Beware Of Those Electric Kettles

[Yangpuss]

You know those electric kettles you see everywhere in the stores, the ones that say Kando or Wellco on them?

Well, they are a ticking time bomb.

I've lived in Thailand for 5 years. I have owned about six of these. I use them to boil water for coffee or for simple cooking tasks.

The ones I bought 5 years ago were hazardous. Several times I got electric shocks from them when sticking a spoon in the water. (Mostly I think this happens when you get the plug area wet). I learned to not touch them until I pulled the plug out.

But the newer ones are much worse. In the last six months I have owned 3 of these pots. In every case, after a few weeks of use, the plastic handle broke off.

The first time it happened, I was carrying a potful of beans to the sink to drain the water off. The handle broke off and the beans went all over the floor.

I got another one. With this one, the handle broke off after two months of use, as I was lifting it to pour the boiling water on my coffee. Luckily, it broke before I got it high into the air, and the pot just fell back to the table without overturning.

I took it to the store and they exchanged it for another one. This lasted three weeks before the exact same thing happened with the handle.

And in all these cases, the pots weren't even half full, so it's not like there was too much weight.

All around Thailand, people are probably getting severely scalded when the handle breaks off as they are lifting these pots.

I'm sure shoddy construction like this would not be tolerated in most western countries, but it is here.

Clearly, the handles on the pots of five years ago were much stronger, and the company is now using substandard handles.

I have emailed the manufacturer and gotten no response.

I won't buy another one. I kept buying them because for simply boiling water, I can't find an alternative in a unit that's easily portable.

[Joey Boy]

this may sound obvious but why dont u get a kettle where the handle is actually a cast/molded part of the entire kettle??

[the scouser]

Bearing in mind that water is an excellent medium for conducting electricity, why on Earth did you stick a spoon in a kettle with a live connection?

Scouse.

[Eric Davis]

The offending kettle.

[Eric Davis]

Repair Service

Defective goods can be sent for repair by the following methods:

1. You can bring the defective goods to our factory for repair which can be done within 1 hour waiting.

2. You may deposit the defective goods for repair at the repair service centre at the Department Store where you purchased them. After we have received the goods, we shall repair and return them to the said center within 7 days.

3. You may send the defective goods for repair by parcel post, stating your name, address, and telephone number in the mail. After the repair is completed, we shall send them back by parcel post within 7 days.

Notes:

- Please attach the warranty certificate every time you send the goods for repair, for the purpose of free spare parts changing, for the goods under warranty period..

- We provide free repair service cost ( not included the spare part ), even thought the warranty period of the goods has laspsed.

http://www.kando.co.th/new/Veng-Profile/eS...e/eservice.html

[bendix]

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde:

To have one faulty kettle and have similar problems with its replacement is unfortunate. To buy a third after more problems is careless.

To continue ad nauseum to buy your SIXTH kettle, after all those problems is . . well . . pretty stupid, dont you think?

Simple question: Why not buy a different brand?

[buadhai]

We have an inexpensive one branded "Kashiwa". The handle is molded with the pot. The power goes to the base. When you lift the pot up from the base, it is no longer connected to the power, so you can play with your spoon all you like.

[Eric Davis]

Try Here for a New Kettle

[Thetyim]

We have an inexpensive one branded "Kashiwa". The handle is molded with the pot. The power goes to the base. When you lift the pot up from the base, it is no longer connected to the power, so you can play with your spoon all you like.

Yes, I've got one exactly the same , and it's bloody dangerous.

Everytime I stick my spoon into the power contacts to clean out the ants I get a shock.

[buadhai]

We have an inexpensive one branded "Kashiwa". The handle is molded with the pot. The power goes to the base. When you lift the pot up from the base, it is no longer connected to the power, so you can play with your spoon all you like.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, I've got one exactly the same , and it's bloody dangerous.

Everytime I stick my spoon into the power contacts to clean out the ants I get a shock.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Same darn thing was happening to me until I got smart and put on my rubber slippers and started using wooden chopsticks to clean out the bugs.

[Thetyim]

Same darn thing was happening to me until I got smart and put on my rubber slippers and started using wooden chopsticks to clean out the bugs.

Doh, why didn't I think of buying rubber slippers.

I went out and bought two more kettles and would you believe it they were both the same.

[bendix]

Yeah, but buying just two is hardly a good enough representative sample.

I suggest you buy four more, just to be sure . . . . .

[Neeranam]

I use the microwave, much faster, and the handle never falls off.

[jobsworth]

I too have had problems with electric kettles.

I used to buy them from Big C.

For some strange reason they are designed to boil water,

switch off, and then when the water goes off the boil they switch back on again.

This means that if there is no water in them, they just get hotter and hotter

until the plastic handle melts.

The first one I purchased had a melted handle and was obviously

a customer return which had been put back in its box on the display.

I have not been able to buy a conventional kettle which boils once,

switches itself off and then remains switched off.

When I was last in England I puchased a kettle from Currys,

which of course boils only once and then switches itself off.

But, guess what, it was made in China.

So why can the same kettles not be sold in Thailand?

[Yangpuss]

To answer some of the sarcastic comments made by jerks when I am trying to alert people to a problem that could severely injure someone:

1) The reason I didn't buy a different one is that the only different ones I saw in the stores were the plastic kettle by the same maker (which is incidentally not the one I am talking about--someone posted the wrong picture). Boiling water in plastic doesn't sit well with me. Seems an invitation to have chemicals leech from the plastic into the water.

