CBC MARKETPLACE: YOUR HOME » DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS
Dangerous defects
Broadcast: March 26, 2006

Almost every day in Canada, something in your house is recalled: a toaster, your kid's hoodie sweatshirt, a power tool, a toy car…

Recalls can be the result of dangerous defects; the trouble is you're not always told about them.

In fact, consumers don't have much protection at all when faulty products make the journey to store shelves and into your home.

If a product goes wrong – even if it becomes dangerous due to flaws in its design or manufacture – there's not much of a system in place to protect you.

Don MacLaren has been a firefighter for 26 years. He's seen his share of preventable house fires, but nothing could prepare him for a call he got last May – to attend a fire at his own house.

It was May 21, 2005. Don's wife Susan was at home in Bradford, Ontario. She went to fetch something and noticed smoke billowing from a vent in the hallway. "It was roaring," Susan recalls. "I can still hear it; it was white flames – it was a burning fire."

Don says he and Susan came close to losing everything: 15 more minutes and their home would have been overtaken by an inferno.

The fire itself had started in the least likely of places: inside the couple's brand new, energy-efficient fridge.

What the couple didn't know was that a fire very similar to their own had occurred just weeks before. That fire was caused by the same model of fridge, made by the same company.

"They're responsible," Don says of the manufacturer of his defective fridge. "You make a product, you're responsible for the product."

"They're responsible," Don says of the manufacturer. "You make a product, you're responsible for the product. It's not as if the fridge was ten years old and failed on us. It was six months old."

In the end, the MacLarens had to rebuild their home – to the tune of $300,000. But the fridge fire cost much more, says Don:

"You've lost some of your identity… your personal possessions… your home where you live … it's not there. And you're living out of a … suitcase in the trunk of your car for several months. That's an invasion."

The MacLaren's fire and ensuing upheaval of their lives were preventable – if the couple had known about the defective part in their fridge, they could have returned it to the manufacturer to be replaced or repaired.

The trouble is they didn't hear about the flaw in the problem part, until it was too late.