Mobile Operator O2 UK Recalls Own Brand Phone Chargers
Mobile network operator O2 (VMO2) has put out a product recall notice for their own-brand 45W or 20W charger plugs, which follows some additional safety testing that took place after the operator said they “received a very small number of reports on a few faulty O2-branded plugs“.
The plugs, which were sold by O2 between August 2021 and January 2023, are not currently known to have caused any injuries or damage to property, but O2 have still opted to recall them. “A full investigation was conducted by the third-party supplier, Exertis. While they’ve confirmed there were no significant failures in testing, and there’s a very low likelihood of public risk, they’ve recommended a voluntary product recall, which we’ve followed,” said the statement.
Recalled O2 Mains Chargers
O2 Original 45W Mains Charger with USB-C to USB-C Cable
O2 Original 45W Mains Charger with USB-C to Lightning Cable
O2 Original 20W Mains Charger (without Cable)
O2 Original 20W Mains Charger with USB-C to USB-C Cable
O2 Original 20W Mains Charger with USB-C to Lightning Cable
Further details can be found on O2’s recalls post.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Recalls are expensive, they’re not “just a precaution”, and the complaints would be about specific problems. All of which says there’s specific safety failings of this adaptor, and that leads on to the question how an unsafe product got stamped with conformity assessment markings (visible in the photo) and released onto the UK market?
Because the EU’s CE mark allows factories to quite literally mark their own homework in the majority of cases. The UK had an opportunity to re-establish the proper safety conformity markings it used to have, but instead just established a CE mark of it’s own with all the same massive downfalls.
The only thing that the CE or UKCA marks tell you is that a Chinese factory cared enough about the appearance of safety to spend the half-a-second per product to laser print it on the plastic.
@Chris Some of the Chinese products just stamp a similar looking CE but not the same to prevent any trouble! Ultimately it now feels like the responsibility has just been shifted to the retailer. Its why you need to be very careful at a certain big site now that they just sell any old product for anyone (Personally I’d never buy a no-name/unknown mains powered item. Spending a few quid more for a known quantity that wants to protect its brand is worth it).
@Anonymous – Its possible this is just an issue with a small batch not noticed during manufacturing (maybe some bad soldiering that increases the risk of a short) and its just not possible to tie it down to a specific date range. Its cheaper to recall the lot than being sued for causing a death. I bet this is still safer than some of cheap junk you can get.
Big clive on youtube does teardowns of a lot of electrical products some chinese stuff is shockingly bad (forgive the pun). He recons the ikea usb chargers are one of the best from a value for money POV
@Cheesemp: It’s possible it’s a batch fault (eg capacitors from one maker), but the normal reasons for chargers failing product safety standards are things that are design related, such as the wrong dimensions on plug pins (risk of arcing and fire in the wall socket), or circuit board tracks that are too close together, or a casing that breaks open too easily revealing live parts. The UK safety regulator bought a load of chargers last year and tested them, and there were loads that were unsafe and had to be recalled and further sales prohibited. However, government have a solution to the problem of products that are unsafe and non-compliant: The clowns have decided that there is in fact too much regulation, and that’s holding back business, so they’re having a big review to reduce regulation and enforcement. The dribbling idiots of the Conservative party have said (pretty close to the words of the policy document) that regulation should be a last resort because markets are better at sorting things out. Obviously they’re blind and deaf when it comes to the very lightly regulated market for electric scooters, where there’s about three serious house fires a week caused by the things.
I vaguely remember hearing years ago that a death was cheaper than a car defect recall.
Fight Club? https://medium.com/@GallowayJefcoat/tyler-durden-was-right-about-car-recalls-d7fe8a6c9586
Lmao – I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re as garbage as their network