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Samsung sold top-load washers for 5 years before recalling 2.8 million
Samsung's top-load washers could lose balance on a high-speed spin and fling their lids off — 733 reports and 9 injuries later, 2.8 million were recalled.
Samsung Electronics · 2016-11-04
What happened
Samsung's top-load washing machines, sold under 34 models between March 2011 and October 2016, could lose drum balance during a high-speed spin cycle — especially with bedding, water-resistant or bulky items — triggering excessive vibration strong enough to separate the lid from the machine.
By the time Samsung and the CPSC announced a recall on November 4, 2016, the company had received 733 reports of excessive vibration or lid detachment and 9 related injury reports, ranging from a broken jaw to injured shoulders. About 2.8 million washers were covered.
Samsung offered owners a free in-home repair with a one-year warranty extension, a rebate toward a new washer with free installation and old-unit removal, or a full refund for machines bought within 30 days of the announcement.
Why it happened
- A drum-balance flaw that could fling a lid off the machine shipped across five and a half years of production before the pattern of injury reports forced a recall.
- The high-speed spin setting most likely to trigger the failure — used for the bedding and bulky loads a washer is meant to handle — wasn't tested against this failure mode before the models shipped.
The lesson
733 vibration and lid-detachment reports came in before Samsung recalled — waiting for hundreds of identical complaints is itself a decision about how much injury risk to tolerate.
Aftermath
The recall became one of the CPSC's largest appliance actions at the time. Samsung faced consumer class-action litigation over the defect in the years that followed, alongside the recall remedy program.
Sources
- ABC News — Samsung, CPSC Recalling 2.8 Million Top-Loading Washing Machines Due to Risk of Explosion
- NPR — Samsung Recalls 2.8 Million Top-Load Washing Machines
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