Profit-Consumer wars.  Is economic activity to maximize profits, at the safety and other expense of lower-end consumers, a form of war. Even without armies with traditional weapons, can the exploitation of financial cutting corners and caveat emptor take on absurd meanings where the item cannot be tested in the store.

The issue of this is indeed a form of war (GE as the hammer, us as the nail) as triggered by GE and its freestanding 30" cooktop range JB series, ours a JB630DF1WW.  We have discussed our dissatisfaction with safety and other basics with GE, who assured us our concerns would be forwarded to the design department. They had asked our opinion of our purchase, and we told them we were not pleased.  Issue 150223-005490. Not enough.



I.  Our new stove.  Not recommended here for purchase.

Here it is, in our kitchen, with the overhead light reflecting, nothing from the stove itself.  There are dials and no light to warn of a hot burner, as these do stay very hot even when not glowing red.

JB63 etc. Our specific model is JB63ODF1WW.

 

Is any burner still hot when you go to wipe the stove, or use its flat top for a useful other purpose?  Pass your hand over the top, hovering, to see what is hot.  Dangerous.  And the burns when you wipe the dishcloth over the hot top hurt.

 II.   OLD STOVE:  the good one. See how it looks like the new one?  We were fooled, too.

But the old one here has lights at each burner to show when it is on, or a burner is still hot.  The clock is visible even when the oven is on.

III. Practical complaints continue.  

• Inconsistent dial treatments, which direction to rotate as to the large burner with the small one inside. Clockwise for this, counterclockwise for that. Different directions.

• And, the dial for the big-little burner in the front used to work with a simple switch from big to little.  
• Now, to use the small burner, you have to get your glasses, squint, and start at the bottom and go counterclockwise up on the dial toward the high for that little burner, 
• Then you have to go clockwise on that same dial toward the high for the bigger size burner.  What??

Has marketing come to wars for profits requiring cutting corners, safety, against the cook and others cooking and at unnecessary risk. Wars take many many forms as one group and its interests seek to dominate others:  civil, cold covert, guerrilla, ideological, religious, conventional, Wiki goes on forever, but economic war is omitted. GE recall would be appropriate, as this stove is a danger for households with children, people with intellectual disabilities, the elderly, and me. Safety and the cook and her helpers come first.  Unreasonable risk of injury -- and easily corrected, since GE had it before right.

Why? An economic activity, whether colonialism or hype, geared to get advantage by persuasion as well as force (misrepresentation, omissions of important information) and not necessarily by merit, legitimately a war?  Apply warfare to the selling of goods where the seller seeks and gets unfair advantage, obscures danger.