I bought a set last year through a company advertising on FACEBOOK - i left a facebook comment stating the lights were dangerous and within 5 minutes i was reported for 'harassment' and got an official facebook warning - and they removed my comment .
Clive, you might just have saved my family’s life. I bought this exact set from eBay a few weeks ago. I hadn’t got round to putting them up yet as they were so tangled. The same unconnected fuse,no sand in the fuse either, at that point I just put them in the bin. So again …thank you.
Great work Clive, if rather depressing. The fake fuse issue is now so big it's hard to get genuine fuses (with sand in, correct ends and right blow current), but actually bypassing the fuse completely is a new one!
Here in the U.S., lots of devices (space heaters, fans, christmas light strings, etc.) include a fuse in their plug, even though our plugs aren’t universally required to be fused.
Depressing indeed. Evidently "Build Back Better™" in the current year means burn the house to the ground. You will be building back, but not by your choice, or even better for that matter.
I saw the title of this video, and immediately thought: "EXCELLENT!" Nice to know that the supply chain troubles haven't completely disrupted sources of dangerous christmas cheer!
What gets me is that they went out of their way to design a UK plug that holds a fuse, but doesn't use it. You'd think it'd be easier just to use a premade plug that actually works, or to just design it to use the fuse (since they basically already did), but no. I'll give them the rest of the safety issues, it's all laziness and cost-cutting. But the plug is just malicious. And this is coming from an American, who's accustomed to not having fused plugs... with the interesting exception of Christmas lights.
I would have been really interested to see the inside of the plug. Part of me wonders if they are taking a (albeit non compliant, because of the Earth pin) standard plug design that would normally require a fuse, and shorting the fuse holder, or is it a non standard design where the fuse holder is not part of the circuit. When the UK government mandated that all commercial electrical devices for plugged use must come pre-fitted with a plug, they doomed us to cost cutting measures. This led to moulded plugs becoming the norm, and with it, a massive amount of danger. We have no idea what is going on inside most plugs. So then you have the internal struggle of "Do I say hang the warranty, cut off the moulded plug and put on a known safe plug, or cross my fingers and hope the plug is good". Sorry, sudden tangent to a rant! Regardless, it it's more than a bit annoying that somebody comes up with this sort of crap, and cares nothing about the consequences. It also annoys me that it brings out the unsavoury side of me that doesn't object to connecting those people's nipples to a high voltage as punishment.
@@damionlee7658 But why not have one government mandated safe design that can benefit from economies of scale? seems like that would be the cheapest and safest, while also not requiring soldering and wiring skills.
@@poiu477 in a way, we were there. The UK plug standard (BS1362) had effectively created a situation where plugs were incredibly similar from one plug manufacturer to the next. Plugs were (and still are) cheap, and easy enough to fit with just a basic screwdriver (or more often a dinner knife). Even so, there were "fake" plugs that didn't meet the BS1362 standard making it into the supply chain. It seems that taking action against importers and stockists of these plugs was not the way the government wanted to handle things. So the device manufacturers inherited the cost of attaching the plugs. But I suspect the driving force that got us to these single piece moulded plugs that are on most devices, was the cost of attaching the plug, rather than the plug itself. Because of that, a single mandated design that could potentially reduce the cost due to scale production wouldn't really make any difference if you still require people to manually wire the plugs into the cable. Manufacturers of electrical devices would want it to be a design where they don't require a person inserting wires and tightening screws to attach it. So we still end up with these horrible moulded plugs, where the consumer can't see inside it. In effect, making it a lot easier for these unscrupulous manufacturers of dangerous electronics that do not meet standards to make and use fake plugs. Personally I would happily scrap the legislation that requires plugs be attached by device manufacturers, making it easier to have legislation that made these single piece moulded plugs illegal.
@@poiu477 The short answer is that we do have an array of safe to use designs for different purposes. Our plugs are regulated to be safe so lon as they pass trading standards checks, which some online retailers bypass(such as Ebay). For instance some products dont require an earth pin connection as the product is doubly-insulated by design (symbol = one square inside another square) and so the plug is simply moulded with a plastic earth pin to open the shutters. Some products have unique plugs and sockets as an anti-tamper measure (UK hospitals will have some of these so that the cleaners wont bother unplugging certain life-saving appliances). Generally you don't need a soldering iron to wire up a UK plug either, that's mainly a US thing. The plugs you can take apart with a screwdriver are quite cheap to scale up while still being very safe and easy to re-wire (screw-driver, 10 minutes and maybe a pair of scissors cheap) while moulded plugs generally just need a fuse change (though the earth pin can snap under stress so needing to cut the end off and replace it with a standard plug isnt rare).
