The glass-top garden tables exploding in the blazing heat
AS temperatures have rocketed in the past few weeks, many of us have enjoyed eating and drinking in our gardens.
But apart from the usual hazards of al fresco dining such as bugs and bees, some are facing another problem – exploding garden tables.
Asda has been criticised by customers after glass-top tables they bought from the supermarket chain shattered in the summer heat.
And a mother who bought a table from another chain said shards of glass had injured her daughter.
One Asda customer, Sharon Harvey, said two identical sets of garden furniture she bought from the supermarket exploded within a fortnight. She was sent a replacement when her £400 Jakarta set blew up in June, only for that to shatter two weeks later.
Miss Harvey, from Birmingham, posted a Facebook message outlining her disapproval along with photos of the two tables.
She said: ‘Hi Asda. Spot the difference? Shall I give you a clue? The only difference between the two pictures is… two weeks.
‘Yes, sadly, if you’d been a multibillion-pound retailer, you would have had the resources to conduct adequate market research and/or product safety checking and rather than replacing like for like the first table that shattered in the sun, you would have offered an alternative.’ Earlier this week, Paige Angela Tompkins, 23, from Leicester, reported that her £90 Miami table set from Asda had also exploded in the heat ‘leaving glass all over my garden’. Miss Tompkins, whose three-year-old son Preston ate at the table, said: ‘I rang Asda to inform them of what happened where I was told it’s been happening a lot and that I would not be given a refund as I no longer have the packaging or a receipt.’ Another Asda customer, Elaine Connell, said in a post: ‘I’m absolutely raging. Our Asda table has just exploded all over the garden.
‘It’s an absolute miracle the boys weren’t injured. You can hear the glass popping like candy. This product is clearly not safe.’
Meanwhile, Clare Angell, 29, a mother-of-seven, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, claimed that her young daughter cut her foot on the shards of a £200 B&M table after it shattered. ‘I was concerned they may be a faulty batch,’ she said.
Asda said its products had passed all safety requirements and explosions were ‘rare’.
A spokesman said: ‘Of the 45,000 glass top tables we sell each year there have only been a handful of examples when this has happened.’ The tables were designed to ‘shatter into small pieces rather than shards of glass’, he added.
A B&M spokesman, said: ‘The safety of our products are really important to us, which is why we only use toughened glass and carry out all relevant testing before we consider selling an item.
‘Occurrences like this are very rare. Occasionally imperfections can develop if a table has been marked, dragged or knocked.
‘The glass is designed to shatter into small pieces rather than dangerous shards.’