Dispute Escalates in GE Dishwasher Recall

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 19, 2000; Page A04 Last October, General Electric Appliances and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of 3.1 million dishwashers because they were a fire hazard.

Now, the terms of the recall have erupted into a blazing controversy, as GE and the CPSC trade charges about the fairness of the recall that seeks to compensate consumers for having to replace the defective machines.

The dispute escalated this week as the New York Attorney General officially notified GE that he plans to file suit against the company, saying it intentionally deceived consumers into buying new dishwashers by falsely saying the old ones couldn't be repaired.

The notice came the same day a class-action lawsuit, citing similar grounds, was filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa.

GE spokesman Terry Dunn called the lawsuits "grandstanding, pure and simple."

At issue in both the lawsuits and the GE-CPSC dispute is how the recall was implemented for certain GE and Hotpoint models made between April 1983 and January 1989. GE told consumers that, given the age of the dishwashers, repair was not an option. Instead, GE offered rebates, ranging from $25 to $125, to consumers who bought new washers. (The exact rebate depended on what kind of dishwasher the consumer bought, with higher amounts for purchases of GE models.)

The GE-CPSC recall agreement also offered rebates to commercial customers--landlords and hotels. But if these customers didn't want to buy new dishwashers, an "accommodation" could be made to permit rewiring to bypass the problem--a faulty sliding switch that allows a choice between "heat drying" and "energy saver," or air drying.

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said GE's decision to treat consumers and commercial customers differently was misleading and deceptive.

"GE's blatant misrepresentations have forced tens of thousands of consumers here in New York and around the country to spend hundreds of dollars to buy new dishwashers when their old ones could have been easily, and inexpensive fixed," Spitzer said in a statement. Dunn said commercial customers were offered the repair option because "they have qualified technicians and maintenance staff" who could rewire the dishwashers. "Consumers cannot do it themselves safely."

He calculated that it would cost a consumer about $75 to $100 to repair the dishwasher, almost the same amount for some new models if the rebate were used.

Dunn said that initially GE had offered consumers $50 toward repairing the dishwasher, but the CPSC turned that down "because they wanted us to do it for free."

CPSC's director of compliance, Alan Schoem, yesterday said consumers should have been able to decide whether to repair or replace the dishwasher. And if repair was the option, GE should have paid for it, he added. .

Schoem said the commission's powers were limited because under federal law as long as GE selected a rebate, replacement or repair, the commission could not order them to do differently.

Schoem said the agency has received more than 400 complaints from consumers who did not want to replace their dishwashers.

Dunn said GE has mailed "several hundreds of thousands of rebate checks," and is mailing out about 45,000 a week.

The affected dishwashers have the model numbers GSD500D, GSD500G, GSD540, HDA477 and HDA487. These models are affected if the second letter o their serial number is an A, M, R, S, T, V or Z.

© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMSxedKrrWiPgJiusXuRaWdpZWBnfHKFjmltaqpdZX9yhY9pZKKcqGO1tbnL