The Daily Mirror reports that Whirlpool UK has taken a massive financial hit due to the current and well known about safety modification to tumble dryers that can catch fire, now we know more.
In 2014 Whirlpool UK made around £25 million profit but that has turned into a staggering and eye watering loss of £165 million for 2015.
Whirlpool are said to have set aside some £179 million to repair the affected dryer models sold under the Hotpoint, Creda, Swan, Proline and Indesit brands.
Shadow Justice Minister Andy Slaughter is on the warpath on this issue and has told the firm: “There have been fires. In light of these and expert opinion that this safety advice is inadequate I would urge you to change your advice.”
Mr Slaughter sets out his case in an article for Which? that you can find here.
But the Twitter posts on it continue…
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<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Inadequate response from <a href=”https://twitter.com/WhirlpoolCorp”>@WhirlpoolCorp</a>, failing to answer 10 qs I put to them about tumble dryer safety, safety advice and product recall <a href=”https://t.co/kOjU0GhyQO”>pic.twitter.com/kOjU0GhyQO</a></p>— Andy Slaughter MP (@hammersmithandy) <a href=”https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/803613927770849280″>November 29, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
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Meanwhile the LFB are calling for more action also on the topic of recalls and being able to identify machines that have gone on fire and, they’ve taken to YouTube with this video…
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<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Gt4s6v1eR4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
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As we’ve stated a number of times on this website yes, you can make appliances safer still than they already are but, they’re pretty safe as it is.
However it will come at a price.
Additional safety measures will mean price hikes, no doubt about it whatsoever and a mandatory registration scheme will also carry a cost as, in order to protect legitimate privacy concerns that people have over their data being shared with insurers and so on it would have to be totally independent. That means it would need funding.
In the current austerity climate and, with Brexit looming we can’t see government seeing this as a priority somehow as they’ve got bigger problems to worry about for the time being.
As to the manufacturers doing it for themselves, they are already trying through AMDEA’s Register My Appliance scheme but that can only be voluntary and whether or not it will prove to be worthwhile or even survive remains to be seen as, in our experience, getting people to register products is a nightmare.
