US customers hang F&P out to dry

The list of complaints about F&P products on consumeraffairs.com runs to 16 pages. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Fisher & Paykel is facing a wave of complaints from American customers as the New Zealand company's products come under fire on a US consumer website.

Consumeraffairs.com allows unhappy consumers to complete "complaint forms" which are then published online.

The list of complaints about F&P products runs to 16 pages.

Complaints have been filed about clothes dryers burning clothing, faulty dishwashers and fridges, poor customer service and long waits for replacement parts.

Other appliance companies, such as Bosch, also had a large number of complaints on the website.

One unhappy customer from Illinois wrote: "I am 51 years old and have owned 6 homes and have had different brands of dishwashers, but have never had to have one serviced until I bought a Fisher & Paykel. I have had this dishwasher serviced 6-7 times in the last 2 years for pretty much the same problem."

Another customer from Florida wrote that reading the comments about F&P was like "reading a script of our nightmare".

That customer said his US$800 ($1100) F&P clothes dryer broke down after four years' use.

He said he stumbled across the consumeraffairs.com F&P message board while searching the internet for a spare part for another appliance that had broken down.

The customer said F&P's customer service was "abysmal".

Another website, consumersearch.com, reported that "US surveys" had found that one quarter of F&P's Dish Drawer dishwashers required repairs.

"In one survey, Fisher & Paykel models had the highest repair rate of any dishwasher brand," the website reported.

Fisher & Paykel chief executive Stuart Broadhurst declined to comment on the websites.

First NZ Capital analyst Greg Main recently told the Herald that F&P's Mexico plant, which opened last year, was "the main area of concern" for the firm.

To get the Mexico factory profitable, he said, the company needed to increase its sales footprint in the United States.

After viewing the comments against F&P on consumeraffairs.com yesterday, Mr Main said consumers, when looking to buy an appliance, would first search the internet and the negative "feedback loop" had the potential to put prospective customers off buying products.

Consumer NZ testing and research manager Hamish Wilson said F&P's Dish Drawer had suffered its "fair share of reliability issues" over the years.

He said the consumer watchdog's reliability surveys on F&P products usually returned "average" results.

Mr Wilson said it was important to view the comments made on consumeraffairs.com "in perspective", as there was no statistical data to back them up.