In today’s news we see once again that washing machine door glass incidents being highlighted after being prompted by an investigation by Which?.
This phenomena has been highlighted a number of times in the past and the probable causes explained on a number of occasions with the top reasons being that metal items such as large metal buttons, belt buckles and general “stuff” that really shouldn’t be in a washing machine is hitting the door glass and weakening it.
We’ve covered this topic in the past, here and here back in 2012.
When we see machines in the field it is all too common to see score marks on the door glass indicating that, the machine has been overloaded repeatedly and/or that there has been items that have come into contact with the glass that should not have.
Overloading your machine will “push” clothing to the front and can often trap jeans buttons and the like against the glass then, as the drum revolves, it will score the glass. If items are trapped there on a high speed spin the result can be a heavily scored door glass.
Over time this scoring will weaken the glass and, ultimately it will fail. There is no doubt whatsoever that this will eventually happen in such cases.
Of course the two brands that are in the spotlight over this are Hotpoint and Beko who also just happen to, between them, sell about half of all washing machines sold in the UK. So, no great surprise that they have more instances than any other brands but, we’ve even heard of it happening on Miele machines. No brand is immune from the underlying cause.
A spokesperson for Beko, talking to the Daily Mail summed it up rather well by saying that such instances were very rare and: ‘Out of more than three million washing machines sold by Beko since 2010, there have been 115 reported incidents, less than 0.003 per cent.’
In other words, this is very, very rare.
We strongly suspect that almost all of these instances will track back to have something to do with use, in effect, what was in the machine at the time or the general condition of the glass and is not indicative of a general problem with washing machine doors.
To date, we’ve seen no credible evidence to suggest anything other than this.
So long as the machine is used correctly the chances of this happening to you are extremely remote.
As we explain in this article about washing machine safety and domestic appliances in general here, are very safe indeed.
