Asmoke AS300

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20210507-4C296-2147364270. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: Asmoke AS300 (Asmoke portable smoker Model AS300). Incident: I was grilling with a Asmoke portable grill and after shutting it down, the unit became very hot. After opening the cover, I noticed that the cover of the pellet hopper was very hot and the plastic lever that was used to latch the cover was missing. After finding something to open the door of the hopper, the plastic lever I was referring to, had melted and was sitting at the bottom of the hopper. After investigating further, I sow that the pellets is the hopper had somehow caught on fire and were still burning at the bottom of the hopper. Just for reference, the hopper is only for holding unused pellets and a mechanism transports them in to the area that is used to some the food. So I now have a smoker that has a clump of burnt pellets in a hopper that is only supposed to hold unused pellets, a clump of plastic in the hopper that melted due to the fire in the hopper. I believe this is a serious issue with the unit and I was lucky that nothing else was damaged during the malfunction. Just an fyi...after several attempts to contact Asmoke, they want me to replace some boards and test the unit to see if it works. I don't feel comfortable turning the unit on again (with or without new boards) as it still has debris in the hopper that is not supposed to be there.