Unfortunately whilst ideal research and development process should include extensive and realistic testing, and even when companies have genuinely tried to make it realistic, even the best can be sometimes be caught out.
As Mr Plod suggests the truly honorable companies will take end user complaint seriously, and feed it back into the development process to try to prevent the problem from recurring. When such a failing has occurred the best companies will hold up their hands and put right with the minimum of fuss.
For example look at caravan movers. If there was a way to show how mechanically reliable each brand of mover is , I suspect (but can't prove) that most of the brands have similar level of reliability but there may one or two brands who are notably worse than the rest.
Of the brands with similar mechanical reliability, the public's perception of the brands can vary considerably, based on the quality of their after sales performance when dealing with the end user.
There is one brand who is frequently praised, not because their products have been super reliable, but their after sales service has been excelemporary, and the users problem has been sorted quickly - happy customers who trust the company.
By comparison a company who drags its feet and makes the customer work hard to get their mover repaired, will seem less trustworthy to the public.
The perception (but not necessarily the truth) is the good company has a more reliable product.
It's how companies deal with problems that can make significant differences to the public's perception. We have seen similar comparisons with insurers.
In respect of suspension collapse, The physical evidence is the suspension has relieved, and that can only mean the applied load has exceeded the components strength. But what end users cannot prove is if the design was inadequate for the stated load, or if the components used were to the correct specification, or whether the assembly process was defective in some manner which compromised the suspensions capability. And of course in some cases the end user may have actually overloaded caravan.