Trading Standards? What trading standards?

The item arrived and appeared to be very good. In fact the device itself was very good but, having been in the electronics industry my entire life, I was more than slightly concerned about the mains cable that came with the thing.

It was the normal sort of thing: 1.5 metres long with a standard computer style IEC plug at one end and what was supposed to be a standard 13A mains plug at the other.

Except the only thing that the mains plug shared with a normal mains plug was the shape and positioning of the 3 squarish pins to go into the socket on the wall.

By law a 13A UK mains plug must conform to BS1363. This dictates, amongst various things, the physical size, the intended maximum current rating and that the plug must have a replaceable fuse link.

The device I was looking at was a moulded affair, stamped CE, stamped maximum current 10A and with no replaceable fuse. (See picture) Now the CE mark, for those of you who don't know, comes in two flavours. The first is "Conformité Européenne" ("European Conformity"). This ensures the buyer that this item is tested and acceptable for sale in the EU. The second is "China Export" which means sweet sod all!

And guess what? - the markings look absolutely identical!

Anyway since there was no fuse this plug was instantly a no-no legally. Any fault on the equipment it was powering and the only thing would be for the cable to melt as there was no fuse to blow.

And melt the cable surely would as, on removing some of the cable sheath, marked as being 18A capability, I was not surprised to find 3 cores of cable which I suspect wouldn't have carried even 5 Amps too happily.

Then I decided the meter out the cable and discovered that the live and neutral wires on the plug were actually reversed at the IEC connector.

Now this meant, combined with a lack of any fusing, that this cable was a death and destruction sentence just waiting to happen.

It was here that I tried to contact Bromley Trading standards.

I assume they were all asleep as no one bothered to answer the telephone on several calls over a couple of days.

Instead I went to the consumer direct website, got their number and called them.

The woman I spoke to was very helpful but......

And the but was that they can only refer the problem to my local trading standards. I wished her good luck on that but gave her all the details and waited to see what, if anything, actually occurred.

Yesterday I received a latter from Bromley trading standards headed with the name of the company from which the mains lead had come.

The letter is one of the best examples of corporate 'fluff' speak I have come across but which basically said that they weren't even vaguely interested.

Let me quote part of it " Unfortunately, we cannot investigate every complain, although we do try to prioritise complaints according to the seriousness of the allegation, taking account at the same time of any supporting intelligence which may indicate a wider consumer harm, with an emphasis on seeking to protect the more vulnerable consumers from rogue traders and scams"

In other words a piece of faulty mains cabling supplied in such a manner to be 1)a potential fire hazard and 2) a potential danger to life and limb doesn't rate checking whilst (from further on in the letter) snealing around playing devil's advocate stopping shops selling cigarettes to an underage kid who probably looks 20 anyway receives priority treatment.

So my advice is take a good long look at the picture of the plug shown in this post. If you've got anything like that with no replaceable fuse - REMOVE IT AT ONCE . You could send it to Bromley trading standards but I suggest, from my experience you might as well just bin it as trading standards in Bromley appears to be a misnomer.

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