Harness broke during fall

Ellen Swrote:

Um, why is bd using "unique materials" in life-supporting harness construction? Why not stick to tried and true dyneema or nylon? 

Because new light shit sells

Collin Hwrote:

Anyone who has a BD Vision harness is advised to routinely coat it in sunscreen before use.

lol!

Good on BD for the recall, and nice work by the OP for reporting it. I love it when the system works:)

Ellen Swrote:

Um, why is bd using "unique materials" in life-supporting harness construction? Why not stick to tried and true dyneema or nylon? 

Vectran (it is Vectran, right?) is well understood and used all the time for mission critical stuff by NASA. It’s great strong and light stuff. It is also known to have terrible UV degradation… I don’t think “unique” was a problem, but just a poor specific choice. 

Jeremy Lwrote:

Your comment implies that the OP was dumb to send it to BD. I assume you had a better idea on figuring out why the harness broke. Can we hear it?

Oh, the honesty and expediency from BD. AMAZING. People can literally be dropping dead from this failure.  Several weeks go by and all we get is a recall. How many people own this harness won’t ever know of the recall. When you put on this harness will you get a prompt for a software update.  

Greg Dwrote:

Oh, the honesty and expediency from BD. AMAZING. People can literally be dropping dead from this failure.  Several weeks go by and all we get is a recall. How many people own this harness won’t ever know of the recall. When you put on this harness will you get a prompt for a software update.  

I'm honestly curious as to what you think the better solution would be? I'm frequently impressed with the ideas that other people come up with as alternative solutions to something that I found acceptable. 

For example, in this case it's been ~8 weeks. I have to figure that close to 2 of those weeks were shipping time for the harness to get from Europe to BD in the US where they would have done the testing and evaluation. BD also would have needed to find other harnesses of this same vintage to test and evaluate in order to determine if this was a one-off failure or if there was a possible systemic weakness in the manufacturing of the product. This would have taken at the very least, a couple more weeks. They then issued a recall with an ability to purchase a new harness (that does not use this technology any longer.) The process seems acceptable and forthright to me. 

How would you have handled this differently? What's the better way that I'm not seeing?

Just had a conversation with someone at the recall line, and discovered that there is some misleading information that BD has posted online. It says that the recall is of harnesses manufactured and sold beginning January 1, 2018. Mine has a manufacture date of 2017, but when I read out the lot # I was told that it too is affected by the recall.

EDIT: There's already been a rapid revision, but I'm not sure that simply deleting the words "manufactured and" is significantly less confusing.

Greg Dwrote:

Oh, the honesty and expediency from BD. AMAZING. People can literally be dropping dead from this failure.  Several weeks go by and all we get is a recall. How many people own this harness won’t ever know of the recall. When you put on this harness will you get a prompt for a software update.  

They're also offering people a $200 credit, so that's significantly more than the value of the harness.

How do you think BD would locate everyone who owns one of these other than issuing a recall? 

Andrew Ricewrote:

They're also offering people a $200 credit, so that's significantly more than the value of the harness.

How do you think BD would locate everyone who owns one of these other than issuing a recall? 

That could be $200 towards a new Recon LT Avalanche Transceiver!!

You Know You Want One

Greg Dwrote:

Oh, the honesty and expediency from BD. AMAZING. People can literally be dropping dead from this failure.  Several weeks go by and all we get is a recall. How many people own this harness won’t ever know of the recall. When you put on this harness will you get a prompt for a software update.  

Kinda sad that my comment from 7 weeks ago bothered you that much. Sorry that I hurt your feelings.

Greg Dwrote:

Oh, the honesty and expediency from BD. AMAZING. People can literally be dropping dead from this failure.  Several weeks go by and all we get is a recall. How many people own this harness won’t ever know of the recall. When you put on this harness will you get a prompt for a software update.  

Has anyone dropped dead from this? 

grug gwrote:

Has anyone dropped dead from this? 

Like flies, man. It’s nuts. 

grug gwrote:

Has anyone dropped dead from this? 

Not that I know of.  Y'all are right. I don't know what I was thinking.  This was handled so well by BD.

