What feedback have you got from lock manufacturer?

[zeepia]

My friend bought a 4-digit combination key storage lock and came to me and said: "this is something you can´t pick". I asked for a permission and 15 minutes later I got the lock opened without minding the right combination, just bypassing it without leaving any marks to the lock. Needless to say my friend wasn´t very happy with the result

Then I figured that it would be nice to let the manufacturer know that their lock isn´t safe at all and I emailed them and response was only one line:

"Take the product to the shop to get inspected"

I then told them politely that my lock isn´t malfunctioning or neither it is broken but you just sell poor products. I also suggested easily made improvements for the lock safety. They haven´t responded yet.

What I think here is that person who answered me don´t know or care anything about the issue. The product is bought from a department store which sell these locks with their own name. They don´t advertise it as accepted by insurance corporations but they suggest you put your homekey in it or cottage, boat or caravan. I wouldn´t.

And this leads to my question: what feedback have you got from lock manufacturers when you have informed them about safety issues in their products?
Have you got taken seriously or just mumble about how suspicious it is to pick our very well made locks...
And has somebody even got any financial benefit from finding some ways to humiliate lock designers?

I will post a report about this combination lock bypass if I some day fill the requirements for the advanced locks

[gibson]

you gotta read 'Open in Thirty Seconds" by Marc Tobias - you should see what it takes to even get a manufacturer to admit that there might be a defect in their product, much less do anything about it. Classic example was the car that exploded when rear-ended - name deleted by me. It was decided it was cheaper to deal with each lawsuit on an individual basis than to fix the problem.

[Legion303]

One company I contacted fixed the serious flaws in the mechanical portion of their lock, but did not seem interested in the even more serious flaws I found with the older versions of their software, which may still be in real-world use. I am also not sure whether they contacted any of their customers to let them know. I am probably going to contact some of these customers myself to find out.

-steve