… is that you can spot fakes easily.
I’ve been aware of these for ages but, up to about three weeks ago, had avoided actually managing to inadvertently buy anything that was supplied with one - but recently two have turned up.
The first was on an LED “grow lamp” - I fixed that by replacing the cord, there were a couple of other issues with the product but it’s not going to be used “unsupervised” anyway.
Today one arrived along with a 12V power supply - that’s going back because I can’t trust it if the vendor is going to ship such a clearly dangerous cable and the case is welded shut so I can’t check the quality myself.
The thought struck me though - it’s easy to spot a fake BS1363 plug. This one is the wrong size and shape, has no fuse (though there are plugs with fake fuses that are not connected) and - the instant give away - the earth pin is shrouded (it should be fully plastic for a double insulated appliance or fully metal).
Less easy to spot is that the cable is also fake in that it claims to be 0.75mm2 conductors (rated 6A) but has about 5x the electrical resistance that it should have. These things are dangerous even at their rated current.
However - the French/German CEE 7/7 and 7/6 plugs - while being harder to manufacture incorrectly don’t provide such obvious give aways. I presume that getting a fake and dangerous cable attached to one of these is just as likely as it is in the UK.
So - to those SFers who live in the UK - if you have any plugs which look like the above get rid of them, and consider getting rid of any appliance that was supplied with them.
For SFers in France - be careful and try to stick to reputable suppliers.