I remember buying an LED necklace while I was at Disneyland years ago for like $25. I spent the better part of a few hours waiting in line analyzing the circuitry; it was remarkably close in design to those large stars you have. I'm betting it was over 90% profit for Disney, if not the better part of 99%
A few years ago my uncle wanted me to look at some Christmas lights he'd gotten new from a flea market. It turned out they'd stopped working because there was zero strain relief on the mains wires going into the control box, and just moving them around had broken the solder joints. It was also far too thin of a wire. I refused to fix them and told him to throw them away. I think selling cheap imported Chinese crap is probably a pretty common thing at flea markets now, and people just assume that anything you buy in this country must be safe. Same with junk off of Amazon. Some places will even put counterfeit UL stamps on stuff, though, so you just never know anymore.
i bought some on ebay this year opened up string wire broke multiple places unwinding them. asked for refund and all they wanted to offer was 4 quid. ended up setting trading standards on them got refund and the store vanished.
The counterfeit CE mark has become so common here that if it wasn’t so dangerous it’d be almost laughable on some of the items I’ve seen it stuck on to. We refer to it as the ‘Chinese Export’ mark now
For the UL thing I believe there is supposed to be an number registered to the product that is supposed to be able to looked up to confirm the certification.
The wife order some of these last week from eBay. The plug is different to the one you have Clive, doesn't even have a fake fuse, it actually looks like it's caught on fire. The circuit board is less and doesn't even have the extent of stuff on yours. Truly shocking but safe to say I said to the wife these are in no way being plugged into the house. I wouldn't even these plug into my worse enemy house. Full refund from the seller on eBay.
That is the fastest way to improve the electric safety standards right at the production lines. If enough customers reject (and report!) these Death Traps, it will hurt the manufacturer financially. It's a pity that so few people are able to check their purchases for safety violations.
"The wife order some of these last week from eBay." - And she is one of probably thousands who have done so. Your wife obviously didn't know how dangerous this crap is, and she isn't expected to. It is up to arseholes like eBay and Amazon to do the ethical thing and ban dangerous goods for sale on their respective sites. If I'm not mistaken, isn't this part of their respective "standards"?
@Jeremy Head Rather than politely ask for a refund, report the trader (who knows exactly what they are illegally importing) to Trading Standards. When enough reports come in they take direct action.
An advantage to having Xmas in summer in the Southern Hemisphere - we run Solar Powered Xmas lights ;) Mind you, it does get late in the evening before you can see them running :)
Thanks for sharing how it can be for you guys at your side of the world. I never really thought about those consequences. I usually just remember how unusual it would be to us northerners to experience December as the hottest month of the year.
@@TrondBørgeKrokli Yes feel pity for all the store Santa's, sitting there in a felt suit, with them generally losing a few kilograms of weight over the 2 week period. Though many of them compensate by drinking beer to excess as well.
@@redace001 😆😁Haha, that would be something I don't know if I want. Anyway, I would need reincarnation to do something like that, unless we could live as long as we wanted, as long as we didn't die from accidents or other kinds of violent causes.
@@TrondBørgeKrokli You could probably use a zero point energy pen to stay alive (that won't work) but hey, think if what number Playstation would be on then!
This is quite disappointing, not that they are making cheap dangerous stuff, but that they are making it even more dangerous by faking security features to make it look less cheap than it really is.
You can see the IP44 and double insulated symbols on the plastic case, i'll wager there is a CE mark there as well. It makes a total mockery of the system and Ebay and Amazon should be prosecuted for failing to sell safe goods. We bang on about facebook putting profit over user safety, same should apply to these two online tat bazzars.
That control box is practically unchanged since the 1990s, with the exact same chase patterns too (combination, in waves, sequential, etc...). I did a teardown of one many years ago when the string went bad, and I distinctly remember the thyristors/TRIACs being TO-220 or a similar package, rather than the flimsy little TO-92's seen here. I guess when switching LEDs there isn't a need for the larger components. They came at quite a premium back then though, I think I remember paying close to $20 US for a simple string of 140 bulbs.
Best part of eBay is how much dangerous (aka fun) stuff is available on it! I got a couple strings of these lights a while back and the little controller housing, with mains-referenced everything barely inside, seemed to be made of a 1mm thick material that had the approximate physical properties of a stiff variety of cheese.
Related: I saw a weird thing on Amazon. It's fire extinguisher patches that go on outlets. (firecop/kordo, appears to be south Korean I think) In this age of fake fuses and faked UL stickers I gotta wonder if that concept would work?
