This week (17 to 21 January) is Register My Appliance Week and manufacturers, fire services and safety campaigners will be urging the public to register their home appliances.
A striking AMDEA pop-art campaign will highlight a serious message as householders are asked if their appliance manufacturer would know which machines they have in their homes if a fault comes to light with their model.
The answer is ‘no’ for some 100 million appliances, according to recent research. But this could all be remedied by people taking a few minutes to register their much-loved appliances.
While the recent increase in online purchasing and the advent of smart appliances will all help to improve traceability, 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. Yet research also found that nearly half of us have never registered a product.
Maintenance and registration of machines is important to help keep them running efficiently, whether we found the appliances in our homes when we moved in, inherited them from family or simply installed and forgot about them. But registration can be done easily 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 AMDEA (the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances) to improve ownership data by making it quicker and easier for householders to register old and new appliances. Offering access to over 60 of the nation’s leading brands, the vast majority of manufacturers on the site welcome registration of products up to 12 years old or even older.
Handy tips guide the user through finding the important model details, meaning all the user needs to supply is their name and address. This data then goes directly to the manufacturer for use exclusively in case of a recall.
A recent AMDEA survey of appliance users nationwide, in both rental and owned properties, revealed that 83 per cent of respondents did not know or did not think they could register an older appliance that they had not purchased themselves. The predominant reasons for not believing this possible were not knowing the dates of purchase (59 per cent) or not having the receipts (48 per cent) – neither of which applies to registration as a safety precaution.
AMDEA Chief Executive, Paul Hide, said: “The world has become a more ‘connected’ place, with advances in smart appliance technology adding high-tech convenience to our lives. But, as we sit back and enjoy this new technology, we shouldn’t forget that – when it comes to safety repairs – any connectivity with manufacturers is only guaranteed when you take a few minutes to register.
“You can do this easily on AMDEA’s registration portal. And registering older appliances is particularly key because it ensures you’ll never miss out on any important safety dialogue with the manufacturer.”
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.
