Appliance fires not on any re-calls

Re: Appliance fires not on any re-calls

At a rough guess, I’d reckon that there was about one every two to three weeks reported in the UK. But it can go a while between little bursts of them being reported.

Something that annoys me, as I will explain.

What you will see in the media is a report that goes along the lines of, “Family home destroyed by washing machine blaze”, Family terrorised by washing machine fire”, “Fire crews attend home gutted by washing machine fire” and so on.

But completely fail to report any facts beyond the headline most often other than a bit of blurb about the shock, horror and terror. Often it’s not exactly as advertised though shall we say.

No make, no model, no reason. No nothing.

So, to us and to report on UKW, that is completely useless.

Although a common theme in them is that they all seem to happen through the night when everyone is in bed or no-one is in the house at the time. Read into that what you will.

K.

Re: Appliance fires not on any re-calls

Which is fine Mal but, without the data to back up any claims it’s pointless. In fact, you could get sued for making false claims if you can’t prove your case.

But, when you think about it, just using the data that we do have…

There are approximately 27 million homes in the UK almost all of which will have a washer. Let’s say that there are 25 million washers out there for round numbers.

Using the average of 2.3 people to each doing the average 117 washes per year per person, that’s 269 washes per year, per home which equates to 6,727,500,000 wash cycles run in the UK every year.

Even if it was two fires per week that put the odds of such an instance happening to you at over 64,680,000:1.

The odds of being in a plane crash are 11,000,000:1 almost six times greater risk.

The odds of being killed in a car crash 5000:1. An order of magnitude more dangerous.

In actuality, you’ve more chance of death from falling out of bed and, I’m serious.

Out of all the washing machine fires I’ve seen over the past decade or so, not a single fatality. Not one. Ever.

So the odds of a washing machine causing a fatality through a fault or fire are utterly staggeringly, infinitesimally small so much so I can’t even point to a single example of it happening worldwide. Which is why nobody is interested.

The chance of a fire is extremely low even leaving aside the possibility of a fatality being caused.

Which goes to show you just how safe appliances actually are and it’s actually far more surprising that there are not more serious incidents than there are when you actually run the numbers and take into account some of the stupid things people do.

I’m not saying that anyone should be complacent at all, I’m just demonstrating what the actual risk is from a statistical viewpoint and why the press and government don’t care. And, probably never will unless there’s a big off like what happened to Beko recently where they can identify a potential (serious?) risk and hold someone accountable for it.

But, to get the numbers to do that to others given the data, probably nigh on impossible as there simply aren’t enough incidents to warrant it. then, when you do see them reported, not enough data as, like I said, you usually don’t even know what brand it was let alone anything else.

K.

Re: Appliance fires not on any re-calls

Ah but does a burnt out component constitute a fire risk or, is it just a burnt out component?

My own personal opinion would be that these are two very, very different scenarios.

Burnt out bits we’ve always had after all, we make a living from parts failing. But there’s a world of difference IMO between a PCB or anything else popping and a “fire” or even the risk of one involving actual combustion.

Long have we seen things from customers when they report a fault saying something like “It went on fire…” and, when you get there you find that the drum was blocked with a pair of knickers or whatever and the belt is belching smoke. We used to see this all the time on Candy’s with the clutch on the motor and drum pulley when one stuck. Or, the mains switch has burnt out or something. Or it’s had coffee spilled down into the PCB, overfoaming and leaking onto the motor and so on. The point being, a lot of it is actually down to use, not the product.

The classic is tumble dryer fires. Every single one I’ve ever seen has turned out to be down to the user not cleaning out the filters or, using it with knackered filters or just being plain dumb by drying stuff that’s got plastic in it or some such stupidity. Every single one will invariably try to present a claim for damage to the manufacturer with the usual, “it could have killed” rider somewhere.

Are these “fires” in the manner you mean? Are they the responsibility of the manufacturer? Can you be sure?

My opinion is that they are not “fires” as such, by far. And, a lot of times (if not all) it was nothing the customer did according to them, they used it in accordance with the instructions they say, it’s the manufacturer’s fault they will holler to anyone that will listen.

Are cheaper appliances more likely to fail, almost certainly. But does that mean that they present a higher risk of combustion?

All I’m saying is that to build a list that would be of use with pukka empirical data that was correct would be, at best, very difficult indeed and you would need to have all the facts to do so and not get your butt sued off by a brand owner who’s not too happy about the association with their products going up in a ball of flames.

I’m all one for a good story but, I don’t fancy being sued because I don’t get my facts straight before publishing and I put a heap of effort into making sure that they are correct or, as correct as possible.

When you pop the lid on a can of worms… 😉

K.

Re: Appliance fires not on any re-calls

Quite correct Martin.

If an individual wishes to post their own personal opinion and it is stressed that this is the case then there’s little can be done about it. Well, I think there may be, but whether it’d be worth it or not is open to debate.

Jackal can probably clarify this more, right or wrong as I’m no solicitor and, as such am not prepared to take the risk. 😉

Trouble is though that if you go on a crusade and someone calls you out for being wrong then you’re made to look a fool that doesn’t know what you’re talking about or, who didn’t check the facts before shooting your mouth off. Not an appealing end to what is intended as a beneficial service provided at no cost.

I just don’t want to see myself in trouble or any of you guys.

K.