It will only occur if your bread is odd-shaped which might only occur with self-sliced bread or with small slices of baguette. The risk is if you dash off to answer the door or phone while the bread is toasting and it keeps cycling back down.
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Welcome @AlanR
I have moved your post into the Toaster Review topic on the site.
Your experience is a concerning one. Have you contacted Breville about the issue? It might be a fault that needs investigation and fixing.
There is a bit of a conversation about a Breville Lift & Look further up at
I will tag Chris Barnes the Head of Household Goods testing for CHOICE so that they may be able to help respond to the problem, over to you Chris. @ChrisBarnes.
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No I havenāt contacted Breville. I thought Choice might like to test it - preferably out in the carpark!
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What if CHOICE donāt find a problem or donāt test it and/or you have a defective toaster then Breville or the retailer you bought it from still have a duty under ACL to deal with your Toaster and fix the issue. You should contact at least one of them (Retailer or Breville) to ensure it isnāt a defective toaster, Retailer should be your first port of call.
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Do the elements come on when the toast descends for the second timeā¦as a result of the toast unable to ascend freely. If they donāt come on it could be a safety function to protect the lift mechanism. If they come back on, it is concerning.
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Yes, they do.
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Thanks @grahroll for the heads-up. We donāt test toasters for unusual situations such as the one experienced by @AlanR with the odd-shaped bread catching and triggering a repeated toasting cycle. It is very hard to predict all the odd things that might go wrong with a product, though weād certainly note it if it happened to occur during our test. Unfortunately we donāt have time to investigate every such case brought to our attention. As you said, we might test a sample and find it works just fine.
Iām not sure that our original recommendation ācatapulted salesā of the product! But this toaster has been a good example of how our tests canāt always detect a productās problem (especially with long term reliability), but where member feedback can be useful.
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Thank you Chris for your response.
Sorry if my post to the indicated previous complaint/post on this type of toaster was taken as a negative, it was just to point to where a previous conversation had taken place. @PhilTās & @SueWās responses to that one I think captured a good part of why CHOICE have limitations on testing for every nuance of every item and why reliability problems may still exist for some users of products.
I think in regards to the original linked complaint post it is evident that as users made CHOICE aware of reliability issues that CHOICE then responded appropriately to the issue by removing their recommendation of that unit. That removal of recommendation still stands today, reliability can be hard to test in a testing environment as some issues only become apparent after long term usage eg after 12 months of constant use as you are more than well aware. 
This is why I trust CHOICEās selections because they donāt hesitate to decry faults when they are found.
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The auto lift protection feature may not be unique to this particular model, especially when a piece of bread gets stuck/jammed in the bottom of a toaster preventing the lift mechanism working. We have tried a number of toasters (Kmart, Russel Hobbs, Kambrook) and if the lift held down the bottom of the toaster (such as roughly cut bread causing it to cease in lifting), the element stays on when held down. It may be that it is a design for automatic toasters where the element is triggered by the lifting frame being at the bottom of the toaster.
Removing the toaster from the review may not be appropriate as Choice would need to test all toasters to ensure that are different (which is unlikely).
Maybe Choice instead provides a note in the review such as:
as toasters have the potential to pose as a smoke or fire risk when used, their operation should be supervised at all times.
This sort of comment applies to other appliances such as stoves or others which purpose is to heat/cook somethingā¦and not unique to toasters.
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The manual already says:
Do not leave the toaster unattended when in use as toast may jam.
and
Do not leave the appliance unattended when in use.
which covers the above wording. So there may be no need to double up with similar wording (which could create inconsistencies between what Choice says and what the manual says in relation to a toasterās safe operation) in the review.
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No harm in offering a general warning though.
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Iāll look into updating the buying guide with general advice - weāll be doing toasters again soon. As someone whoās caused the smoke alarm to go off in this way (thanks to a blunt knife and left-handed bread cutting) I think itās worth mentioning.
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These toasters scored poorly in our tests:
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And the test does show well that one canāt go on price to determine performance.
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Iāll never pay such huge prices for a toasterā¦ its just a toaster FFS!! I still mourn the demise of the well balanced drop-side toaster.
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An observation on our 4+ year old Delonghi/s.
Always purchased on colour and styling. Influenced in part by the thinking of Diana Fisher.
On toasting unevenly one side of the toast compared to the other. The degree varies depending on which slot. It varies with thickness and age.
The technical explanation is due to how the toaster centres the bread between the electric elements. When the toast is lowered the metal guides on either side of the bread slide inwards to centre the bread. They are lightly spring loaded? The mechanism is not absolute in itās movement or spring tension with friction forces etc unbalanced. Hence the toast sits off centre.
We have two similar model Delonghi 4 slice toasters. The mechanisms appeared to be identical, with each other and some similar branded models. One of these toasted unevenly between each side of a slice from new. It varied between slots. The other when new was good in one half (2 slices) and just ok in the other half. Over time it has progressively developed a bias and is nearly as bad as the other Delonghi.
For the Choice testers:
How do we know that the one sample chosen at random is reliably representative of the product? The sample purchased may be by good luck for the manufacturer one of a better batch.
Is it also worthwhile for the lower cost items doing some ātear downsā or investigation of the internals?
Is the one chassis, mechanical toasting guides and toasting element used across multiple models and brands?
Hence what is being reviewed is a shared chassis in many different skins.
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The ones that used smoke signals to let you know when the toast was ready?
Thats the one!! But, to avoid the smoke signals you had to actually watch the toast and not imagine it would be automatic. 
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This article by the NYT identifies why toasters fail:
The Choice recommended toaster is expensive and breaks down according to user feedback on the Choice website:
Lack of durability is the #1 problem with toasters. Why isnāt durability one of the parameters tested by Choice? The element is obviously the key to durable toasters. Why not identify toasters with the most durable elements? No point having a lovely looking toaster or one that toasts evenly if it needs replacement every year or two? You seem to be measuring the wrong parameters for toasters?
BTW: Itās usually not worth repairing a toaster. It usually costs almost as much for a repair as buying a new toaster? Why arenāt toasters more modular and easier to repair? Perhaps Choice could address this issue as well?
P.S. Can someone recommend a toaster which will last?
If durability in whatever metric you mention were laboratory tested the time to test could be many years, well beyond the market presence of the particular product.
Some products can have synthetic tests, such as mattresses (rolling weights mimicking a human) or luggage (tumbling) to suggest their real world durability. How would that be done for a toaster or other appliance?
Hence brand reliability from member surveys gets cited, but every brand no matter how good produces some bad products, and poor brands some good ones from time to time, so it is a difficult issue looking for viable solutions. Suggestions on āhow to doā are welcome.
Many toasters are not designed to be repaired while some have replaceable elements that are, as you suggest, expensive in the context of a new similar toaster. If one cannot DIY replacing elements there is added cost to have it done.
nb. Reliability and testing was just addressed by Choice staff in another topic.
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