Thousands of owners of potentially dangerous tumble dryers are being forced to wait for modifications to their machines, a year after the manufacturer announced a safety alert due to the risk of them bursting into flames, a consumer group has warned.
Which? said Whirlpool customers were being subjected to “slow, poor service” and even incorrect and dangerous advice, as it published the results of a survey showing that one in five are still saddled with a faulty machine.
Whirlpool is in the process of replacing or repairing an estimated 5.3m potentially faulty machines across the UK – under well-known brand names Indesit, Hotpoint, Creda and Proline – after identifying a safety defect last November caused when excess fluff touches the heating element. However, it did not issue a product recall, telling customers that they could continue to use their tumble dryer while waiting for the modification, provided it was not left unattended.
In a new survey, Which? found that 22% of affected customers it first polled in an earlier exercise in April were still waiting for their machine to be repaired or replaced. A quarter of affected customers (26%) had been told by Whirlpool they would have to wait longer than six months for their tumble dryer to be repaired, and one in five (22%) were told that the wait would be between three and six months.
Fire chiefs warned in October that owners of the faulty dryers must stop using them immediately, after one of the machines was found to be the cause of a huge blaze in an 18-storey tower block in Shepherd’s Bush in London. Following a six-week investigation, fire chiefs confirmed that the dryer was behind the August blaze, which ripped through part of the building in west London and took 120 firefighters to control. They urged Whirlpool to change its advice to customers so that any dryers waiting to be modified are not used – advice rejected by the company. They also warned of the lack of a robust national system of product recalls in emergency situations.
Piling further pressure on Whirlpool, Which? also claimed it was giving potentially dangerous advice to mystery shoppers only last month, telling one that their machine was not affected despite the model number being listed in the safety notice, and incorrectly advising three others to contact the shop they bought the machine from for a replacement.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that one year on, Whirlpool customers are still seeing slow, poor service and potentially receiving incorrect and dangerous advice,” said Alex Neill, managing director of home and legal services at Which?. “Its modification programme is clearly not progressing as fast as it should. Following the devastating fire caused by a tumble dryer in Shepherd’s Bush earlier this year, Whirlpool cannot be allowed to continue letting consumers down. It must clean up its act and sort out this mess urgently.”
Shadow minister for housing and London, Andy Slaughter – MP for Hammersmith and in whose constituency the fire broke out – said: “The new research produced by Which? provides further evidence that Whirlpool’s response to this issue has been totally inadequate thus far, and makes it clear that they have disregarded the safety and consumer rights of those in possession of these faulty dryers. Whirlpool need to rectify this immediately, and should do so by implementing a full product recall and changing their safety advice to consumers.”
Whirlpool said in a statement: “We urge everyone who owns an Indesit, Hotpoint or Creda dryer manufactured between April 2004 and September 2015 to check if their dryer is affected and then register for a free modification if it is. The safety of consumers is our number one priority and we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that the tumble dryer modification programme is carried out in a safe and timely manner.”
The company insisted it was continuing to make improvements to speed up the modification programme – hiring 300 additional engineers to deal with the backlog.