Cheap chargers could electrocute 12:27PM, Tuesday 22nd July 2008
Counterfeit mains chargers could electrocute users and represent a fire risk, warns a UK council's Trading Standards body.
The chargers are mostly imported from Asia and sold through sites like Ebay.
Because of the high cost of original units, the trade-in replacement and counterfeit devices has burgeoned in recent years. Third-party chargers can cost a third of the price of official units from the manufacturer, so many owners have turned to auction sites for accessories.
The charger mentioned specifically in the warning bears the product code DE 62347066, which is a replacement unit for Nintendo devices.
"We are alerting consumers to potential electric shock and overheating problems we have found in certain non-branded gaming machine chargers imported from China and typically sold through online sites," says the warning posted on Buckinghamshire Council's Trading Standards website.
"The chargers were supplied as accessories for charging Nintendo DS and DS Lite machines, although they could also be used to charge Gameboy machines."
Last year Suffolk council issued a similar warning around cheaply made mobile phone chargers after one customer witnessed hers "explode" after she had plugged it in.
Thats why we don't buy chargers from 'that bloke down the market'
We brought 30 cheap acer chargers at my last school, and I was shocked at how easily the cases fall apart! I think we only had a few left in use when I left the school thankfully! They also had an alarming failure rate. Cheap chargers are a false economy.
Mike.
Thats why acers are so cheap. One of our teachers demanded he wanted an acer laptop. We said you do know that the customer support is rubbish and that the parts break easily? He ignored this and was still adiment that he wanted an acer, anyway, it came and after 18 months he has been through a hard drive and a CD drive.
I've had a few failed HDD and DVD drives in Acer laptops this year and a failed screen after just a few months.
Plus a tiny warranty on the keyboards and mice on their desktops.
Their terrible organisation of drivers (including the ATI video drivers for one machine which doesn't even have any ATI hardware inside it), or the wrong NVIDIA drivers for another machine.
And they told me I'd invalidated my warranty by installing XP - a "third party operating system" they called it.
Erm, if you buy the cheapest of anything its not gonna be great.
the school bought 60 acer laptops and I've yet to see a single failure. except for the science teacher who destroyed a lcd by dropping his laptop.
Was visiting a PCT in croyden a year or so ago, and forgot my nokia charger - oh, how useful, there's a bloke in a hat selling them.
Well it worked ok for ages, despite a worrying buzzing noise in-use.. then i pulled it out of the socket one day to find it was entirely held together by the "QA" label. Oh the irony.
This just illustrates the need for "INSPECTION AND TEST" prior to "taking into service".
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