Philips DST8050/21
VerifiedMPN: DST8050/211 review
Avoid this iron if you live in cold climate – I bought this iron from Amazon in December 2022. It is working perfectly fine until it meets Melbourne's winter temperature. The unit suddenly stopped heating up even though it has been plugged for more than 15 minutes. I contacted Philips customer care and we did some troubleshooting which involves putting the iron on its plate on top of hot towel for 3-5 minutes to warm up the plate. Apparently, the iron has been designed to shut itself off and not heating up if the plate's temperature gets below 20oC. Now if you live in Victoria or other southern states in Australia, you know that temperature inside our homes can get below 20oC anytime during winter. I have raised this design flaw concern with Philips customer service (not based in Australia), and they promised to get back to me on this issue again soon. For the time being, it looks like have to manually warm up the iron before it can warm itself up. What an inconvenient it is. This is a design flaw by Philips and they don't advise anything on this limitation in the manual or on the box of the product. I'm thinking to go to ACCC with this if Philips does not do anything to fix this issue. I'm sure I won't be the only one that has this issue. Philips, you need to be responsible for this issue!
Another update - I'm still waiting on Philips to arrange a parcel pickup for the iron unit. Apparently they are still waiting on Australia Post to get back to them. I can't believe that a company with size like Philips does not have a courier partner as such that this arrangement can be done in a matter of hours not days. I will keep posting updates on how Philips is treating their customer until this resolves, which I think will take a while. So much work for a $200 iron, but I don't think we should let big companies get away with their mistakes just because things are getting too hard.
Hi there, thank you for taking the time to write a review. We're doing our best to arrange the pick-up for you! Sadly it takes a bit longer than usual to arrange the pick-up, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime.
If you have any questions in the future, please feel free to contact us at 0800 658 224 (NZ) from Monday -Friday: 09:00 am -05:00 pm EST and 1300 363 391 (AU) from Monday -Friday: 09:00 am -05:00 pm EST. One of our colleagues will be happy to help you out
Kind regards, The Philips Australia Team
Quick update: the saga still continues. The iron has been sent back to Phillips more than two weeks ago. I was advised that their finance team has issued the refund and the money will be in my account 5 working days. This was 05/06/23. Now it’s been more than 5 working days and still no refund. Phillips Australia Team, please get your act together!!
This will be my last time buying any Phillips products. Customers be warned!
So at this stage, the iron unit has been taken by Phillips Australia and no money has been refunded. Is theoretically my iron stolen by Phillips Australia? Can this be considered as a fraud?
This is the last email that I received from Philips Home Living Support team (not based in Australia). It's been 3 weeks now since the iron was returned. I know that this thread is monitored by Philips, so it's either that they don't care about their customers or they think that their brand is too strong so they don't have any worry or they have a very bad processes within the company.
"This is Tony one of the supervisor from Philips Home Living. Thank you for your feedback. We understand where you are coming from. DO not worry because we already have all of the details needed and we have submitted the refund to the team.
We are checking this form the relevant team and we are taking this seriously. We will update you once we have received an update from the team. Thank you for your understanding and patience on this matter.
Regards, Tony Philips Home Living"
Hi, thank you for updating us. We understand that this may be taking longer than hoped for. As we understand, our team is currently working on finding a fitting solution for this issue. We thank you for your patience in the meantime. As mentioned before, if you do have any questions in the future, please feel free to contact us at 800 854 885 (NZ) from Monday -Friday: 09:00 am -05:00 pm EST and 1300 80 58 65 (AU) from Monday -Friday: 09:00 am -05:00 pm EST. One of our colleagues will be happy to help you out.
Kind regards, The Philips Australia Team
ProductReview.com.au has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence our content moderation policies in any way, though ProductReview.com.au may earn commissions for products/services purchased via affiliate links.
Just an update. Philips has contacted me and offer a refund as long as I can provide proof of purchase. They also offered a 50% discount on another model that they said doesn't have the same feature (cheaper) but I declined. I don't trust Philips brand anymore. Receipt has been sent to them and I'm awaiting their response on how they will provide the refund. The unit will also need to be returned at Philips cost. I will update again when this resolves.