Potentially faulty kettle

battenburg88

I bought a new electric kettle at the weekend - one of the middle aisle deals at Lidl. Its a Salter.

I've had a lot of trouble this week getting the switch to stay in the 'on' position. For the most part it fairly rapidly switches itself off before it's got anywhere near to boiling, but it doesn't happen every time. I had a thought that maybe I need to have the water level above minimum (usually I boil less, because its just for the one cup of tea and minimum is shown as 1.2 litres!), but I've just tested that out to no avail. It switched off very quickly again.

I'm just wondering whether there is any obvious user error here?! Its brand new and I'd really just like it to work (obviously). If its only marginally over the minimum water level, is the mechanism such that it could still refuse to boil? It would be preferable not to have to boil more than a litre every time and perhaps if I do return it then I'll look to get one that allows you just to boil one cup.

Having done a quick internet search it seems as though this crops up quite a bit. One of the kettles at my office started doing this too, but there was no rhyme nor reason as why.

Any suggestions appreciated. I know its a just a kettle but this is most frustrating!

theonlywayisup

What does it do if you boil considerably more than the minimum level?

EssexExile

It sounds faulty. With mine, the less water you put in it the longer it boils before turning off. With any amount between min & max it should boil before turning off.

battenburg88

theonlywayisup said:

What does it do if you boil considerably more than the minimum level?

I feel a little bit foolish that I didn't try this before posting. So, I filled it right up and it definitely still cuts out. As I wanted to make tea over the weekend, I did try it a few more times and its certainly an intermittent problem. But there doesn't seem to be a pattern for when it does or doesn't work - either way, shouldn't be happening with a new item so I'll have to return it.

And I suppose the one silver lining here is that whatever I buy as a replacement I'll take a look at what the minimum fill level is and make sure I don't need to be boiling hige amounts of water when all I need is a single cuppa!

grumbler

EssexExile said:

With any amount between min & max it should boil before turning off.

It should boil with any amount (except zero) and get switched off by the steam generated by boiling.

This switch is obviously faulty.

TELLIT01

You've only had it a couple of days and it doesn't work properly.  Take it back.  Surely that's a no-brainer.