Erika Augthun Shoolbred was more than a little surprised when her new hair dryer started spitting a jet of flame instead of hot air.
“Oh my gosh. I can not freakin’ believe this,” she said on her Facebook page last week. “Fire is coming out of the hair dryer.”
Augthun ordered the expensive OraCorp “Salon Grade” hair dryer from Amazon and had it shipped directly to her home in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She recorded the video below after discovering her hair-care product was actually a very weak electric blow torch.
“Amazon credited my account and gave me the contact info for the company but I have yet to hear from them,” she wrote on Facebook. “The drier was marketed as salon grade – the product has now been removed from Amazon’s site.”
“I’m still a bit shaken actually,” she replied to a friend on Facebook last Wednesday. “The dryer would not turn off. The [off-on] switch only made it more torchy. I knew I would have to get it submerged in water but first I had to pull the cord from the wall. That’s when I burned my hand. I then was shocked after pulling it from the wall that it still flamed up. I then ran it under the sink. I was fearful my smoke alarm would engage so I opened windows. My bathroom was like a fog and still smells.”
Fox News reports that the dryer was manufactured in China and is no longer available on Amazon.