Lakeland Drysoon heated airer driving me mad!

[AlbertCampion]

We bought one of these about four years ago. It was a big outlay for the airer and cover but we figured it would be worth it cos Lakeland is a trustworthy make.

For the past year or so it's been doing this thing where it sometimes beeps continuously when turned on and refuses to heat up. Googling seems to indicate that this is a well-known fault with them. On Twitter threads, Lakeland say they will help if you bought the airer less than three years ago and have the receipt still. Otherwise, they recommend you get an electrician to fix it.

Does anyone else have the same airer and the same problem? If so, have you managed to fix it? We paid well over £100 for this and it seems mad to just accept that it's broken after only four years. We also don't want to pay lots for an electrician to tell us it's not fixable.

And if anyone has a different heated airer, would you recommend it? We definitely won't be buying Lakeland again if we do have to replace it.

Anyone got any advice? Just been hanging out washing and got the rage all over again! 😂

Take it to your nearest Lakeland shop they’ll exchange it I did this with mine that was probably older than yours. It’s when it’s not their own brand that you have the three year guarantee Lakeland own brand they’re more than happy to replace a faulty product

If it is faulty they will exchange it. Lakeland have an excellent reputation for customer service. We have also had ours for 3 years - the cover was split along
a seam, instant exchange, why we keep going back.

Really? Thanks - will try that tomorrow! Fingers crossed.

Hello. Just an update on this for anyone interested. I called Lakeland and it was bought over three years ago so there is nothing they can do. They have offered 10% off a new one as a goodwill gesture.

I think we'll be buying a new one from somewhere with a lifetime guarantee if possible. Lesson learnt!

I bought my first one years ago and it worked fabulously well until last year when it stopped heating up evenly but we'd had our monies worth so we were happy to send it to our recycling centre. Having had years of excellent use we decided to upgrade to a top of the range Dry:Soon - worst mistake ever. It doesn't heat up evenly or heat up hot enough to dry clothes in a reasonable amount of time. We finally had enough after some jeans were on it for 15 (yes 15) hours and they were still not dry so we bought a tumble dryer instead. It has been surprisingly cheap to run for a few hours a week as we got one with a huge drum. The super dooper 'luxury' Dry:Soon is sat in its poorly made cover in the downstairs toilet as I've not gotten around to returning it but we will never but one again.

I’d take absolutely no notice of customer services number to be honest with you. Just return it directly to one of their shops they’ll happily no questions asked refund you .

Thanks for this update-mine has just started doing the same thing- what a shame Lakeland know it is a known fault- built in obsolescence!
Did you find someone to fix it ?

It was more expensive to get an electrician to look at it, so we bought a new one in the end. Managed to negotiate a slight discount in Lakeland but it was very hard-won - they were very reluctant to offer anything at all. It's dented my confidence in their customer service a bit, tbh.

Well you did leave it for over a year before doing anything about it.

Hi, my Lakeland airer also randomly beeps non-stop (sometimes it works perfectly fine) but is at least is drying the clothes. It's over 4 years old and when I phoned the customer service up, they wouldn't/couldn't help at all! I asked if it could be repaired as apart from the beeping, it's working but the noise is incessant and annoying and they said that no repairs are possible and they can't do anything except suggest that I buy a new one! Of course I'm not going to do that when it's an expensive products that is still 'working' but surely, they could do something about the beeping. I was very disappointed with the customer service as they've been excellent in the past with other products which I've bought from them.
I also tried to leave a review warning others that this might happen to the airer but my review was removed from the Lakeland website as I'd bought the airer more than 3 years ago!

I've only ever had one Lakeland rack and it's still going strong 20 years later, with constant use for many months of the year. I dred it breaking and having to buy a new one based on such reports as OP's which I've read a few of.

I've read this thread with interest. I run a volunteer 'repair cafe' at my church, and one of these Dry:Soon towel rails came in with the constant beeping fault. I've had a play around with it, and have managed to fix it. It's actually an extremely simple fault with one of the components on the board. If you know what you are doing it takes 5 minutes and a £0.30p component to repair.

I'm going to post on my blog about it and will update here when I've done that, but if anyone wants to contact me I could help with a low cost repair (or give you the instructions) to prevent these from going to landfill (and saving you money).

James

Please do post a link to your blog/ how to repair James, that would be really helpful!

Also interested in the blog James ?

Thank you, James! My husband was going to have a go at taking it apart and it would be fantastic to know how to fix it. Please share your link to the blog.

Great that so many people are interested!

I've written up the repair on my blog here:

https://universaldiscoverymethodology.com/2024/01/11/repairing-a-lakeland-drysoon-clothes-airer/

There is some background information in here and extra details but the key point is that you need to replace a capacitor on the control panel, which is a small yellow rectangular plastic box.

In order to do this repair you do have to be able to use a soldering iron and have basic experience of working on circuit boards. Having said that, it's about as easy as a soldering job gets so would be ideal as a first project if you wanted to learn. There are lots of videos on YouTube which show you how to solder.

If this is a problem for you then I would be willing to do this repair for you at low cost if you could get the module out and send it to me. I have plenty of spare parts - I had to buy a pack of 10.

I'd very interested in any comments or feedback on the article too. It's really upsetting to realise how many of these have been junked (on Lakeland's advice!) when all they needed was a quick and simple repair.

James

Oh this is so brilliant - thank you so much for posting! It's too late for us as Lakeland said we had to give back our old model when we bought a new one at a discount, but hopefully it will help others. I quite agree that it is madness sending so many to landfill when they could be fixed.

Just adding to my original message to say that I later discovered that when the airer was beeping, it wasn't heating up but as the fault then was intermittent, and it would eventually turn on, I mistakenly thought it was heating and beeping hence my complaint was about the noise. Subsequently, it beeped continuously any time it's switched on but won't heat up.
I'm really grateful to James for sharing his repair as he's saved me money and time as it's been taking days to dry my clothes without the airer.

Yes - the constant beeping happens because the rail tries to engage the relay which controls the heater, this leads to the power failing and it resets, so beeps again, tries to engage the relay... and the cycle continues

So if you are hearing constant beeping then it won't be heating up.

Thanks for all the comments so far!

James

gw0udm you're a live saver! I was literally on the phone with Lakeland 20 minutes ago since I have the same issue (beeping noise) and they were advising me to replace it since I bought it more than 3 years ago. Just as I got off the phone, I came across this thread with your post and I'm currently going through your blog. Going to order the capacitor and hope this fixes the issue :)

That's great to hear - thanks! Do let me know (on here or the blog) how you get on. It's such a shame that Lakeland are taking this approach, they must now by now it's a common fault. Might be worth lobbying them to at least signpost the fact that repairs are possible.

Hiya by any chance do you know how to get the damn thing from beeping? ours is driving us crazy it's beeping 5 times probably every 30 secs or so, looked in the manual but nothings worked.

@Carrie2004 - James very kindly offers a fix to do it yourself or he can repair.

Thank you :)