I hope those pens are never banned. Its literally the only way someone can get a sample of thorium for an element collection that isn't in a sketchy form like a antique gas mantle. The mantles are fragile and can easily release the thorium oxide. Those pens are sealed by a press fit or screw thread which is much safer.
I had a look and could not find a critical mass for the thorium oxide. So I assume it's rather safe if someone hordes those pens. Maybe I can get enough to build a rtg with their contents. But I want to do more research before I attempt that.
@@heyarno You cant do either with thorium. Its a fertile material meaning it cannot have a critical mass. Thorium's half life is very long, 14 billion years long, which makes it not very radioactive, which means it will not have any decay heat to give anything power. RTGs run on heat produced by decaying elements. Elements that produce heat while they decay in large quantities are usually the boogiemen of the nuclear world because they are typically long lived enough to hurt you fierce and short lived enough to be very radioactive. RTGs basically take hundreds and hundreds of thermocouples and string them together like a massive chain of batteries. They typically use something with a medium length half life like Plutonium 238 (88 years) cesium 127 (30 years) or strontium 90 (28 years). You will note the last two radioisotopes are also two major components of nuclear waste and are responsible for most of the radiation hysteria. Their half lives are much shorter, they are expensive to acquire (Plutonium 238 is just about impossible to get, and its illegal to own any plutonium in the US.) Cesium 137 and strontium 90 can be gotten, but you only can get a tiny little spec and its in a sealed button. These are for calibrating Geiger counters and cost upwards of 100$ each, also they will most certainly kill you because they can mimic calcium, lodge in your bones and give you a nice steady dose of radiation for the rest of your live. Why would you want a RTG anyways? They are bulky weigh a lot and don't really give out much power. No more than say what it takes to run a microwave and that's from something that costs millions to build and weighs close to half a ton.
i'd rather use a slightly radioactive pen from time to time than burn down my house (at best, rather than the whole neighborhood), that's the difference
These make my (US) ancient incandescent strings with super thin wire carrying actual current seem safe by comparison. Also in re meter, my BK at work beeps angrily at you if you enter a voltage range with the leads in the amps or mA jacks. It has saved me from going bang a couple of times.
Those strings may be safer than you think. Due to the thin wire, they often include a fuse in the plug. ruclips.net/video/K_q-xnYRugQ/видео.html (Most of that video is a rant about how most extension cords *do not* actually have fuses.)
I wonder if there are Christmas lights on eBay that are just entirely fake: where they've left out the wiring and the LED's and there's just a blank circuit board or a dead moth or a plastic middle finger in the control unit.
I have a bucket full off them in my garage as LED spares all removed from schools during P.A. testing. Often in nursery and reception classes, one school had 8 off the damm things that a teacher brought in from using at her wedding. How there has not been a death or fire is just pure luck. One site had just weaved them into a black felt background, and you could feel the heat from the underated resistors.
These remind me of 5 net light sets I bought years ago, both mains cables in the plug were black and upon testing, it was shoving rectified mains into a low voltage (single insulation) cable, all 5 were destroyed in due course, 24v is the way forward with regards to safety around my young nephews!
I started watching this with skepticism thinking the lights were battery operated but what you point out is very disturbing. The lights are connected to 240V main with no isolation or functioning fuse sending that 240V into a string of lights that could easily come off and expose the terminal wires. The controller does little to prevent electrical shock and could potentially overheat. I can't imagine how anyone would build or sell something like this. It reminds me of some stranded wire I bought on ebay that had less conductor and more insulator than it was supposed to. That is dangerous because with less conductor the wire can't carry the required load and could overheat.
It just doesn't feel like Christmas until I've been shocked by some ridiculously unsafe lighting product at least once. Good old single insulated/kind of insulated/never grounded has always been the standard for US decorations.
Think of how many families will be saved from these hazardous items because containers full of these are trapped on ships anchored off the coast of Long Beach !
"always so pleasing dangerous" hahaha i love it. I bought 4 or 5 sets of these cheap leds (only red leds) from ebay about 3 years ago now for 2 euro a set, still working fine, a wire came loose on one set so i soldered it back but that is the only issue i have come across (aside from the constant risk of electric shock) Very very surprised they have lasted for this long
I had a housing "inspector" try to make me get rid of all my lovely 1960's MK bakelite plugs because "pins not sleeved".. their provided sample "suitable replacement" was the nastiest cheapest garbage I have ever laid eyes on. I have stuck with my MK plugs.. if it lasts 50 years it's good enough for me.. and the pins don't wobble.. plus unlike the "replacement" they don't melt when you put a fan heater on them.
You should start your own safety certification organization, with your face as the seal of approval. See how long before it starts appearing on these products.
