I installed a brand new decorative double 13 Amp. switched socket today that a customer had bought. It was bought retail from a big shed. It is a “trendiswitch.”
When I plugged in my socket tester the left hand socket was good, but the right hand socket had an intermittent earth connection. The quality is rubbish, the reliability dubious and the safety factor is worrying. AVOID.
Update. After just trying to talk to the technical dept. at trendiswitch at P.O. Box 890 Forest Row, East Sussex I got put through to a Tesco voicemail phone. Not impressive. A Micky Mouse outfit.
“I reckon that Zoomup might have the moderators on his back”
Don't worry. Nobody has mentioned that Homebase and The Range sells them
Zoom has a Discussion nearly to himself!
There are quite a few accessories that use steel earth straps. I don't have an issue with the use of galvanised steel as most houses these days do not suffer from damp. But having replaced many disintegrated galvanised back boxes in damp walls I would worry about putting them in a damp building.
My daughter bought a house and I tested all the electrics were OK. There were cheap chrome faced accessories in some rooms. She complained that one socket caused the RCD to trip. I had a look and one of the screws holding the back of the socket together had fallen off and was in the backbox so the innards were loose and shorting when a plug was inserted. It also had lots of certifications stamped on the back. I have replaced them all.
Thats very poor looking quality and the application of the CE mark and BS No all look a bit dubious. You say the contacts were intermittant on the earth which is a critical safety feature, all the replies have also indicated they dont like the look of it. So what I would be doing is advising your customer ( You cant do it as you never purchased it, although you could provide a short report to help them) is along with their receipt for the purchase of the socket is make a complaint to their local trading standards department indicating they believe following your advise the socket was faulty/not fit for purpose and appears dubious. Trading standards should then follow thru with retailer, distributer and importer if need be and also get appropriate testing done on other samples to see if the socket/s are really fit for purpose and compliant.
Thats very poor looking quality and the application of the CE mark and BS No all look a bit dubious. You say the contacts were intermittant on the earth which is a critical safety feature, all the replies have also indicated they dont like the look of it. So what I would be doing is advising your customer ( You cant do it as you never purchased it, although you could provide a short report to help them) is along with their receipt for the purchase of the socket is make a complaint to their local trading standards department indicating they believe following your advise the socket was faulty/not fit for purpose and appears dubious. Trading standards should then follow thru with retailer, distributer and importer if need be and also get appropriate testing done on other samples to see if the socket/s are really fit for purpose and compliant.
GTB
Hello GTB,
my customer is a very nice sensible person. He only bought one double and one single socket from the range to see if he liked them when installed, and to get my opinion before buying more for his home.
He is going to return them to the retailer and get a refund. He was very happy that I spotted the defect. I have found from experience in some cases that the Trading Standards' Dept. is more concerned with defending the sellers than protecting the end users.
