SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20161025-E6C88-1603293. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Sharp The model is SMC2265KS.. Source model text: R-1214-T. Incident: I plugged in a brand new Sharp microwave and turned it on to make sure it actually worked before mounting it to the wall. It immediately began smoking, thick grey plumes coming out of it. Then my husband googled it and there are several reports of this model (R-1214-T) catching on fire and/or smoking. This was 3 years old, but had never been used. It was stored inside of our house in the basement bar area, waiting for us to finish moving in. I knew a return would be a painful process so I took it to the local repair shop thinking it would be a $50 maximum repair. I was wrong, and ended up being quoted $250 to repair the $400 unit! When I called SHARP to report it, they stated that there's always a percentage of failures and that online reports are not a real representation of the total # of failures, so there was no need to alert the public. They also stated that they would not repair or replace the unit due to the age, regardless of the unit being brand new and a known defective design. I'm hoping that this report will alert the USCPSC that this design is known to cause fires due to an overpowered transformer. I would request that you require SHARP to alert consumers of this fire hazard and offer to replace the defective component with the appropriately powered transformer as soon as possible.