SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Overheating

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190408-3BAF6-1846594. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: KitchenAid KDTM354DSS4 (KitchenAid Model KDTM354DSS4 Dishwasher). Incident: On March 22, 2019 while loading the aforementioned dishwasher top rack for cleaning during the early morning on March 23, 2019, the top rack two front support "bosses" failed without warning throwing some glass ware onto the ceramic floor causing said glassware to shatter on the floor. This is the second instance of this type of failure the other having occurred in October 2017 while the tray was being pulled out for unloading. In this instance only one of the top rack's bosses failed since the owner was able to quickly grab onto the rack thus preventing the rack's contents from spilling on the floor. In doing so, the owner's finger suffered a minor cut. In the current failure, only minor scrapes and scuffs on the finger and hand with no open wounds. Luckily for the owner an extended warranty was purchased along with the KitchenAid Dishwasher and the top rack was repaired on Monday March 25, 2019. Whirlpool customer service was contacted on Friday evening to no avail. Owner was placed on hold for an extended time interval. Consequently the phone conversation was ended by the owner. On Saturday March 23, 2019 contacted Whirlpool customer service and informed them of the catastrophic top rack failure. They were also advised of the previous failure and extended warranty coverage. Contacted [REDACTED] customer service who eventually made arrangements for the Monday repair. Top Rack failure was very similar to that which occurred in October 2017. The support bosses apparently failed by them being pulled away from the material substrate. This is shown in Figures (8-16} where the