Climber falls.  Harness has catastros look into iyphic failure...deadly failure.  By the grace of God, his non load bearing gear loops keep him alive.  

MANY weeks later..... do de do.....hum de dum....mmmm...lets see what we can find out... no rush... BD says oh we better issue a recall.  

Now, the hundreds of people that own this harness have now idea there is a recall.  Great!!!!!  Thanks BD.

Fortunately, if you die, you can get 200 bucks toward a new harness. 

I love BD!!  So awesome.

Greg Dwrote:

MANY weeks later..... do de do.....hum de dum....mmmm...lets see what we can find out... no rush... BD says oh we better issue a recall.  

To give you a better idea of the timeline: They only got hold of my harness in the US end of January, as I was located in South Africa and didn’t have time to hand over the harness immediately. Obviously you don’t issue a recall before doing some testing and inspection first, as most gear failures in the field are not necessarily the product’s fault. Bear in mind that any climbing gear that ends up on the market undergoes plenty of testing and certification. BD did not sell that harness anymore and had to collect additional harnesses for testing from athletes, employees etc., taking additional time. Also note that they were not able to reproduce the failure under any real life conditions, but still issued the recall out of caution.

All in all I think the timeline and response is quite reasonable and I’m satisfied with how things went.

David Menkenwrote:

To give you a better idea of the timeline: They only got hold of my harness in the US end of January, as I was located in South Africa and didn’t have time to hand over the harness immediately. Obviously you don’t issue a recall before doing some testing and inspection first, as most gear failures in the field are not necessarily the product’s fault. Bear in mind that any climbing gear that ends up on the market undergoes plenty of testing and certification. BD did not sell that harness anymore and had to collect additional harnesses for testing from athletes, employees etc., taking additional time. Also note that they were not able to reproduce the failure under any real life conditions, but still issued the recall out of caution.

All in all I think the timeline and response is quite reasonable and I’m satisfied with how things went.

I totally agree with you, but for someone who’s harness snapped in half, you are taking this really well! BD is lucky this happened to the world’s chillest and most understanding climber and not the guy who sued the gym over failing to clip into the autobelay properly. “I’m satisfied with how things went” is not something I expected to hear from the affected party in this without money changing hands haha. Not saying you should have sued or anything, just impressed you’re out here defending BD when half the climbers on this forum are criticizing companies when their shoe rubber wears out early

Greg Dwrote:

 …….Now, the hundreds of people that own this harness have now idea there is a recall.  Great!!!!!  Thanks BD……

Greg, you must not be vaccinated.  I was notified instantly by BD via my vaccine chip.   Also got a follow up email.   Not sure what perfect world you’re looking for here.  

Mark Pilatewrote: Not sure what perfect world you’re looking for here.  

And in this case, it actually IS the perfect world. BD becomes aware of a SINGLE suspicious failure, publicly issues a recall of a seven year run, and offers a full refund! 

Proposed superior solution: issue a bounty on BD Vision harnesses. Cash reward (or credit) to anyone who can track down a BD vision harness in the wild and successfully retire it (with or without the permission of the owner). Let the hunt begin!

Greg, you okay budy?

Greg Dwrote:

Not that I know of.  Y'all are right. I don't know what I was thinking.  This was handled so well by BD.

Climber falls.  Harness has catastros look into iyphic failure...deadly failure.  By the grace of God, his non load bearing gear loops keep him alive.  

MANY weeks later..... do de do.....hum de dum....mmmm...lets see what we can find out... no rush... BD says oh we better issue a recall.  

Now, the hundreds of people that own this harness have now idea there is a recall.  Great!!!!!  Thanks BD.

Fortunately, if you die, you can get 200 bucks toward a new harness. 

I love BD!!  So awesome.

I mean. I asked a genuine question as to how you would handle it better but you just spouted another emotionally charged, sarcastic, but rather irrational rant about how BD handled this.

So I’m going to assume you don’t have a better way things should have been handled and just have an irrational hate for BD. Which makes your posts rather easily dismissed.