A mum has been living in a smoke-damaged home with her young children after her Whirlpool washing machine caught on fire three months ago.
Amanda Tucker took her four-year-old boy and rushed out of the property after spotting white smoke billowing from her kitchen on March 16, reports Derbyshire Live.
Two fire engines raced to the scene to douse the flames but the kitchen, hallway, stairs and landing were left "blackened and smoke-damaged".
Amanda recalled noticing a "really bad smell" around five minutes after putting a normal cycle on.
She said: "I couldn't see any of my units in my kitchen, which are black, I just couldn't see anything.
"I grabbed my son and my phone and ran out into the street and rang the fire brigade.
"The worktop had just started to catch fire. My kitchen was completely smoke damaged and I had just had my hall, stairs and landing decorated, and that was all blackened and smoke damaged.
"My three-piece suite was smoke-damaged, the kitchen is water damaged too from the water in the washing machine and the water used by the fire brigade.
"There's quite a lot of damage that I have been left with, because we didn't know whether someone would be sent out to assess the damage, so I have left it as it was."
The mum, who works for a commercial vehicle dealer group, purchased the washing machine for around £300 in 2017.
A local tradesman - with over 30 years experience in fixing washing machines - replaced a door lock on the product in 2019.
Whirlpool repaid £225 for the machine only after claiming the incident was caused by "poorly performed" third-party repair.
A spokesperson for the firm said: "The incident that occurred originated in the vicinity of the spliced wiring, resulting in damage to the internal parts and the console.
"Our records show that none of our own engineers attended a service call to this machine either at the consumer's address or indeed to this machine at any address.
"In summary, we believe that this incident was caused by the poorly performed replacement of the door lock by an unknown third party and we confirmed our conclusions to Mrs Tucker."
But Frank Wain, who repaired the washing machine, rejected their claims and said the replacement door lock would have been the same as the one on the original machine.
He added: "This is a problem Whirlpool have been having, where machines have been catching fire.
"We are going to machines even now that should be on the list, and we get customers to ring Whirlpool to say that it should be on the list of models that should be recalled.
"So many times I have had to tell the customers to ring Whirlpool.
"I am shocked, to be honest. I am shocked that Whirlpool is trying to blame third parties when the part has been on there for three years.
"It doesn't make any sense one little bit. It doesn't take three years for that to happen."
Amanda has accused Whirlpool of "fobbing her off" and "hiding" a report into the cause of the fire.
She said: "I feel like I have been honest with them about the third-party repair, but that has given them ammunition to blame it on them.
"A door lock was fitted three years ago, if it was going to cause a fire, it would have done it three years ago. It feels like they have been fobbing me off when I've been honest with them.
"Unless I see the report stating from their investigators that the door lock is the root cause of the fire, why else would they hide the report?
"It feels like they are keeping things from me when it's my washing machine."
Whirlpool previously recalled 519,000 Indesit and Hotpoint washers after 79 caught fire due to a flawed lock system.
That came months after it recalled 500,000 potentially dangerous dryers.
