SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Battery failure

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20170419-BD4C3-2147404235. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Kidde Model 30CUA10. Source model text: KN-COSM-IB. Incident: We are a federally funded housing authority using a Kidde safety product, a combination detector model # KN-COSM-IB which has been recalled by the manufacturer. On April 11 one of our tenants informed maintenance of a low battery indication in their apartment, maintenance staff changed out the battery and assumed everything was back to normal. As the day progressed we received many more instances of the low battery indication so maintenance supervisor called the Kidde support line to see what may be happening and was informed of a recall on this model detector. Housing authority staff changed out all detectors of this model after realizing that upon changing out the battery and resetting detector it rendered it no longer function able. Kidde is offering replacement of the detectors discounted at 50%. Due to the safety of our residents and property we could not leave the non functioning detectors so we began replacement immediately. We have replaced approximately 80 detectors to date and have associated costs of $3,200. We do not need to purchase any more detectors since we have already had to replace, so the discounted alarms they are offering are essentially useless. I would like to see Kidde offer reimbursement for the expenses of the replacement detectors. I feel they are not realizing the seriousness of this problem and are not backing the product recall.