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(I posted this by accident on the LK model site. I suspect they are similar microwaves, however).

I filed a report with the Consumer Product Safety Commission on my Model 520JK microwave, and also contacted Sharp USA. These are cheap enough to throw away when they break, but I am concerned that someone might get hurt by one of these machines.

After two years of use at our summer home, the START and 6 buttons stopped working. After unplugging and letting it sit for a few minutes and plugging back in, it seemed to solve the problem - at least temporarily.

Then it came back and sometimes the START would work, and sometimes not. We used one of the program settings to start the microwave when the START button didn’t work and used numbers other than 6.

One night I found my partner swatting the keypad with an oven mitt. He said that the keypad started emitting sparks around the perimeter and he tried to exinguish the fire with an oven mitt. I later found out that the 20 amp circuit breaker in the basement had tripped.

I filed a report with the CSPC, as this seems like a safety issue. I also contact SHARPUSA and filed a report with them as well. I do not expect a new microwave from SHARP (it is out of warranty), I expect them to take the safety of their customers seriously. Such is not the case, however.

SHARP called me and asked me to take the microwave to a local service center for evaluation, which I was happy to do. It is only a 20-mile drive, one-way. The local service center says they don’t know what I am talking about and won’t take the microwave for evaluation.

I called Sharp’s 1-800BESHARP hotline and the first person said they had no record of a complaint. After several minutes on the phone, she reluctantly agreed there was a record of my calling (I never called) and that they told me to hit the “reset” button (this never happened). She kept saying I lived in California for some reason. She was being intentionally unhelpful.

I called again, and the second person found the correct information and asked me to “hold for customer relations”. I was put on perpetual hold.

The third person I talked to said to “hold for a supervisor” and again I was put on perpetual hold music.

I sense this is the typical “wear down the consumer” approach used by many customer service centers. Make the consumer wait on hold forever and hope they go away.

For a cheap mircrowave, it is not worth my time to mess around with this. I though I would tell them about this for their own sake, so they don’t get sued. They treated me like dirt. Nice.

I am somewhat shocked (no pun intended)that the Sharp service center would try this approach when it comes to safety issues. I could understand it if it was the typical “let’s avoid a warranty claim” game. I can only hope this is not a design defect of some sort and one of these microwaves does not injure or kill someone. Sharp apparently doesn’t care.

I am going off to buy a new microwave today. Guess what brand it WON’T be?

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