Why are model numbers of electrical appliances hidden away? (From This Is Local London)

Why are model numbers of electrical appliances hidden away?

6:34pm Thursday 1st September 2011 in Colin Baker By Colin Baker

I AM considering offering my services as a freelance product designer and marketing advisor. To establish my credentials for this post, I shall give a piece of free advice to the manufacturers of electrical goods generally.

I suspect that, like me, you have had occasion to need service or parts for something technological in your home. It is never a simple matter of looking at the front of the thing.

My current requirement is very simple – a pair of plastic clips for the interior sliding tray in our dishwasher, without which the plate rack collapses during the washing process and with it all the plates.

The original clips have broken. In order to convince the manufacturers to send me these small, but I suspect probably disproportionately expensive, items they very reasonably require me to tell them the model number of the dishwasher. Where they were less reasonable was in the design and manufacture of the wretched thing. It is a built-in dishwasher and having checked all the accessible surfaces, external and internal, there is no indication whatsoever of anything other the name of the company that manufactured it. That is emblazoned across the front. Never miss an opportunity to advertise, they say. But no model, registration number, type? Nothing.

So the information that I, the consumer, now need is nowhere to be found unless, I presume, I get my toolbox out and undo all the retaining brackets and haul the thing out to scrutinise its back, whilst straining mine. Will the German manufacturer pay my osteopath for the remedial work required if I do that? I suspect not. Had I been involved in the design stage of this very efficient piece of white goods, it might just have occurred to me that vital information that may be needed in the future should perhaps appear on the front of something that is designed to be built in, or inside the door or anywhere that is visible without hauling the thing out into the room.

We had exactly the same problem with an oven earlier in the year. The name of manufacturer was writ large on the front; the model number was inside the door, blackened and baked, the after effects of several years of high temperature cooking.

The vigorous treatment required to clean it also removed the information I needed.

In the end I emailed a photograph of the part I needed to the manufacturer.