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Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

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Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#31

Post by Fnoord »

nickff wrote: post #28
Fnoord wrote: post #22

Articles like these are great to argue nonconformity which can get you your money back in EU. Even past the warranty period.

From what I can find, the guarantee period seems to be two years, after which the burden seems to 'flip'. Given that this microwave is at least five years old, I am not sure what standard one might cite to demonstrate 'non-conformity'. Do you know of a standard which says that a consumer microwave oven must work for more than five years? https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Yes, the warranty period for consumers in whole EU is the minimal amount: two years.

But some countries have a more lax law (Germany, for example, not).

For example, here in The Netherlands you can have more than two years warranty. If you buy a premium smartphone (say: the latest iPhone or Google Pixel), and it stops functioning after twenty-five months (two years and one month), then your warranty isn't exhausted because a premium / flagship device like that (costing that much) is to be expected to work longer than twenty-five months. So, your warranty is still active. Now, if you bought a budget smartphone, you're probably out of luck. This is also why, yes, sometimes Google Pixel devices are cheaper in Germany. But you'll have less warranty if you buy it from there.

Then there's non-conformity. A device like a microwave isn't supposed to stop working because of a LED display suddenly turning on due to a hardware failure. Especially not if a blue LED display has this issue far more often than a green one. You can argue non-conformity with the seller (so the company who sold you the product; not the manufacturer), and they have to figure out how to handle it with the manufacturer; such isn't your issue as consumer. Only issue is you need a lawyer to write the letter for you (but there are nice examples available online which you can copy/paste, and there are also some very nice lawyers who do this either for free or low fee).

For businesses, different laws apply…

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#32

Post by 1970-01-01 »

wat10000 wrote: post #6
1970-01-01 wrote: post #4

This is literally evidence of stuff being designed to fail. An extra diode costs less than a cent at production scale. This was a manufacturing choice, not an error.

It’s not exactly designed to fail, they just don’t care. If they could add a one-cent part that made it fail sooner, they wouldn’t do that either.

How is designing it to fail and not caring about part longevity not the same thing for the buyer?

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#33

Post by fellerts » 

  I’m surprised that they chose to add a bunch of components to feed the AC line frequency to the microcontroller instead of just using a 32.768 kHz crystal. A single crystal oscillator seems like both the cheaper and more accurate option
The power line frequency is carefully monitored and adjusted to ensure that deviations from the ideal (60 Hz in OP's case) are smoothed out [0]. Even a single ppm deviation equates to 2.6 seconds per month, and your cheap 32.768 kHz crystal is going to be orders of magnitude worse than that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Stability

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#34

Post by djdnndne »

fellerts wrote: post #33

I’m surprised that they chose to add a bunch of components to feed the AC line frequency to the microcontroller instead of just using a 32.768 kHz crystal. A single crystal oscillator seems like both the cheaper and more accurate option The power line frequency is carefully monitored and adjusted to ensure that deviations from the ideal (60 Hz in OP's case) are smoothed out [0]. Even a single ppm deviation equates to…

[dead]

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#35

Post by close04 »

nickff wrote: post #28
Fnoord wrote: post #22

Articles like these are great to argue nonconformity which can get you your money back in EU. Even past the warranty period.

From what I can find, the guarantee period seems to be two years, after which the burden seems to 'flip'. Given that this microwave is at least five years old, I am not sure what standard one might cite to demonstrate 'non-conformity'. Do you know of a standard which says that a consumer microwave oven must work for more than five years? https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

The warranty/guarantee is different from the average lifetime of the device, which is defined in the law as the average period a device must maintain its working parameters stated by the manufacturer.

In some countries a fridge is expected to have a lifetime of 10 years but a warranty of 2 years. So in theory if you could prove that the fridge cannot meet the expected average lifetime, the cooling ability decreases below the stated parameters much earlier, then it becomes the manufacturer’s responsibility.

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#36

Post by close04 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #32
wat10000 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not exactly designed to fail, they just don’t care. If they could add a one-cent part that made it fail sooner, they wouldn’t do that either.

How is designing it to fail and not caring about part longevity not the same thing for the buyer?

Intention.

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#38

Post by trumpdong »

Fnoord wrote: post #31
nickff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can find, the guarantee period seems to be two years, after which the burden seems to 'flip'. Given that this microwave is at least five years old, I am not sure what standard one might cite to demonstrate 'non-conformity'. Do you know of a standard which says that a consumer microwave oven must work for more than five years? https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Yes, the warranty period for consumers in whole EU is the minimal amount: two years. But some countries have a more lax law (Germany, for example, not). For example, here in The Netherlands you can have more than two years warranty. If you buy a premium smartphone (say: the latest iPhone or Google Pixel), and it stops functioning after twenty-five months (two years and one month), then your warranty isn't exhausted b…

[dead]

Re: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)

#39

Post by jonathanlydall »

fellerts wrote: post #33

I’m surprised that they chose to add a bunch of components to feed the AC line frequency to the microcontroller instead of just using a 32.768 kHz crystal. A single crystal oscillator seems like both the cheaper and more accurate option The power line frequency is carefully monitored and adjusted to ensure that deviations from the ideal (60 Hz in OP's case) are smoothed out [0]. Even a single ppm deviation equates to…

My microwave seems to gain minutes per month, my assumption was that it's due to incompetency of Eskom, the essentially sole producer of South African electricity. With the government and parastatals here incompetency is very common.

However, out of interest I just pulled yesterday's stats from my inverter on Sunsynk's website. It has the frequency of the grid at 5-minute intervals and the average over the whole day was 49.975Hz which doesn't strike me as particularly bad, so I have to wonder if the Microwave itself has an issue. It's a Samsung which is now 13 years old.

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