In March I received a notice from the manufacturer Candy instructing me to stop using my 18-month-old tumble dryer because of a safety issue.
An engineer arrived within a couple of weeks to fix it and, believing all was well, we resumed using it.
On 1 August, I received an urgent alert telling me not only to stop using the dryer but to unplug it. I found this was in response to a government-issued “requirement to warn” notice.
Since then Candy has made and cancelled four appointments to fix it. Customer services insists there are no available engineers and that only the “planning team”, which is apparently uncontactable by them or me, can book new appointments.
AW, Stamford, Lincolnshire
You have not just been left with an unusable £529 machine, which you say is essential, as you have young children and limited space; you’ve been living for two years with a potentially lethal hazard. So have thousands of others.
Candy, which is part of the Chinese multinational Haier group, identified what it called “manufacturing variations” that could result in certain brands of built-in heat pump dryers short-circuiting and catching fire. Technicians were dispatched to modify all affected machines. So far so alarming. It seems the repairs may have been botched.
In August, the government’s Office for Product Safety and Standards said the modification programme was “not satisfactory”; that the tumble dryers were “dangerous”; and ordered Haier to contact customers urgently to tell them to stop using their appliance and disconnect it. Failure to act on a requirement to warn could lead to a fine or imprisonment for the manufacturer’s bosses.
So unsatisfactory were the repairs that it was feared the dryer could catch fire even while idle if plugged in.
About 17,000 tumble dryers are affected, including Baumatic, Caple, Haier, Hoover, Lamona, Iberna and Montpellier brands.
Judging by your experience, Haier is remarkably cavalier about the impact of its failings. Having cancelled the fourth appointment it went to ground and only resurfaced when I gave it a prod.
It told me it sent its “sincere apologies for the inconvenience” and congratulated itself on its “ongoing commitment to product safety”.
This miraculously unearthed a technician who attended with a few hours’ notice. Thousands more are probably still waiting. All Haier will say is that it aims to get round to everyone by “the earliest possible date”. Fingers crossed it has got the fix right this time round.
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