SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20180523-461B6-1763319. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Char-Griller 9020 Wood Fire Pro (9020 Wood Fire Pro Pellet Grill). Incident: We purchased a model9020 Wood Fire Pro� Pellet Grill from Lowes (#3168 in Bear, DE) on 25 March 2018. Upon its first operation, we experienced a flame out blast which blew the lid open. There was a fire inside the main grill body. This fire had to be extinguished. We phoned Char-Griller's (C-G) Customer Service line and a Customer Service Representative (CSR) told us the 9020 " ... is known for having been wired backwards." The CSR talked us through disassembling the digital control unit and reversing the power feed from the auger and draft fan. We became concerned that such a "known" issue wasn't handled by a product safety recall or through some other proactive corrective action. And that their way of repairing their products were to have the consumer take directions by phone to rewire and repair their products. Next we realized that the fire rod or igniter was not working as described in the Owner's Manual. On the next call to their support line, the CSR explained how I needed to, once again, disassemble the digital control and send pictures to C-G for a visual review to determine if there were other problems with the assembly and manufacturing of the grill. I was informed that C-G would not incur the expense of" randomly shipping parts out in an attempt to correct every problem." At that point I determined I was not about to act as a surrogate repair engineer to repair a faulty product in hopes that all of the manufacturing errors would be diagnosed from a smart phone picture. Char-Griller issued an RTM statement to return the product to the place of purchase but would