2) The ones I bought over the last five years did not have this problem. The handles on them did not break. They DID have a problem with electric shocks if you got the plug contacts wet. But I learned to avoid that by simply not touching the pot when it was plugged in. A small compromise for the convenience of having an easily portable pot.

The handles breaking off (and it's the plastic itself that is breaking, not the screws. the plastic apparently weakens from the heat) is a new problem that I have just encountered this year. So the pots have deteriorated in quality from 5 years ago.

I certainly won't buy another one. The third one was the one that was replaced by the store for free, not the second one. I did not know whether I had simply got a single bad pot or whether they were all like that now. After all, the earlier ones I had owned years ago did not have a handle that breaks off. With three occurrences, it becomes possible to see a systemic problem and the likelihood that they are all, or many of them, similarly defective.

I was watching that third pot very carefully, and handling it very carefully. When it broke, I was prepared, as I was expecting it might break.

Thanks for the link to other pots. It is still a challenge to find one that isn't plastic and isn't exorbitantly priced, as many of the ones at the link were.

Meanwhile, warn your Thai friends not to boil water in these pots.

Here is a picture of the guilty pot.

[ovenman]

The cheap Thai-made kettles are not even worth the couple hundred baht they charge for them. I went through a couple of them quickly after I moved here and gave up on them as being poorly constructed crap. Bought a Philips electric kettle a few years back that cost four or five times the price of one of the cheap Kando models, but I have had nary a problem since with the Philips. Money well spent.

[chaiyapoon]

Have had the same lack of robustness/electrical safety issues with a thai made kettle and only bought it as there was little or no choice.Never mind when I come back to LOS in a few weeks there will be decent quality one bought in UK in my bag.

[jayenram]

Tefal Vitesse kettle.

http://www.tefal.co.uk/tefal/products/fami...PFX6RJD5QR3CXUD

Bht 2,300.00 from Robinson's department store (not sure about the new 'S' model).

I am not rich by any means but I would never spend 2 or 3 hundred Baht on an electric appliance that involves water and that doesn't even have an earth cable.

Could I ask why you were cooking beans in an electric kettle? Or did I misread that?

[Nickerelastic]

The first time it happened, I was carrying a potful of beans to the sink to drain the water off. The handle broke off and the beans went all over the floor.

In a kettle, which by design is solely for boiling water?

[bendix]

The adventures and misadventures of an inept kettle consumer.

Reports of boiling beans in a kettle and then wondering why it doesnt work (they spilled and went all over the floor, don't you know?)

Recommendations on domestic appliances from a poster called Ovenman.

umm .. . . .. . . .this is a wind-up, isnt it?

[ovenman]

Recommendations on domestic appliances from a poster called Ovenman.

Take what advice you can get, from wherever/whomever you can get it.

[bendix]

LMAO.

It's just been pointed out to me in PM that my nickname here is evidently a famous brand name for household appliances in the States.

The plot thickens.

[tuky]

The first time it happened, I was carrying a potful of beans to the sink to drain the water off. The handle broke off and the beans went all over the floor.

When your missus asked you to "spill the beans"on where you were last night, she didn't mean literally

[MyNameIsFarang]

Buy a quality Japanese brand and problem solved.

Well worth the extra cost.

[Yangpuss]

The same pot also goes by the name Wellco (made by the same company). Both brand names had the same problem.

[Yangpuss]

The first time it happened, I was carrying a potful of beans to the sink to drain the water off. The handle broke off and the beans went all over the floor.

In a kettle, which by design is solely for boiling water?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Show me where it says that these kettles are solely designed for boiling water. You can do more than that in them, if they are properly constructed. They are utility kettles.

A potful of beans doesn't weigh any more than a potful of water.

Anyway, I will look for something better. Many or most of these more expensive pots are plastic, and I just can't bring myself to boil water in plastic. It would be hard to convince me that chemicals from the plastic don't leech into the water.

I don't want to trade one hazard for another.

The bigger point is, why don't the Thais have consumer protection laws and basic standards for manufacturing? These pots should be pulled from the market.

[Gazza]

LMAO.

The plot thickens.

Then add in some more boiling water, stirring ocassionally.

[Greer]

LMAO.

The plot thickens.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Then add in some more boiling water, stirring ocassionally.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[swangdi]

Yangpuss

I bought 1 in 1998 (Wellco) from BKK & used it back home. My god ... I got electric shock on day 1. I cautioned all my family members about it. I was the only one using it.

After 1 month I got another shock. So I decided to dispose it off. End of the story. I'll never ever buy that brand again and I've advised all my friends not to buy the brand.

Thanks Yangpuss for the reminder.

[PETERTHEEATER]

Tefal Vitesse kettle.

[I am not rich by any means but I would never spend 2 or 3 hundred Baht on an electric appliance that involves water and that doesn't even have an earth cable.

Problem here Jay is that not too many of the folks using these kettles have grounded domestic wiring (3 pin sockets properly connected) so two pin ungrounded appliances prevail.

Yesterday I bought my wife a small good quality PANASONIC microwave (Made in LOS). It comes with a moulded European DIN plug which will off course fit a bog standard Thai electrical socket without the DIN plug earth contacts being used. Thoughtfully, in the box was a neatly coiled yellow and green (British standard) earth wire with a spade terminal on one end and sripped wire on the other but no instructions on how to use. Clearly if the input plug is inserted into a two pin socket then to effect a ground (earth) the provided cable would need to be attached under a screw on the metal back or base (the case is plastic) and then to a true earth.

Fortunately, my new house has fully grounded systems so I am now buying 3 pin plugs to put on transferred appliances. Curiously, I am having difficulty locating 3 core electrical cable!