Toyota Motor Corp. apparently first found out about the problems occurring with power-window switches in their cars that resulted in 7.4 million cars to be recalled this week way back in 2008.

The Japanese car company first received a complaint about one of their main power-window switches in Sept. of 2008 according to a post on the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website. 

The next question is, if they knew four years ago about the issues that could cause fire hazards, why did they wait so long to issue a recall?

Since Toyota has gone through many recalls over the past decade, including one of over 20 million cars in 1996, the company didn't want to jump the gun too early before deciding on issuing another huge recall that could hurt the company.

"There was really no trend early on and it took considerable time to diagnose what seemed to be an isolated problem and how it was occurring," John Hanson, a U.S.-based spokesman for Toyota to Bloomberg Buisnessweek.

Since "only" fewer than 20 customers initially complained of problems, the company didn't feel a massive recall was necessary at first. Since then, nine people have been injured and 161 fires were started due to the defect.

Once word spread about the recall, people weren't too surprised given the company who issued it. When it was announced today how long the company knew however, people have had a different take on the situation.

Some have felt the company did the right thing since you can't issue a recall every time an issue occurs unless it is a major problem. Meanwhile others feel that those nine people who were injured could have avoided such problems if Toyota did something sooner.

The Toyota models that have been recalled include the: Tundra released in 2007-09, Corolla released in 2009, Camry and Camry Hybrid released in 2007-09, RAV4 released in 2007-09, Scion xA and xD released in 2008-09, Matrix released in 2009, Highlander and Hylander Hybrid released in 2008, and the Yaris released in 2007-08.

Of the 7.4 million cars that were recalled, over 2.47 million of them are vehicles in the U.S. Owners of these vehicles will be receiving notices in their mailboxes regarding their car and if they should bring it into a dealership or not. 

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