Are other repair cafes experiencing an influx of air fryers at their sessions? We always get a few, but last month we had four, just in the one session. Most of them are from the Ninja brand. If others are experiencing the same, I wonder if this is something that should be addressed in some way with the manufacturers? (Not sure how to go about it, though!)
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Haven’t seen one yet. Any tips on fixing them? Any common problems?
No recent air fryers at Lambeth Repair Cafe. Think I may have seen only one or two in the 18 months we’ve been going.
Common problem seems to be fan not running due to failure of thermal fuse.
Have fixed two with this problem.
Simple fix but difficult to get at. Suggest photos of dismantling at each stage and beware of washers and shims when removing fan blade.
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We often get things in three’s and four’s - sometimes you can see why, pressure washers and hedge trimmers in spring, electric blankets in autumn but otherwise not.
Is it a quirk of statistics/expectations like the famous shuffle mode problem where a random set of your tunes will sometimes have three by the same artist in a row but that doesn’t seem random to most people?
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Bit like busses?
The distribution of time between random events isn’t itself random it’s a Poisson distribution. Except the failures making people bring something for repair aren’t entirely random events - you find out it’s failed just when you go to use it (spring, autumn), or it fails while you’re using it.
What makes such high failure-rates possible is the lack of government action on the subject of “planned obsolescence” (Google it if you don’t know the definition). Governments won’t act unless voters push them, and vendors won’t act unless they are stuck with lots of returned products and angry customers.
The only solution is to take action by chasing your politicians and getting people to return broken products to wherever they got them.
You might also want to purchase only those brands that history shows will last.
Tell your friends too.
Interesting to hear you’re seeing so many air fryers @Kat_Corbett. We actually had an enquiry about air fryers from a journalist a few months ago.
There aren’t loads of air fryers in the data recorded here on the Fixometer—just 14 in the last quarter—so it’s hard to draw any conclusions from that (data here if you’re interested).
But in terms of taking action for products to be made easier to fix, we’re still encouraging people to contact their MPs (as @John_Evans_5804 suggests) and ask them to sign the Repair & Reuse Declaration.
For air fryers specifically, the relevant policy asks from the Declaration would most likely be:
- Expand the UK’s right to repair regulations to cover all consumer products, strengthen design standards and remove barriers to repair for everyone.
- Introduce a repair index to help the public choose more repairable and durable products.
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Update on the air fryer situation: we had two more at this week’s repair cafe, plus one that returned from last month. This makes it a total of 8 in 3 repair sessions.
We noticed it is quite tricky to track down spare parts. Tried to find a new heating element for a Ninja Airfryer online with no luck. The person who had brought it in was advised by the Ninja customer service team to recycle it and get a new one. Very frustrating!
Do you have any Facebook assets about the Repair Declaration that can be used on our local Repair Cafes Facebook Group? And maybe a digital poster with a QR code that we can print off and display at our Repair Cafe?
The major problem with fixing Air Fryers in our experience is the difficulty of re-assembly. There are obvious differences between analogue driven ones with a wind up timer and a knob operated temperature control but it would still seem that the sensing devices for temperature in the actual heating cavity and the thermal fuse on the outside of the motor wind assembly are standard components with their values displayed on the casing (however small). These items can be changed and with the use of shrink wrap sleeving to cover any re-joining and thermal resistant adhesive tape to restore the motor wind covering, they are fairly easy. Disassembly in the first place seems to not require specialist bits but the re-assembly can be a nightmare. Numerous photos taken with a mobile phone and the re-placement of screws in the holes they came out of will help but the provision of an internal wiring layout by the manufacturer would genuinely remove a repair barrier.
Hi Kat
Regrettably, I can’t help you. I am simply a long-term IT/electronics/electrical geek and joined my group only recently. Also, we are in Australia and undoubtedly laws that govern “conditions of service” vary markedly between the UK and Australia. So, if you are provided with such material by someone – I suggest verifying the appropriateness of that material under the laws that are relevant to your location.
Please note: these comments are from me and are based on my personal experience – and are not from any group, organisation or other individual.
Regards
John