The Brick offers to replace 'exploded' glass table after customer takes issue public

Shards of glass on the chairs and floor surround the base of the tempered glass table Calgarian Zarifa Hniedi purchased at The Brick.

After going weeks without any response from The Brick, a Calgary woman whose tempered glass dining table spontaneously exploded has been offered a replacement, but she doesn't want to welcome a similar table back into her home.

Zarifa Hniedi heard a noise one night in mid-January while she and her family slept and soon discovered her table, which she had owned for roughly three months, had shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces of glass strewn around her kitchen. Some shards landed in other rooms and, even weeks later, glass chips were still appearing throughout her home.

She reached out to The Brick through the store's website, as well as by email and phone, only to be told she wouldn't receive a refund, She was also informed that there wouldn't be an investigation into what she called "a safety concern" stating she "bought a ticking bomb and it exploded."

CTV News Calgary reached out to The Brick on behalf of Hniedi and, days after the original story on the exploding table aired, the company responded, stating tempered glass is designed in a way that, should it break, it will break into tiny pieces.

"This is a rare occurrence but does happen as a result of hard contact or heat to the glass," said Gregory Nakonechny, The Brick's vice-president of legal and corporate secretary, in an email sent Monday. "Contact or heat may expose an imperfection in the glass and cause the shattering. Shattering is preferred as large pieces of glass that may result from a breakage are more hazardous."

According to Nakonechny, The Brick launched a review of the product to ensure it's not hazardous or defective.   

"The product in the circumstances behaved as it is designed," he said. "We also have confirmed that this a rare incident and are not aware of other similar incidents with respect to this product."

Hniedi says a director from The Brick reached out to her, apologized and offered her a new tabletop, but she has hesitations regarding owning a glass table again.

With files from CTV's Kathy Le