M&S glass coffee table - spontaneously exploded/shattered

kingla

Had to share this in case anyone was considering buying one of these 'on-trend' all glass coffee tables.

My 6-month old glass table from M&S spontaneously exploded at 4am this morning. It broke into large dangerous shards of glass and it sprayed smaller pieces across the room. The only saving grace was that our family were all in bed. Had anyone been in the room, it would have been very dangerous.

There were no chips, scratches or marks on the table. It had nothing on it of weight. We have no idea why this happened. The only thing we can think is that the temperatures in this area have significantly risen over the last 48 hours, though that is just a theory.

With all fairness to M&S - I called this morning, they were very apologetic and have promised a full refund and also a £50 goodwill voucher. My real concern is that this might happen to someone else and cause serious injury. The M&S rep mentioned this is one of their most popular coffee tables.

Please think seriously if you are considering buying a glass table or if you know anyone who has one, please warn them.

jimbms

Not sure which table you are talking about as you have not put a link to it, but I would always advise against having a table with a large area of glass in any room that can have a large temperature variation (this usually occurs at night when people allow the room temp to drop and not have a anti frost setting on central heating), one slightway round if anyone has one is make sure the table has something on that will absorb any heat/loss of heat ie metalic (the reason why sme tables have a metal strip or legs.

kingla

This is the table - http://www.marksandspencer.com/Clear-Glass-Coffee-Table/dp/B000MKPBCK?ie=UTF8&extid=TP_2_FRO_T_MSF_

It was in a living room area that does not experience any great fluctuations in temperature. Definitely a mystery, but if it happened to us, it can happen to someone else. (which is what I am worried about!)

jimbms

Now I have seen the table I would guess there is a flaw in the manufacture process where they do the legs causing an uneven rate of expansion, remember glass is a poor insulator so can expand at different rates, so if the bend section was over a certain percentage thinner then this woyld have happened

maninthestreet

Personally, I avoid any glass furniture for this very reason.

bryanb

Was anyone singing in bed?

Searcher

Strangely enough, this is the second time this week that I've seen this.
The other time was office glazing

It's called spontaneous explosion and while very rare it does affect toughened glass from time to time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

Liquorice_Twirls

I'm a bit shocked that all you got was a refund and £50 goodwill gesture. It sounds like it would have taken a long while to be certain all the little shards were hoovered up and for this and something towards the shock of it I think it seems pretty stingy. But tbh I would have wanted to hear M & S tell me they were going to investigate what had happened in case there was a design flaw and this could potentially happen again.
Imagine if a young child had been in the room at the time - it could have been a serious injury.
Thanks for posting - will definitely avoid this kind of furniture in future.

xocbc

"Imagine if a young child had been in the room"

sigh....was waiting for that

Imagine ANYONE, or a pet for that matter, had been in the room you mean

ellay864

Did you have anything on it that may have had oils? My MIL recently had put one of those plug in air fresheners on the table as she wanted to use the plug socket for something else. There must have been a slight leakage and as she was watching TV (the TV was also on the table) the base of the TV shattered sending the TV crashing down. Apparently the heat from either the TV or sunlight coming in had warmed the oil and casued a reaction

hoyles10

Liquorice_Twirls wrote: »

Imagine if a young child had been in the room at the time - it could have been a serious injury.
Thanks for posting - will definitely avoid this kind of furniture in future.

So any other member of the human race would have been fine with random exploding glass around them?

I'm quite impressed M&S refunded straight away without any form of investigation. After all what's to say the OP hadn't dropped something heavy on it and it broke then called them to say it had just randomly exploded.

Thanks to the OP for the warning though, one of my friends has one similar so i've let him know about it (although I don't know what he's going to do to prevent it).