Whirlpool Tumble Dryers Update

Whirlpool tumble dryers have been in danger of catching fire for about a year and hundreds have actually caught fire. Whirlpool have said that they will fix all of them and have replaced or repaired about a million already. It's thought that there are another three million still out there (under all their different brand names) that haven't yet been dealt with.

Whirlpool have refused to give owners their money back on the grounds that they will repair them and that they are safe to use as long as you don't leave the house with the dryer on. The fire brigade and consumer organisations say that they are not safe under any circumstances.

The financial ombudsman has settled a case under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act which brings hope to a lot of the people. If you bought the dryer using a credit card then the credit card company is also liable and you can get your money back from them. Up till now the credit card companies have said that they are not liable because Whirlpool are saying they will repair them. The ombudsman has ruled, in a test case, that the time taken is unreasonable and that credit card companies must now honour Section 75. Unfortunately, this only works for those who have paid by credit card.

There is some hope for others because the retailer should now be liable to refund or replace the items under the consumer credit act.

I guess that more info will come out in the newspapers within a week.

If you have a credit card and an item or service costs over £100 then you should always pay by credit card. This acts like a free insurance as Section 75 covers you in most situations where the supplier defaults or the item is faulty.

Even if you are buying something more expensive and don't wish to (or can't) put all of the cost on your card it doesn't matter. A good example is booking a holiday. If you pay a deposit of more than £100 then you can pay the rest any way you like and you are still covered. The law just states that you need to pay £100 of the cost to be covered by Section 75.

Disclaimer:- I am not a lawyer, accountant, financial adviser or consumer expert as I am retired. You should check anything you wish to do about it but, to the best of my knowledge, the above is correct.

 

Good post Shiney!

This follows on from the thread started in February:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/hotpoint-indesit-creda-tumble-dryer-fire-hazard.110367/

Since then there has been another big fire in August, a tower block had to be evacuated - luckily there were no people injured:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-37203933

As soon as we heard these were a fire risk we stopped using ours and bought another make.

We still have our old one in store, a recent email from Whirlpool gave us a date June 2017 for an engineer to call!

 

One of my relatives is a National Fire Investigator for a global company and often gets called out to investigate domestic fires. One of his pet hates, and in his opinion a major source of fires, are Tumble Dryers. But, as he points out, it's not always the machine at fault because people don't check or clean the filters and that leads to a build up of fluff not just in the filter but in the actual machine itself coating the internal parts in combustible material. His advice is to check and clean the Dryer Filter after every use.

 

Much as I am not a fan of Whirlpool, I do kinda feel a bit sorry for them in this case. Whirlpool are an American company, and only bought their majority stake in the Indesit group (Hotpoint, Ariston, Indesit, Candy and Proline I believe) in 2014; shortly after that, and off the back of some reports of domestic appliances causing fires, Whirlpool decided to examine exactly which of the groups makes and models were involved and uncovered a trail affecting almost every model of tumble drier that the group had made in the previous decade or so.

Products from the Indesit group have always been great steaming piles of poo in my view, and this just proves it. I am not convinced that Whirlpool are exactly great, but at least it seems that product quality has improved a bit since Whirlpool took over.

What amazes me is that the Trading Standards authority responsible for dealing with this allowed Whirlpool to have a repair programme instead of a full recall. It beggars belief that the very body that is supposed to protect us as consumers proved to be utterly toothless and were in fact complicit in allowing products that were known to be dangerous to continue to be used.

The whole farce has dragged on for far too long now, and it is high time that Whirlpool were forced to recall and replace ALL of the dangerous products FREE OF CHARGE.

Now, a good example of what should have happened is the current goings on with the Samsung Note 7; OK, they clearly got something horribly wrong at the design or procurement stages, and their attempt to resolve that problem with an exchange program failed - - however, to their credit they have made it really simple; stop using it, and you can have a full refund or a different model as a replacement, whilst also halting production. The thing has only been on the market for a matter of weeks, and they have reacted already.

Would I buy a Samsung product after the Note 7 issues? Yes, I would. It is clear that this is a problem with a rogue model and they have reacted swiftly to get things sorted.

Would I buy a Whirlpool group product? Not on your life!

 

In view of the recent ombudsman's decision I'd be inclined to contact them and ask for them to pay for it as their engineer says that it is still not fit to use. In actual fact, it's the retailer that's responsible to you and not the manufacturer but try the manufacturer first.

 

Unfortunately, there are no laws in this country that govern a recall of a product. It's an American law. Although some manufacturers, particularly of cars, tend to follow that procedure.

We need a new law but I think it would be rather low on the list of priorities for the government at the moment. The EU don't have a recall law either.

This is because of the same lack of law. The Consumer Protection Act only allows for the repair of the product (depending on the age of the product) which the manufacturer has said that they will do. The ruling by the ombudsman is only because the period of time they are taking has gone beyond being reasonable so he can impose the rule. Unfortunately, it would still mean that each person will need to ask the ombudsman unless whirlpool see the futility of resisting.

They are bringing out a new consumer law which allows a 'class action'. This will allow one decision to be considered to stand for all the same, exact, problem.

The U.S. has a peculiar situation where the law allows class actions (one solicitor acting for a lot of similar cases) but businesses can put into their sales contract that the purchaser agrees not to join in a class action. Funnily enough, that clause would be illegal over here under the Unfair Contracts Act. I got an American company by the goolies over that . It was an American cruise company that had the clause in all their contracts. Unfortunately for them they came a cropper when I went into action . It was only over a minor problem but I got them to back down because the cruise was booked through their UK office and I pointed out that I could get the whole contract voided. Don't know whether I could but it sounded a good argument

 

We have a line in our pergola. There's a roof over the pergola

 

We ain't posh either @Jiffy - the closest we get to a Rayburn is a box of Swan Vesta and a chimnea in the garden!