BBC News Fire risks prompt tumble dryer recall

nodnod

On bbc news link http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34901765

see below as i just bought indesit dryer on 1st Nov 2015 from powercity and it is effected by this recall. Company states dryer if on should not be left unattended, so please be aware

A "significant" number of tumble dryers sold in the last 11 years in the UK may need a repair owing to fears about fires.
Owners of large air-vented dryers and condensing dryers under the Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda brands may need to have them fixed.
Indesit said that excess fluff could catch the heating element in the machine and cause a fire.
It is recalling many dryers bought between April 2004 and October 2015.
The company said that the tumble dryers could still be used but should not if they were left unattended.
Checks and visits
It is asking owners to check whether their machine is one of those affected and, if so, to contact the company through its dedicated website.
If action is needed, an engineer will visit to mend the machine - a process that the company said could take an hour.
The safety review began following Whirlpool Corporation's purchase of the Indesit business in October 2014.
There are an estimated 30 million Whirlpool, Indesit and Hotpoint machines in UK households, but the company said it would not speculate about exactly how many had been affected.
In June, consumer group Which? said that nearly 12,000 fires in the past three years in Britain had been the fault of defective white goods and kitchen equipment.

I've copied this post to the safety notices sticky.

nmacc

Ran the model and serial number of my old Indesit and it too is affected.

Automated email reply say:

Thank you for registering your details.

Due to the high volume of registrations, we will be contacting you within the next 5 weeks

I'm not worried about the issue personally as I'm a bit anal about cleaning out the fluff, ever since I had to fix a friend's Siemens dryer which tripped out when the accumulated fluff caught fire. I was surprised how few precautions there appeared to be against the accumulation of fluff on the elements.

In this case it was fairly easy to repair with a decent cleaning with the only symptoms being a little discolouration, but if the Siemens had less steel and more plastic in its construction the results might have been different.

washman3

NO DRYER, EITHER VENTED ON CONDENSER SHOULD EVER BE LEFT UNATTENDED. simple rule of thumb.!!
Dryers are THE most lethal appliance in a house.

The Red Ace

To add my tuppenceworth to the debate one of the main causes of dryers of any make to burn fluff is the user continuing to use the appliance when the fluff filter is holed or broken. Users I find continue to use dryers with filters missing or holed or in the case of some of the Hotpoint/Creda dryers with the filter split in two allowing the fluff into the heater assembly and up around the front end bearings eventually causing the belt to break. My biggest concern with dryers is why are they made with lids that can burn if a fire did start, a metal lid would contain such an event. In all my years in the appliance repair industry I have never seen a dryer that caught fire with flames, ok I have seen plenty where fluff got scorched a bit but nothing that a good vac couldn't remove and maybe a few stats or an element and its back working as good as new.