Product
KitchenAid KFED500ESS
Category
Kitchen Appliance
Report number
20190513-D1DA4-2147381003
Ownership age
About 13 months to failure (from purchase date when reported)
Failure type
Structural / mechanical failure
Incident narrative
SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190513-D1DA4-2147381003. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: KitchenAid KFED500ESS. Incident: While using a KitchenAid brand oven with model number KFED500ESS, one of the knobs controlling the heating elements broke off while attempting to turn the knob to the off position. This prevented me from safely turning off the oven heating element, and could have resulted in injury or property damage. After turning the element off using a wrench, I looked at the knob to identify why it broke and it appears that the knob is made of a very thin plastic, which broke under the heating-cooling stress of being near a high-temperature area such as the spot above the heating elements of an oven. This is a danger, as KitchenAid has defective control knobs on their ovens which can prevent the users from safely turning them off if the knob were to suffer a failure. The age of this oven is only 14 months, and was pruchased new from the store, previous ovens I have owned have never suffered a failure such as this even when going beyond 10 years of frequent use.
Official report number: 20190513-D1DA4-2147381003. Search that ID on SaferProducts.gov or match it in the CPSC public database export to verify this record.