Fisher and Paykel says it will do “everything humanly possible” to track down owners of dishwash drawers that may carry a fault that could cause parts to melt.
That did not stretch to a product recall today, which prompted criticism of the company by the Consumers’ Institute.
Fisher and Paykel said about 30,000 of the dishwashers, manufactured between January 2001 and December 2002 with serial numbers starting with Alpha C or Alpha U, could be affected.
On “very rare occasions” the dish drawers were vulnerable to ants and insects such as cockroaches which could get in and cause product failure.
Customer services general manager Brian Nowell said Fisher and Paykel would send an additional part ““ which monitored the amount of electricity going into the machine and shut it down if problems occurred ““ to owners on its database.
However, he admitted the database contained only about 10,000 names.
While Fisher and Paykel hadn’t discounted a general recall, the “strike rate” of such recalls hadn’t been great in the past, Mr Nowell told National Radio.
The Consumers’ Institute’s David Russell said tonight Fisher and Paykel’s efforts were not good enough.
“They must come out publicly and not just work through the database they have, simply because somebody may have bought a dishdrawer, installed it in a house then sold the house, so a subsequent house owner would not be registered with the supplier.”
Mr Nowell admitted a recall could help the company contact people not on its database.
“We’re equally concerned about them,” he said. Advertisements could appear in newspapers within two weeks.
“We’ll do everything humanly possible to track those people down.”
From stuff.co.nz