Of course they do, because even if they know based on their internal testing that its a hardware issue, they are going to fight tooth and nail against a recall or doing anything to help the consumers affected. They will never publicly admit wrongdoing. It will likely take a class action lawsuit where they will settle without admitting wrongdoing and each person affected gets a buck fiddy for their troubles. (They will settle because going to court and dealing with discovery means they would be caught knowing this was a problem and hiding it anyway.)
Why? Because capitalists gonna capitalist. They want none of the risk associated with profit and all the profit associated with risk. They want to have their cake and eat it, too.
That seems to happen all too often. A company does well and gets purchased by another company. The new company drastically lowers quality while retaining high quality prices and rides a wave of profits during that period before consumers figure out the company now makes garbage.
Aren't almost all (if not all) the storage manufacturers guilty of futzing up their production at some point? In the different threads concerning this issue with SanDisk, I'm pretty sure I've read of people recounting issues with many of the different manufacturers.
Doesn't help that there seem to be fewer real options thanks to consolidation over the years.