I gots no control over that, not my idea, was just telling you guys about it....
Not everyone can swallow a $600 muffler
True. Some can, but not with smile. But a Class Action (CA) suit won't help anyone that bought that $600 muffler, at least not much. Assuming the CA won, I doubt the Class would walk away with more than $100/each and that is being generous. Either way, all the Class members will be taking a loss and an award won't make much difference. The purpose of a CA suit is to punish the defendant for wrong-doing, not to make the plaintiffs whole. Therefore, there is never going to be an award that comes remotely close to covering the loss of the entire Class.
I assumed the mention of a CA was not your idea since you stated you heard "grumblings" of it. No, I only meant that being one of the people affected, and having heard those grumblings, you might want to step in and extinguish the flame before it becomes a fire.
Right now, Alpha has a chance of trying to make things right for the individuals that have been affected, even if it takes some time, effort, and negotiation with the affected customers. They are a small business and probably don't have a lot of cash in the bank, so that may be overly optimistic, but it is at least a possibility.
However, if a CA is filed, that window closes and will likely never reopen. The cost of defense alone would cripple Alpha and any hope of working things out individually goes out that window when it closes. If you have any hope that Alpha will try to mitigate your loss, a CA will take it out of your hands without your consent and the result will be little better than your initial loss.
Alpha has stopped offering the muffler (goodbye revenue) and their reputation is damaged (adios customer loyalty), so they are already feeling the pain on their bottom line. If they can weather this, they may recover and be able to make amends. In the meantime, they have other products that are of good quality that can keep them afloat long enough to fix the muffler problem and possibly replace the bad ones. If Henry is as credible as some are claiming then I think that could be a real possibility. If you agree, then I recommend you try to convince the grumblers to forget about starting a CA and keep trying to work things out. Maybe join together as a group and petition Alpha to open a discussion about reparations, even if its only to repair/reinforce the existing units, like Polaris did with the swingarm recall.
Just my two cents, for what it's worth. ☺️
Sent from my Nexus 6P
And don't even get me started about dealing with the Architectural Committee... submitting proposals, get signatures from all the neighbors, and God knows what else... 
