Explosion warning: Do you own this IKEA desk?
An explosive accident with an IKEA desk has raised concerns about their products.
A mother has described the horrifying moment her IKEA desk “spontaneously exploded like a gunshot” in her home.
Samantha Bailey was at home one morning when she heard the bang. She ran upstairs to find a huge mess of glass shards strewn throughout her home. “
“It was raining glass all the way down the stairs, into the kitchen, the lounge room, into the furniture, it's everywhere,” she told A Current Affair.
“There are a lot of pieces that have split and sharded into a lot of pieces that, when it exploded, could have done a lot of damage.”
While luckily her 10-year-old son was not using the desk at the time she said she feared for other people who have the product in their homes.
"I'm really afraid somebody else might have this product in their house and they have a young child," she said.
Ms Bailey approached IKEA but was told that without proof of the purchase they could not offer any insight to her claim.
She was also told the desk had exceeded its own expectancy which Ms Bailey said was not satisfactory, refuting the claim that the three-year-old desk broke under the weight of the load on top of it.
"It's not a satisfactory response for me," she said. “I'm really fearful that this spontaneous explosion is going to cause a death.”
Another IKEA table which is in Ms Bailey's son's bedroom will be sent straight to the tip.
There have been other random acts of exploding IKEA glass tables around the world and one incident in Melbourne last year.
Choice Magazine's Tom Godfrey said he believed IKEA needed to take customer complaints more seriously.
"When this product fails, it fails catastrophically," he said.
"It's literally broken to pieces and those pieces are potentially dangerous."
Mr Godfrey urged people to report incidents to the regulator at productsafety.gov.au to pressure IKEA to call a voluntary recall.
IKEA issued a statement saying the company took its customers' safety "very seriously".
“Products at IKEA are designed and made of the highest quality and are subject to comprehensive safety checks,” the statement included.
IKEA added that although it was not common for their glass products to shatter it is still fragile.