LG, on Wednesday, stated that it had recalled its dryers from South Korea. This decision was taken owing to customer complaints regarding an important component of the dryer.

LG has made a statement saying, “Although we couldn’t find safety issues or defects regarding our dryers, we decided to voluntarily recall the products in order to serve our customers sincerely.”

The firm has even gone further to say that it will happily provide free repairs on its dryers for all its customers. Earlier, the servicemen with the required expertise in repairing these appliances were being sent to the customers’ place in case of any complaints received. However, now LG has said that it will contact customers by itself first and offer to repair their dryers for free.

Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) had given a recommendation to LG, which it had accepted post which it has been offering to repair its TROMM Dual Inverter Heatpump Dryers absolutely free of cost. LG has been offering free repairs since August this year.

What was the complaint regarding these dryers?

Apparently, there were consumer complaints that there were too much lint and dust accumulation inside the condenser of the dryer. A condenser is responsible for removing the moisture from the clothes by the process of air circulation within the dryer. All of LG’s clothes dryers come with an automatic condenser cleaning system. This simply means that there is no need for users to clean the parts all by themselves.

LG has also stated that it has no intention of paying an amount of $85 as compensation to every consumer who has purchased its dryers. This proposal was put forth by the KCA. LG further went on to say that it is completely following the principles of its Quality Assurance program.

Has this sort of incident occurred before?

Whirlpool had found itself in a similar situation before, where a few of its washing machine models posed fire risks. Apparently, the washing machines that belonged to the Hotpoint and Indesit brands were recalled due to an issue with a few units in the door locking system of the appliance. As a result, this problem caused the entire appliance to overheat, which became a major fire threat. These faulty machines became responsible for about 79 of the total fires caused.

In December this year, more than half a million machines belong to the above two brands were ordered to be recalled by Whirlpool. These machines were sold between 2014 and 2018, out of which about 20% of the appliances reported this defect.

Likewise, the tumble dryers manufactured by Whirlpool too reported some defects, and they were recalled in huge numbers at the beginning of this year. In July, Whirlpool had recalled about 800,000 dryers after pressure from the government to issue a notice regarding the same. Again, these faulty dryers were responsible for fire hazards, although there is no connection between the faults in the washing machines and the dryers.

Roughly, about 750 fire incidents have occurred during an 11-year span, all due to these faulty dryers. About 5.3 million tumble dryers belonging to Hotpoint, Indesit, Creda, Swan, and Proline posed fire hazards.

Although Whirlpool has decided to roll back its faulty models completely, it has been criticized for not handling the situation well enough. If reports are to be believed, these faulty appliances may not be replaced before January 2020, which means customers owning these appliances may have to manage without washing machines and dryers during the Christmas period.

Well, one can only hope that the recalled faulty appliances are replaced with good ones that do not have any complaints