Date: 23 Jun 2006 19:01:10
From:
Subject: Re: Black & Decker coffee maker recall
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On 2006-06-13 steve@SNIP-THIS.twoloonscoffee.com said:
Newsgroups: alt.coffee
Who'd have thought they could sell that many to
begin with?
From http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06160/696855-28.stm
Applica Consumer Products Inc. is recalling about 420,000 Black &
Decker brand thermal coffee makers. The coffee maker may not turn
off as programmed, causing the unit to overheat and melt, and
posing a risk of fire and burn injury.
The recalled coffee makers make up to eight cups of coffee and have
a programmable countertop feature. The coffee makers are silver and
black with a stainless steel carafe. Model numbers TCM800 and
TCM805 are printed on the rating plate on the bottom of the coffee
maker.
Home improvement and discount department stores sold the coffee
makers from March 2004 through April 2006 for about $40.
----SNIP----
So where is the surprise here? Black & Decker, Hamilton-Beech, Mr. Coffee,
and Sunbeam are probably by far the four biggest name-brand kitchen
appliance sellers in North America. Did you forget that Bunn, a relative
late-comer to the home-appliance market for coffeemakers, and a much smaller
supplier than those four, and probably abour four or five other brand lines,
recalled about 1-and-1/2 million of their drip coffeemakers for the home,
which were made in about the same two-year period?
Maybe it's time for a reality check for some of you guys. Some of you guys
are moving in a rarified coffee world, mostly of your own private creation,
of which probably not more than one out of one-hundred-thousand coffee
drinkers even cares about, let alone drops in for even an occasional casual
sample of participation. Remember, these mostly Chinese manufacturers crank
out these drip coffeemakers under many dozens of brand names at the rate of
probably a couple million or more every day.
I remember that about 16 years ago my mother had just bought, at a Wal-Mart
store in a small town in south Georgia, a Mr. Coffee Model for which she
payed about $22 or $23 including sales tax, regular Wal-Mart Price. It was
one of the basic units in Mr. Coffee's Accel PR-NN line, where <NN > is a
two-digit model designation. The machine was made in China. The nice glass
carafe, which would cost about $15.95 plus sales tax to replace, was made in
Germany. Now if you are part of the rest of the coffee world, the 99,999
out of 100,000, of so, if you accidentally drop that carafe and break it,
you're probably not buying a new carafe. You'll just go down to Wal-Mart
and replace the whole machine instead of waiting for one, two, or three
weeks, for a special-order carafe to arrive, which you'll have to go by the
store and pick up anyway.
I remember that in the last Consumer Reports survey of drip coffeemakers,
there was at least one model listed as costing about ten dollars, the
replacement carafe price for which, was about fifteen dollars. One could
wonder why they would bother to even mention such a thing.
That was over a year ago when that article came out, and now, there are
literraly dozens of drip coffeemakers on the market, even in places not
generally considered to be discount outlets, that sell all the time for
under fifteen dollars, even machines that have a claimed brewing capacity of
8, or 10 cups. Four-cup claimed-capacity machines in the same stores are
ten dollars or less.
This time 20 years ago, there were no insulated carafe models of drip
coffeemakers, with or without programmable timers, that sold anywhere at
retail or discount for less than sixty dollars.
The thing that surprised me about the Black and Decker recall was that there
were so few units from so few model numbers. Just to list the model
numbers, and the serial number ranges, in the Bunn recall required nearly
three times as much copy space as that required for that Black and Decker
recall notice.
Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA USA
Email: dososaurus@bellsouth.net Phone: 1-404-814-0768
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