SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20171027-8236E-2147396407. Severity: Injury, First Aid Received by Non-Medical Professional. Product: Philips A1238 (Philips Fidelio docking speaker. Built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery. Used to play your IPod or IPhone music through.). Incident: 7/11/2014, I purchased a refurbished Philips docking speaker from Wal-Mart online. I have used this unit coupled with Apple IPods, as intended, without any event. There was never any glitch or abnormal behavior from the unit prior the the incident. On the morning of 7/31/2017, I woke up to a strange sound coming from my bathroom. I went inside and the room was smoky. I heard a strange chirping sound and quickly realized the smoke was coming from the Philips unit. I unplugged it and took the IPod off. My hand was slightly burned, as the IPod unit was very, very hot. I thought to videotape the unit smoking and chirping, because it was so strange and scary. I have photos and the unit in my possession. Upon inspection, after everything cooled down, the connector of the Philips unit and the IPod connector had both melted. It was alarming, because had I not gotten up and gone to the unit, there, no doubt, would have been a fire. I contacted Philips on 8/11/17 about this. I let them know that I wanted to impress my concern for other people using this docking speaker model too. The unit was not in play mode at the time. I take good care of my things, so I can't imagine what went wrong. Maybe the device was not flush-on, possibly causing the IPod and docking connection to try to communicate and heat up? I'm just not sure, as I'm not an electrical engineer. I strongly feel that this incident took place because of a Philips design flaw. I let them know that. If this was the impetus, had they had a click and release coupling mechanism, this likely would not have occurred. I am not an e