After reading in the March 2021 Choice about the Aldi pressure cooker recall, and how a burnt customer was told by Aldi customer service after asking why Aldi had not made more of an effort to notify customers of the recall that she “could have checked the website for recalls”, I thought I’d have a look at this website (productsafety.gov.au). It does indeed list all the recalls, but there are literally hundreds of them. What I did find though, which others might find useful, is that you can subscribe and receive recall notices by email. You can choose what sort of products you want to be notified about and the frequency of the notifications. Subscribing was easy (although my confirmation came up in my spam!), and you can unsubscribe anytime.
Welcome @annelenert
Thank you for sharing this information. Hopefully it will help others to find an easier way to find out if a product they use may have recall notices.
Just stumbled across the Bunnings web page for recalls:
https://www.bunnings.com.au/product-recalls
and quickly counted about 26 recalls; not for plant pots or clothes pegs but rather for things that can explode, electrocute, burn, slash and crush the user and/or bystanders. Realise they sell a lot of items but if you take out the ones that have no potential to kill or injure you (eg plant pots and clothes pegs) the odds of buying something that can change your life in ways you’d rather it didn’t seems…pretty good. Sadly there appears to be no onus on Bunnings to advise affected customers, and just posting recalls on their website is a nonsense because most folks simply aren’t going to review it daily to see if an item they bought at Bunnings makes it onto the list at some time in the future.
A few years ago there was an issue with electrical conduit in that IIRC it could quickly degrade and become unsafe. There followed a detailed campaign to have it identified and replaced ie sparkies and electrical wholesalers were notified, communication campaign including media etc. Caused quite a stir at the time. Bunnings was recently selling a car jack prone to collapsing, a brush cutter from which the blades could detach in use, and several other devices that could cause electrocution but they just park a notification on the website and…job done. The conduit issue made it into the media but when you’ve got 26 items that are dangerously defective the air time would be prohibitive and it’s not a good look. Also none of the media outlets would want to take on Wesfarers so it’ll probably never make prime time.
Admittedly there was a half hidden A4 sized notification about the car jack behind the Returns Desk when I was last in Bunnings, surely a large board listing recalls and positioned at the large glass portico at the entry to every Bunnings would allow customers to do a quick check as they enter (possibly to return the can of leaking paint stripper or the spray gun that gave them a strange 240V tingle when they touched it).
Costco on the other hand - through their membership scheme - appear to contact customers who have purchased items that are subsequently recalled or withdrawn.
Choice ran an article that addressed product safety more generally:
but there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of it having gone anywhere and it also doesn’t appear that Choice staff monitor this forum any longer so there’s probably no point in shouting out.
Does anyone know whether the Choice initiative got legs and to what extent, or whether it just faded away?
