Mother and young children exit home damaged by smoke after washing machine caught fire

Amanda Tucker accused Whirlpool of “fobbing them off” after the company paid back £225 just for the machine and accused the fire of a “poorly executed” third-party repair

A mother was living with her young children in a smoky home after her Whirlpool washing machine caught fire three months ago.

Amanda Tucker reportedly took her four-year-old boy and rushed out of the property after seeing white smoke billowing from her kitchen on March 16 Derbyshire Live.

Two fire engines sped to the scene to douse the flames, but the kitchen, hallway, staircase and landing remained “blackened and smoke-damaged”.

Amanda recalled noticing a “really bad smell” about five minutes after putting on a normal cycle.

She said: “I couldn’t see any of my units in my kitchen that are black, I just couldn’t see anything.

“I grabbed my son and my cell phone and ran out into the street and called the fire department.

“The countertop had just started to catch fire. My kitchen was completely smoky and I had just had my hallway, staircase and landing decorated and it was all blackened and smoky.

“My seating set had smoke damage, the kitchen also has water damage from the water from the washing machine and the water from the fire brigade.

“There was quite a bit of damage left because we didn’t know if someone would be sent out to assess the damage, so I left it as it was.”

The mother, who works for a group of commercial vehicle dealers, bought the washing machine in 2017 for around £300.

A local handyman – with over 30 years’ experience repairing washing machines – replaced a door lock on the product in 2019.

Whirlpool only repaid £225 for the machine after it claimed the incident was caused by a “poorly executed” repair by a third party.

A spokesman for the company said: “The incident that occurred originated near the spliced ​​wiring, resulting in damage to the internal parts and the console.

“Our records show that none of our own technicians attended a service call on this machine, either at the consumer’s address or on this machine at any address.

“In summary, we believe this incident was caused by the poorly executed door lock replacement by an unknown third party and we have confirmed our conclusions to Ms. Tucker.”

But Frank Wain, who repaired the washing machine, dismissed their claims, saying the replacement door lock was the same as that on the original machine.

He added: “This is an issue that Whirlpool has had where machines have caught fire.

“Even now we go to machines that should be on the list and we get customers to call Whirlpool to say they should be on the model recall list.

“So many times I’ve had to tell customers to call Whirlpool.

“I’m shocked to be honest. I’m shocked that Whirlpool is trying to blame third parties when the thing has been running there for three years.

“It doesn’t make any sense. It won’t take three years for that to happen.”

Amanda has accused Whirlpool of “fobbing her off” and “hiding” a report on the cause of the fire.

She said: “I feel like I’ve been honest with them about the third party repairs, but that’s given them ammunition to blame them.

“A door lock was fitted three years ago, if it was going to cause a fire it would have been three years ago. It feels like they threw me off if I was honest with them.

“If I don’t see the report from your investigators stating that the door lock is the root cause of the fire, why else would they hide the report?

“It feels like they’re withholding things from me when it’s my washing machine.”

Whirlpool previously recalled 519,000 Indesit and Hotpoint washing machines after 79 caught fire due to a faulty locking system.

That comes months after 500,000 potentially dangerous dryers were recalled.