Household Appliances Safety Service Terms and Conditions Difficulties

In September and October 2012, there were more and more incidents involving the breakdown of home appliances. Actually, these failures were not caused entirely by product quality problems, or they may have been caused by the use of the product for more than its safe use period. The period of safe use of household appliances should be clarified. However, due to the controversy over the assessment methods, the “Safety Life Cycle and Recycling Use Regulations for Household and Similar Electrical Appliances” has not been introduced. There is no standard requirement for enterprises to express this explicitly, and the evaluation of the useful life of household appliances is still not yet available. The method is currently under research and development.

“The general standard for the useful life of home appliances has long been introduced, but the specifications for different products have been difficult to produce.” Lu Jianguo, director of the comprehensive inspection department of the National Household Electrical Appliances Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, told reporters.

It is understood that the “General Requirements for the Safe Use of Life and Recycling of Household Appliances and Similar Electrical Appliances” (hereinafter referred to as “General Regulations”) issued by the National Standardization Administration Committee has been implemented since May 1, 2008. The “General Regulations” are recommendations. Standards, however, stipulate the labeling principles for the safe use of household appliances, and recommend that manufacturers mark the period of safe use of their home appliances. Due to different functional structures of various electrical appliances, and too frequent updating and replacement is also a waste of social resources, the safety and service life of different types of home appliances under the average use intensity of general households is "safe use of household and similar electrical appliances. Years and Recycling Rules should be considered for limitation. However, until now, only the service life of gas appliances has been stipulated in its technical standards. Details of other products have not yet been introduced.

According to reports, the reason for the difficult production of the rules lies in the greater controversy among the parties on the method of assessing the useful life of products. Lu Jianguo stated that there is no internationally explicit requirement for the safe use of products. However, the practice adopted abroad is the design life of the company's self-declared products. For example, the design service life of the German Miller washing machine statement is 20 years. During this period, when the consumer uses the product normally, there is a safety accident. All the responsibility is borne by the manufacturer. When the use is delayed for 20 years, the consumer should request the regular maintenance department. The safety status of the product and the time limit for extending the use of the product are identified. The safety of the product during the extended period is determined by the appraisal department. If there is no appraisal, the responsibility for the occurrence of the safety accident shall be borne by the consumer.

Lu Jianguo also pointed out that some people in the country have proposed that they can use the product reliability evaluation method, but this is also not realistic, because product reliability is the number of operations of the product, and this indicator has a big difference in different regions. Take washing machines as an example. The frequency of use in Japan is 2 times per day, Europe is 400 times a year. In China, the more frequently it is used in economically developed areas, the higher the frequency is used. For example, Shenzhen has reached an average of 8 times a week, and Shanghai has 4 times. Beijing is 3 times. However, he still believes that although there are difficulties of this sort or another, it is still necessary to introduce relevant laws and regulations as soon as possible to require companies to express product safety deadlines. This will not only allow manufacturers to design products based on evidence, avoid waste of resources, but also Consumers can effectively remind consumers of the quality of their purchases.