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What do you do when one big online retailer rejects your product for having a manufacturing fault?

Why - you sell them on eBay of course, because they really don't give a toss what dangerous crap you sell there.

Here's one of those products with a very silly manufacturing fault involving a slight printing misalignment that defeats a safety function.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UALm8oomJRg

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Defective surge protector being dumped on eBay

These surge protectors were being sold as "returns" from a major online retailer at a suspicious price of £10 for four. I felt the urge to buy a set to check out. It turns out they were perfect for sale on eBay since they have at least one major manufacturing defect that means they can't indicate when they have ceased to provide protection, and may possibly continue to pass current even when they are supposed to have triggered their thermal safety device. eBay is full of this stuff because they have no easy way to report a listing for a dangerous product. However, they DO have ways to report items that will undermine their profit. It's a shame the UK electrical industry is price gouging SPDs (Surge Protective/Protection Devices), as it encourages people to use rogue imports like these - which may well work, but will not always be made with proper quality control. I have a UK compliant SPD on order for our exploration. If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. #ElectronicsCreators

Comments

Gadgetman

John Ward made a series of videos on SPDs around 2020. He featured similar orange units which had the same flag fault. I can’t remember which video this was shown in but here is the playlist:- https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVsHvs2Suqmo0GS6oa9l2kCN-A7QhIQe8

bigclive

Given how simple they are, I get the feeling that the only difference between the grey imports and super-expensive compliant ones is quality control and testing.

Ymir the Frost Giant

Well done for calling this out. Great soldering iron BTW!

Anonymous

Do you have some key words for this product? Seems there's lots of din surge protection devices at or around $15 which last I checked is something like £10... I want to let out some magic smoke and want to make sure I get the correct faulty ones.