Customers buying 'safety critical products' should be required to provide minimum contact details, says expert.

Introducing the requirement would mean that buyers could be contacted directly in the event that safety critical faults are identified with such goods, product safety law expert Fiona Caldow of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said. The move could help save lives, she said.

Caldow was commenting after a manufacturer of gas cookers stepped up its efforts to raise awareness of potentially deadly faults with some of its products.

Beko has said that some gas cookers it manufactured before 2009 may contain a fault that can result in the potentially lethal build-up of poisonous gases when consumers operate the grill part of the cooker with the grill door closed. Eight people have died as a result of the defect, according to a report by the BBC. The company has so far been unable to trace 480 products it believes "pose a serious risk" to owners' health, the report said. It is trying to reach more than 6,000 owners of the models it believes are affected.

"When the grill burner is on, the grill door must always be in the open position," Beko said in a product safety notice published on its website. "If the grill is operated with the grill door closed, the air supply to the grill burner is restricted which can cause extremely dangerous levels of carbon monoxide to be produced which can pose a very serious risk to health."

Trading Standards has also published a notice warning about the defective models. 

In addition to its website notice, Beko is to place adverts with several media outlets as well as undertaking a targeted advertising campaign on caravanning websites in a bid to raise awareness of the problem, according to the BBC's report. The company first issued a product recall in relation to the safety concerns in 2008.

Caldow said Beko’s experience is indicative of the difficulties producers usually have when trying to successfully effect a product recall.

"The proportion of successfully recovered product is frequently well below 50%," Caldow said. "This means that the rest of a potentially dangerous product remains in consumer hands and use. It underlines the importance of traceability: being able to identify affected batches easily; and most importantly of all having a plan to work out where the product has gone."

"Effective product tracing is what makes a huge difference to the success of the recall. Effective use of all channels to the customer, including, in appropriate cases, social media is key. Beko’s targeted advertising campaign on caravanning websites is an example of targeted routes that can be used," she said.

"However, safety-related recalls are not unusual, particularly for electrical and gas appliances. This raises once more the important question of whether, in order to save lives in future, it is time to require customers to provide minimum contact details when purchasing electrical, gas and other safety critical products. Such a step would not avoid the need for recalls but would raise the level of their effectiveness dramatically," Caldow said.

In its product safety notice Beko said it "sincerely regrets any incident linked to any of our products" and that it takes safety "very seriously".

"When we do need to perform a corrective action, we try to inform all our customers as quickly and efficiently as possible," the notice said. Owners of affected models can arrange for a free safety inspection and modification, the company said.