Scott tells Consumerist that he used some new oven mitts from IKEA last night, and found out that one of them is defective. Unfortunately, he learned this the hard way: by burning his thumb. Now, he’s not really sure what to do: the store is a few hours away, and he’s not really sure what he wants from the store in return for the incident. What would you do?

He writes:

My wife purchased oven mitts from Ikea, and I was the first to try them out. Taking a baking sheet out of the oven, I immediately felt searing pain in my thumb, and threw it on the stovetop. For the next 7 hours I put it in ice to help with the pain, and then had a pretty tough time falling asleep as I couldn’t keep in the ice.

Called Ikea, and was told to return the item to the store. I said that I live 2 hours away, and wasn’t taking a day off to do that. Then I was told to call the store the next day.

Upon inspecting the gloves, it’s apparent that one of them is thinner than the other and defective.

So I woke up today and have a blister forming, and am about to call the store. My question is: do you have any advice on how to go about getting some resolution to this? What can I expect? I don’t want to sue them, but I want … something. And of course they need to be aware of a faulty product. I got the sense that I may receive a runaround.

It sounds like the defective mitt had the wrong type of batting, or its maker omitted the batting altogether. Bad move.

As for dealing with the company, ask yourself: what would be an acceptable resolution? Suing for pain and suffering is too much, but is a replacement oven mitt not enough?

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