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National Consumer Week: dangerous electrical goods In this feature l counterfeit goods l product safety l consumer education The true cost of a bargain Consumers may call them killer deals, but the National Trading Standards is calling them killer counterfeits. Louise Parfitt reports on the battle to remove dangerous electrical goods in the festive period – and beyond prOduct safety and Market surveillance package It’s been three years since the EC adopted the Product Safety and Market Surveillance Package. This proposes regulation on: ● Consumer product safety – to merge all safety rules for consumer products into a single piece of legislation replacing, among others, the General Product Safety Directive, in a bid to improve product identification and traceability ● Market surveillance of products to ensure a more collaborative and joined-up system, extending the powers of market surveillance authorities and placing greater emphasis on penalties The legislation has been delayed because members cannot agree on the proposed introduction of country-of-origin marking on consumer products, but Mark Gardiner, CTSI lead officer for product safety, hopes this issue will be resolved soon. If the UK is still part of the single market after Article 50 is enacted, then the legislation will apply to the UK. However, if not, Gardiner recommends the UK sets up national regulation that allows any goods purchased outside the UK to be stopped at the border. ‘People would only be able to import goods if carrying them themselves – anything purchased by post would be covered by regulation,’ he explains. Recently Underwriters Laboratories, the global safety consulting and certification company, tested 400 counterfeit iPhone chargers. The results were chilling. More than 99 per cent (397) failed a basic safety test. Twelve were so poorly designed and constructed that they posed a risk of lethal electrocution to the user. The issue of counterfeit and non-compliant goods bought online is now so serious that it took centre stage at this year’s National Consumer Week, which launched on 28 November. According to Ofcom, more than 70 per cent of adults in the UK now own a mobile phone, and while chargers sold with new phones are safe, it’s the cheap, fake chargers we buy as spares that pose the danger. Martyn Allen, from Electrical Safety First (ESF), explains: ‘While the terms “counterfeit” and “substandard” are not synonymous, it is not surprising that fake items take shortcuts or omit components, which impacts on functionality and safety and allows them to be sold for less than the genuine article.’ Many faults can be difficult to spot, because internal components often fail and can’t always be seen, and the chargers may not be fused properly. The counterfeits in the Apple test were bought online from around the world, which highlights another issue: the growth in unsafe products available online that bypass any regular safety checks. According to Mark Gardiner, CTSI lead officer for product safety: ‘An electrical conformity assessment won’t have happened; consumers are caught out because the chargers look OK on the site, but are manufactured outside the EU and are, in fact, very dangerous.’ Allen agrees: ‘With the increasing sophistication of counterfeiters, it has become increasingly difficult to tell (from the outside) if an item is fake or not.’ New research from ESF shows that today’s UK consumers are more likely to use online marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay than buy directly from retailers’ websites, and most admit they don’t give safety much thought. In the UK alone last year, 1.8 million mobile phone chargers were bought online. remove the online supply Concern about the dangers these products pose has driven consumer protection agencies, such as trading standards, ESF and the fire service, to organise a campaign to keep dangerous counterfeit goods – and especially cheap chargers – out of people’s homes. Mike Andrews, national e-crime coordinator for National Trading Standards eCrime Team (NTSeCT), explains: ‘We are working to remove cheap chargers supplied online. Alongside the product safety team, we’re starting dialogue with sites such as Amazon and eBay to make them aware of these dangerous counterfeits, so they can take steps to remove them by blocking the suppliers of these chargers.’ ESF has recommend that online retail portals take responsibility for the products sold through their services and take reasonable steps to inform their users of the law, while refusing to tolerate the listing of counterfeits. Andrews admits it is a challenge: ‘Apple has struggled to deal with [cheap versions of its chargers] because not all these chargers are trademarked and therefore they are not counterfeits. We’ve had to look at this as a safety issue as well, which is why the product safety team is now involved. ‘A lot of the chargers are not infringing trademarks, but they look the same as the genuine product,‘ says Gardiner. ‘The chargers are designed to look the same, but they don’t behave the same. The problems – from a safety point of view – are huge.’ raising awareness The work to prevent as many of these devices as possible getting into UK homes is only part of the strategy. National Trading Standards, CTSI and Citizens Advice are also raising consumer awareness by warning about the dangers of these devices. Andrews continues: ‘Looking at how we can raise general consumer awareness about the issue led to work with the Chief Fire Officers Association to deal with chargers already out there.’ Fine details are still being confirmed, but trading standards is putting measures in place to help fire and rescue services identify dangerous chargers in people’s homes when they conduct their safety visits. ESF is helping to develop cost-effective devices so fire officers carrying out the checks can test to see if a charger is unsafe, including verifying both the correct length of the plug pins and their position. There is also talk of holding a charger amnesty, where people can hand in an unsafe charger in exchange for a voucher enabling them to buy a genuine one, to add an extra incentive to encourage people to stop using cheap, unsafe chargers. Gardiner says the message from trading standards to consumers from a product safety point of view is that: ‘If it seems too good to be true, it probably is’. However, he recognises it can be hard to get people to respond to a safety message, because they are prepared to take the chance that nothing will happen. Interestingly, when trading standards have used the angle that fake chargers cause damage to the device they are charging, they have received more press coverage and public interest. He adds that consumers should be encouraged to ensure they buy from European vendors, not from the Far East. Some suggest that there is no reason why fake chargers should not be available, as long as they pass the standard safety test and do not infringe trademarks. Others have said that the manufacturers should bear some responsibility by looking at the cost of their chargers and attempting to close the price gap. Andrews hopes that by ‘disrupting the supply chain, it will make it harder for these products to reach the market in the first place’. As trading standards resources are spread ever thinner, joining forces with other agencies to tackle the issue of dangerous imports at source seems a viable way of dealing with a problem that is set to be around for some time yet – at least while people require a second charger for their Black Friday bargain. In a recent test on 400 counterfeit Apple chargers, 397 (more than 99 per cent) failed a basic safety test OperatiOn Jasper In the run up to Christmas, the fourth phase of Operation Jasper – Jasper 4 – gets under way. The nominal period is up until 10 December, but there will be activity either side of this. Andrews says: ‘We aim to catch, prosecute and convict as many people as we can who sell dangerous counterfeit goods online by working with the National Markets Group through Operation Jasper.’ The first big raid is planned for 4 December and has drawn on information gathered from the first three phases. ‘Jasper 4 is concentrating much more on looking at movement of vehicles and the supply chain, not just individual sellers,’ explains Andrews. ‘Credits To share this page, You might also like Louise Parfitt is a writer for TS Today. click on  in the toolbar The imitation game – October 2016 Images: Sergey Nivens / TaraPatta / Shutterstock National Consumer Week: dangerous electrical goods In this feature l counterfeit goods l product safety l consumer education The true cost of a bargainConsumers may call them killer deals, but the National Trading Standards is calling them killer counterfeits. Louise Parfitt reports on the battle to remove dangerous electrical goods in the festive period – and beyond