Besides miscellaneous small parts, our dishwasher needed a pump after four years and a control unit—the main circuit board—after eight. The circuit board that failed has been causing fires in the United States, enough fires that Asko have recalled them. However, Asko's North American distributors will not recall them in Canada, although they sell the same models here that they sell there.

Not only will Asko not repair the dishwashers, they charge Canadians nearly twice as much as Americans for the parts. In Canada these cost enough to buy a new dishwasher from Sears with enough money left over to buy dishes to fill it. I sent Asko in Sweden an e-mail describing the situation above. Seven weeks later I received a reply stating only that Asko were forwarding my e-mail to their distributor.

Meanwhile, instead of staring at a broken dishwasher, we asked an American friend to order the parts for us from the distributor, the circuit board plus two other parts that the U.S. distributor told us were part of the recall for our model. One of those parts turned out to be for a different model and the second was superfluous because it was included with the board. The distributor refused to take either of them back. After starting the repair, we found that we also needed two pieces of plastic trim that we bought in Canada for another hundred dollars.

The circuit board came with installation instructions that said to check whether the burned area was near certain components, because this would indicate that some other component had caused the board to fail. The burned area was distant from every component listed, so we installed the new board. Two days later the dishwasher failed again, accompanied by the small of a burning circuit board.