SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20180901-FF7D3-2147385816. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Panasonic NI-L70SRW (Panasonic NI-L70SRW Cordless Iron, Curved Stainless Steel Soleplate, White/Clear Green). Incident: I was preparing to iron a shirt with our Panasonic NI-L70SRW Cordless Iron. I had used the iron many times before even on this shirt. I turned the iron on and prepared the shirt for ironing. After waiting until the iron was warm, signaled by a light on the iron, I picked it up and touched it to the shirt. The shirt instantly melted to the iron faceplate. I had not realized the iron overheated and should not be used. After posting a review because I could not find another way to contact Panasonic, I was contacted and returned the iron for assessment. After approximately 1 month, I was told that the iron performed as designed and their engineers are convinced I must have left the iron on the shirt for an extended period of time. I assured them that this was not the case and that the shirt had melted on contact. Instead of being concerned about the situation where the iron overheated to a point where it could have easily started a fire, I was being blamed as a consumer. I was told that Panasonic has nothing to gain from saying the iron worked fine if it did fail, so clearly I must be incorrect. I will be returning the iron if possible (or using the extended return period on my [REDACTED]), but I had hoped that Panasonic would take this seriously so that it would be investigated before someone had a fire resulting from a similar situation.