‘Tumble dryers that don’t dry your clothes’. That was recently voted as the most frustrating flaw in an everyday product as uncovered by our tests. What else is grinding your gears?
Have you got an appliance at home that isn’t up to the task? Feel like throwing your latest gizmo at a wall?
The testing we do here at Which? doesn’t just rate how well different appliances stack up against each other. We also reveal flaws with products and expose the claims that really are too good to be true.
Thanks to our latest survey, we’ve identified which of those flaws wind people up the most.
Top frustrating flaws revealed
To find out which product flaws have proven to be the most irritating, we gathered 10 examples from our tests. These included smartphones that have less accessible memory than advertised, washing machines not reaching 60˚C on the cotton 60˚C program and advertised mile per gallon figures that aren’t reproducible in real life.
We then asked more than 1,000 Which? members to rate how frustrated they were with each flaw. This gave us the following top five frustrations:
1. Automatic tumble dryers not drying clothes.
2. Apps and services like LoveFilm disappearing from smart TVs.
3. Lightbulbs not as bright as they claim (as revealed by Which? tests).
4. Bagless vacs claim no loss of suction, but our tests show they do.
5. Mile per gallon figures not matching up to real life.
Soggy surprises from your tumble dryer
Automatic tumble dryers that leave clothes wet came in at number one. For those unsure what an automatic dryer is – it’s a tumble dryer that doesn’t require you to set how long you want the dryer to heat your clothes for. Instead, you set the dryer going and a sensor inside the drum should keep an eye on moisture levels of clothes. Once it detects clothes are dry, the dryer stops. A good sensor should tailor drying times to every load.
However, our tests show that quite a lot of automatic tumble dryers we’ve tested stop prematurely, leaving clothes wet.
You can read more about the issues we’ve uncovered, who the biggest culprits are and what Which? is doing about these flaws in the September issue of Which? magazine.
But we want to hear what’s getting on your nerves. Have you got a product, appliance or gizmo that isn’t up to scratch? Or have you been affected by one of the issues above? Go on, have a rant.