The sleeved earth pin is what bewilders me. I would think it was actually CHEAPER just to have a simple brass rectangle than to mould one with a recessed part for the plastic sleeve. Unless they can make a saving on a couple of grams of brass per earth pin?
@Simeon Walker Noticed that the 'fuse' says FUSE on it in capitals; UK plug fuses don't say 'fuse' on them at all, just the rating and British Standards number 1362...
Basically the only good thing about these from a safety point of view is the moulded cord grip on the plug, the rest is rubbish. The vendor should be prosecuted by trading standards or BSI for selling such dangerous stuff, but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without a set of dodgy lights. Before I forget Clive, seasons greetings to you and thank you once again for all your superb content.
Thanks for sharing big Clive and making the general public how dangerous these are as I have always gone for battery operated led Christmas lights apart from my fibre optic Christmas tree which I bought from b and m a few years ago
Great work Clive. a) of course eBay didn't give a toss, they are American: all that matters is profit. b) I really don't understand the plug, surely it costs as much to make that fake plug as a real one.
Not just profit, they don't give a toss because the American way of thinking is to leave people do whatever the fuck they want with their money, and let them live their lives without constant interference from nosey air thiefs who want to control every aspect of everybody's lives.
ebay is luxemburgean but that does not matter. they get the provision for every item sold and so they go on. they don't care. just like amazon doesn't care and sells same crap.
I bought an anglepoise type lamp on ebay thinking it would be hard for them to mess up a basic lamp. Eventually it started flickering for no apparent reason so I pulled it apart and found that the terminals in the fitting had fallen apart so the wires were loose. The insulation had gone brittle and fallen off so the bare wires were floating around inside the metal casing which of course wasn't earthed. Then I found the plug wasn't fused either so the thing relied on the 32A breaker for protection. I'd never have used it if I'd known what to look out for when I bought it.
I've had a set I purchased from Amazon back in 2017. I've used them every year since and always on the static setting. Only this year, half of the stars have failed and then, while browsing RUclips, I saw this video and have since unplugged them. I'm definitely going to mod them though, as I have 20m of warm white copper wire style Mini LEDs which I couldn't find a place for them this year.
I've got a lot of cheap holiday lights around the house, purchased online, but they're all battery powered or run on 5 volts using quality power supplies.
for outdoors, I use the battery ones from Wilko, they have a timer on too, so you turn em on about 16:30 Hours, and they turn off after 8 hours and then come back on at roughly 16:30 Hours the next day. three Duracell batteries, might need two sets of batteries for the month
Bought a touch-dimmer module from ebay to replace one that had suicided itself. It was cheap, so I wasn't expecting anything 'flash'. The original one was surprising as to how much safety was packed into it. It had an input fuse, a thermal fuse, a MOV & safety-rated capacitors. The ebay one had NOTHING protecting it (or the user)! Wrote an appropriate product review & within 2hrs, all reviews mysteriously vanished from the sellers page. 😒
I once tested 'accidentally' those thin wires shorting C25 MCB and actually mcb tripped. They just blew clear off the controller circuit board. Because what happened, was that wires that were soldered to controller pcb were too-long stripped of insulation, and when i twisted the controller, they shorted together. There was a spark and the cable just shot off the plastic case xD blowing C25 breaker. But rest of the cable was intact, not smoking or anything. And the short-circuit current had to be over 200A which i find surprising, considering how thin are those wires and should have rather high resistance.
I remember getting a small set of Christmas lights that was built exactly like this after being roped into giving money to an unnamed charity. It had a melody function (which turned on every time you unplugged and plugged it back in and was exactly like those beeping Christmas cards), and one of the wires came off, killing one of the channels. Instead of fixing it, I ended up just ripping it to shreds and extracting the LEDs from it.
As you kinda mentioned at the end, these would be fantastic candidates for carving up into smaller battery-operated strings, then maybe handing them out as party favors at a Christmas party.
I've not even got all that far through the video (just after you've investigated the 'fuse') and I'm already horrified that there are so many things wrong. I can only imagine it gets worse from here on in...
I avoid anything electrical on Amazon that is "Sponsored " purchased some 13 amp plug in night lights, out of 2, only one worked, no CE marking, pins were metallic coated plastic. Fully refunded. Disgusting what's sold here in the UK . Thanks for sharing.
There was a radio ad today to say make sure we look for the ce mark on all electronics. These lights have the ce mark, and of course they do. If these folks are going to make something dodgy, they will not worry about faking a ce mark!!
