AFTER visiting IKEA’s store in Warrington, Cheshire in the U.K. last week, Tiana Lowe was convinced she’d scored an amazing bargain in the form of a one-pound (US$1.38) baking tray. However, when she went to put her new product to good use, she realized her impulse buy wasn’t all she’d hoped. The 24-year-old loaded the tray with eight potato cakes and popped them into the oven, but instead of being greeted with the scent of freshly baked goods, she was hit with the stench of burning plastic. It turned out she hadn’t purchased a baking tray, but instead a plastic serving tray, which had melted all over the inside of her oven. Oops! Opening her oven door, Lowe, from Westhoughton, Greater Manchester, was met with a cloud of smoke and a molten mess of melted plastic, dripping from the shelf. Photos show off the damage caused, with one image revealing the underside of the tray reduced to just eight potato cake-shaped plastic imprints, leaving her with a mess and a stinking kitchen that took two hours to clean. She later took to IKEA’s Facebook page to sarcastically thank them for “making serving trays look like baking trays.” However, her post unfortunately backfired when users mocked her and warned her not to “buy a chocolate teapot.” Despite this, one look at the Swedish company’s site reveals that Lowe wasn’t the only one to have made the blunder with the trays as two other disgruntled buyers gave the product a one-star review after they also melted in the oven. Lowe admits the “blonde moment” was “her error” but thinks IKEA should switch the tray’s color from metallic silver or redesign it so it doesn’t look oven-suitable. She said: “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 realized it wasn’t an oven tray, it was clearly plastic and it’d melted all over the entire oven. “IKEA need to make them actually look plastic and maybe change the color, or put a giant warning sign on them. But it’s my error not theirs.” Lowe has since had to spend 18 pounds on replacement oven trays but says she hasn’t been in touch with IKEA aside from the “humorous” Facebook post because she knows it’s her fault. “I’ve learned my lesson,” she said. (SD-Agencies) | 