To mark this year’s Register My Appliance Week, RBFRS is urging residents to register their appliances to reduce the risk of fire in their homes as part of a week-long campaign.
The campaign, which will run from 17-21 January, aims to encourage the thousands of people that are missing out on product safety warnings and failing to register their most commonly used household items (fridges, freezers and washing machines).
With the recent increase in online purchasing and the advent of smart appliances, according to Government estimates, we are now running more than 212-million essential appliances to cook, wash clothes and dishes, clean floors and store our food. Despite this, researchers have found that 49% of people have never registered a product, potentially leaving some 100 million large and mid-sized older machines untraceable, should the manufacturers need to be able to identify and contact owners quickly to organise a repair or recall.
Tim Readings, Group Manager from RBFRS, said: “As we try to keep our appliances running, maintenance and the registration of our machines becomes paramount. It’s never too late to see if you can register an appliances; whether you found the appliances in your homes when you moved in, inherited them from family or simply installed and forgot about them.
“Registration is easy – even in such varied circumstances – because the process can be completed at registermyappliance.org.uk without a receipt or knowing exactly when the appliance was first bought.”
Register My Appliance is a web portal developed by the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances (AMDEA) to make it quicker and easier for householders to register old and new appliances. Handy tips guide the user through how to find the important model details, meaning all the user needs to supply is their name and address. This data provided to Register My Appliance goes directly to the manufacturer for use exclusively in case of a recall.
To increase safety and the life of appliances the Register My Appliance portal also offers:
- A listing of appliance safety repairs and recalls;
- Hints and tips on household safety; and
- Recommendations for appliance care.