We Read 387 Federal Complaints About Dishwashers. Every Brand Breaks Its Own Way

It usually starts with a smell! In one federal safety report from Michigan, an owner opened the cabinet under the counter and found the plastic scent of burning coming from the electrical box behind the dishwasher.

The wires inside were charred. The insulation had melted. The machine had run fine the day before.

Stories like that one are scattered across a public U.S. government database, and we decided to read them in bulk.

This study looks at dishwasher complaints by brand.. 387 safety complaints filed with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission between 2021 and September 2026.

We grouped them by brand and looked at what actually failed. The finding is simple and a little unsettling. Every major brand fails in its own way, and the pattern is consistent enough that you can almost guess the weak point from the badge on the door.

The surprise! dishwashers get reported for fire, not floods

Ask anyone what goes wrong with a dishwasher and they will describe a puddle. Water on the floor, a warped cabinet, a service call for a leak. That is the mental picture. The complaints tell a different story.

Across the 387 reports, the language is overwhelmingly about heat. People describe smoke rising from the door, a burning smell during the dry cycle, melted plastic, scorched wiring, and in 115 reports, actual flames.

Only 12 complaints were about a simple water leak with no heat involved. When something scares an owner enough to file a federal report, it is almost always electrical or thermal, not a puddle.

That matters because it reframes what a dishwasher actually is. It is not a water appliance that occasionally leaks.

It is a box of heating elements, control boards, and power connections that happens to use water. And each of those parts fails in a way that is specific to how each brand builds them.

Dishwasher complaints by brand (every brand has a signature failure)

Here is the core of the study. We took the six brands with enough complaints to say something meaningful, at least 20 each, and for every one we found the single part that shows up most often in its own reports.

We are not comparing brands against each other by raw count. We are asking a different question.. when this brand fails, what breaks?

The read on this is one line per brand, and each has a clear weak point. Bosch stands out most, so we will start there and then walk the rest.

Bosch has the most concentrated pattern of any brand in the data. 57% of its complaints point at one place.. the electrical connection, meaning the junction box or the power cord where the dishwasher wires into the home.

Report after report describes the same part, and many name the same optional Bosch power-cord box by its part number.

Several owners note that this exact part was the subject of an earlier CPSC recall, yet the reports keep arriving through 2026, some on models outside the original recall range.

If you own a Bosch, this is the spot to have a technician check, and it is worth reading our take on Bosch alternatives for 2026 if you are weighing a replacement.

Worth a quick note on wording: everyday Bosch gripes tend to be about drainage, which we cover in the most common Bosch dishwasher problem.

That is the annoying-but-harmless side. The federal safety reports here are a separate, more serious layer, and they point at the power connection, not the drain.

Whirlpool and Kenmore share a signature.. the control board. Around half of each brand’s complaints describe the electronic control or panel overheating, sparking, or catching fire.

In the Whirlpool family this clusters heavily around a handful of KitchenAid models that repeat again and again. LG leans the same way, though less sharply, with the control board its most-reported part at 26%.

Frigidaire and GE break somewhere else entirely.. the heating element. Owners describe the element melting through the plastic tub floor, leaving a burned hole.

For Frigidaire this is nearly half of all its reports. For GE it is the single most common part, though its pattern is a little more spread out than the others.

Three families of failure

Step back from the individual brands and the six sort themselves into three natural groups. This is not something we imposed. It falls out of the data on its own.

The full table, brand by brand

Here is every brand’s signature failure with the numbers behind it. Each share is the percentage of that brand’s own complaints, so it does not reward or punish a brand for selling more units. Copy any row to cite it.

Download the full table (PDF)

What this means for you

None of this tells you a brand is bad. A complaint count partly tracks how many units a brand sells, so a big number can just mean a popular brand.

What the signature does tell you is where to look. If you own one of these, you now know the part most worth a technician’s eye.

If your dishwasher is in the control-board group, pay attention to a panel that flickers, resets on its own, or gets warm to the touch.

If it is in the heating-element group, watch for a burning smell during the dry cycle.

If it is a Bosch, the power connection behind the machine is the spot to inspect, especially on an older install.

There is one habit that shows up again and again in these reports as the thing that turned a small fault into a scare.. running the machine unattended.

A striking number of the fire reports happened overnight or while the house was empty. The simplest safety step here costs nothing. Run the dishwasher when you are home and awake, not as you walk out the door.

If this study has you reconsidering your choice, our Dishwasher Finder matches you to a model based on real owner data in about ten seconds.

Methodology