Does your mother own a Whirlpool cooktop, if so, she may want to check whether it’s turning itself on.

Whirlpool cooktops that are sold by Appliances Online and Harvey Norman in Australia, recently caught the attention of consumer product investigators that resulted in Whirlpool being fined A$18 million after the business failed to immediately report that its glass cooktops could turn on by themselves, posing burn and fire hazards.

Back in 2019, the US appliance giant appointed the Gerry Harvey owned distributor Arisit to sell their products in Australia, this saw The Good Guys move quickly to discontinue the brand.

The worse part was that Whirlpool know about the problem but failed to reveal the problem despite more than 150 fault reports being investigated by the Company.

The settlement overnight covers 17 models of electric radiant heat cooktops under the JennAir, KitchenAid and Whirlpool brands.

According to the US CPSC, many consumers told Whirlpool beginning in November 2017 and continuing into 2019 that their cooktops were turning themselves on, a defect that could create an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death.

Despite this Whirlpool waited until receiving 157 reports — including 14 of property damage, four of objects igniting and two of minor burns — before reporting the problem Reuters reports.

The CPSC and Whirlpool then announced a recall of more than 26,300 cooktops.

As part of the settlement agreement, Whirlpool has agreed to maintain controls to ensure its compliance with federal consumer product safety laws.

A key element of the deal is that Whirlpool did not admit liability, but settled to avoid the cost, uncertainty and inconvenience of litigation.

In a statement, Whirlpool said it acted “appropriately” upon identifying the defect, including by recalling the cooktops under the CPSC’s Fast Track recall program.

Whirlpool also said it had reached out to cooktop owners and offered to replace their appliances for free.

At this stage it’s not known whether any of the affected cooktops were sold in Australia.