UK: Woman thought she bought baking tray - but realised it was plastic when it melted in oven

A woman who thought she got a baking tray was shocked when it melted in her oven and she had to spend two hours cleaning the mess. It turned out she had bought a plastic tray.

Warrington, Cheshire: A woman who thought she got an amazing bargain when she bought what she thought was a baking tray worth £1 (Rs 103) was shocked when it melted in the oven.

Tiana, from Westhoughton, Greater Manchester, England, bought the TILLGANG tray from an IKEA store in Warrington, Cheshire last week. She loaded the tray with eight potato cakes and put them in the oven.

A few minutes later, she smelled something - and it was nothing like the scent of freshly baked cakes. Her kitchen was filled with the smell of burning plastic as the molten mess of the tray dripped inside the oven.

She posted pictures of the damage caused. In one picture, the underside of the tray was reduced to just eight potato cake-shaped plastic imprints.

We could smell burning, so we opened the oven to find a big puddle of melted plastic and lots of black smoke coming out. It was all dripping from the tray, then I checked and realised it wasn't an oven tray, it was clearly plastic and it'd melted all over the entire oven," Tiana was quoted as saying by Mirror.

She added, "The entire house stunk of burning plastic, so we had to spray the whole kitchen top to bottom and open all the windows. I stayed up for two



hours cleaning everything. A few days before I'd spent a good hour rubbing the oven completely clean, so a couple of days later I'd had to throw the oven racks away and scrub it all again. I had to clean everything in the kitchen as well because of the fumes from the plastic that would have gone on everything."

Tiana got the receipt of the tray and found out that it was a plastic tray. She admitted that she had not read the sticker on the tray.

"It didn't feel plastic or look plastic. It felt a lot lighter [than metal]. But I thought that was because it was smaller and it was only £1," she said.

Tiana took to IKEA's Facebook page and thanked them for "making serving trays look like baking trays". Some people mocked her, with one saying, "If dumb was a picture." There were others who said that they could have also mistaken the tray for an oven dish.

Tiana has spent £18 on replacement oven trays.

IKEA's website shows that Tiana wasn't the only one to have made the blunder with the tray as two other customers gave the product a one-star review after they also melted their trays in the oven.

An IKEA spokesperson said, "The TILLGANG tray is not a baking tray, but a serving tray made of plastic. Whilst this is communicated on the IKEA website and in-store we appreciate that its look can be misleading and will take this feedback with us for future development. We're sorry for the inconvenience caused."