alert as they input something in database that might. If this is as successful as we think it could be, we could see our. We could get to a million, which I know is what the CPSC is trying to do, much quicker. So I, I would recommend that avenue also for the staff.
James Deverell: Okay. Thank you for that comment, and I think we, we've got that captured in the notes.
Leah Wade: Hi. This is Leah Wade from the Illinois Attorney General's Office. In listening to some of the discussion about trying to figure out who the manufacturer is, the labeler, and how confusing that can be. And I, I just wanted to reiterate something that Christine commented, which is that the ten-day period is for the CPSC to post. And I, I hope that something like that wouldn't delay, or trying to figure out who the manufacturer is wouldn't delay that posting. Because you still, and I'm actually looking for clarification, you still have time to post your comments while that is sort of being figured out. So just wanted to reiterate that. Thank you.
James Deverell: Okay. Thank you. Any, any response? Anything further from the audience? No? Okay. At this point then I'd like to wrap up this particular workshop. Thanks everyone for your participation. We will be back here. We've got an hour break for lunch. We'll be back with the workshop on materially inaccurate information which begins at 1:00 p.m., so we'll see everyone then. Thanks.