These things are truly lethal crap, a fantastic bit of public information given here Clive. We ended up with a set of these last year and seeing exactly the same points as you raised, I would not have them in the house. So for a bit of a laugh (in the name of science) and to prove my point I decorated a very cheaply acquired real Christmas tree and placed it outside. One rainstorm and two days later they’d shorted out to a mass of burnt wiring, tinsel and burning to parts of the tree. Had this been indoors, whilst it may not have got wet, the resulting fire would have been a lot more intense.
Ouch. I’ve seen video of a Christmas tree going up. All that sap is just oil so they burn like crazy. It was truly frightening how quick the room went up. Less than 30 seconds and everything in the room was alight. Stuff sold like this should be a prosecution and a jail sentence causes you could be selling someone a death sentence.
In tropical south India we've used these same quality Chinese stuff every year, outdoors, and sometimes they even last a couple of Christmases. Never had a fire but then the humidity is so high it's hard enough to do on purpose. As for electrical safety, I will argue that alcohol made us immune to the puny 230V we get. We just cut off the plugs, splice different sets of lights in parallel, and plug in the now-bulked up wires into some dodgy extension that doesn't have a shutter and isn't waterproof. Our tradition is to pick a tree outside as the Christmas tree (not a conifer, we have tropical trees) and it sometimes rains on Christmas. Not a problem.
@@SodAlmighty I've got a billion replacements ready. But yeah, we are rather casual about electrical safety. Back in the day when the power company was a corrupt socialist mess, the actual repairmen didn't care so neighborhood people would just fix things like blown fuses on the public power distribution lines by ourselves. Well I was young so I watched.
@@SodAlmighty Another (relevant) south Indian Christmas tradition is to have fireworks on Christmas (so much for a silent night). One year we managed to set fire to our nativity scene in the house with a wayward explosive rocket that went right in. Fun times
I got 1000 LEDs string from Aldi for 100PLN (20-25USD), it uses some kind of a plug-in converter and switching unit (complete with a cheap Chinese IR remote!). It says it's usable outside and it looks quite safe, especially with the voltage on the string being 12V i think. A nice feature: other than compulsory blinky modes, it's also a 4-level dimmer and a timer switch. The packaging cardboard was pretty much in pieces, but it works fine, I think I can recommend that. We'll see how it stands after a month or so in sub zero temperatures.
I could be wrong but I think that (at least in Australia) if you buy an item from overseas, you (as the importer) are responsible for the compliance of the items to the local regulations. This goes for any item that has to meet any regulation or other compliance requirement. An insurer may have reason to invalidate a claim if a non-compliant item was at fault.
I use these for a Christmas Lightshow. I took the entire board out and wired them to my own full bridge rectifier. Then I put it back in the box, and glue it all shut. I don't want them to blink because I use a controller to turn them on and off. I thought about doing what you said to make them stay constant, but I wanted noting to do with that crappy board.
I ordered a LED lightbox for artwork years ago, the first plug was broken and unsafe, got a replacement, the next one the plug was apart with internal wiring and components already exposed out of the box. Neither was a fixable thing without buying new power supply, re-wire, needless to say went to another supplier to get one.
ebay is just a marketplace. ebay doesn't sell you anything. It's the sellers there that can offer good or bad stuff. And it's the buyers responsibility to judge whether something is a worthwhile deal or not.
At least the plug conforms to Chinese BS 1363 (BullShit 1363) Complete with sleeved Earth, a handy fuse holder & free explosive fuse. It’s amazing eBay still gets away with this and scary how many tight budget places like colleges buy non-compliant electrical goods because it’s cheap. And also PAT testers who don’t pick this shite up.
I tested my suicide cord with a PAT tester device.. just a cord with 3 bare wires connected to croc clips.. It passed with flying colours. (yeah.. sometimes you just want to power only part of a circuit board.. in one case a multi function oven with heaps of mains connected relays and a low voltage transformer section.. didn't want the whole board live.. just the transformer primary)
There’s very little ‘safe’ on eBay when it comes to electrical items. That’s pretty much the norm now. They won’t stop it because they make too much money out of it.
I have these exact same lights! I never used them, they look way to dangerous. I plugged them in for a minute and the plastic smell was crazy lol. Maybe I will take them apart, good idea.
In my country (Romania) almost all the christmas lights are poorly made and from the first unbox the soder joints from the wires break and make a huge flamey thing on the hole wire. (made in china). Everytime I buy some I open them check the solder joints, resolder them and then I apply hot glue so that they don't break.
I have reported products to eBay, and I'm thinking that they believe that it's just my opinion on those products. I bought an inverter that the seller claimed was 3000 wats, but it would have been closer to about 300. There was no reprimand, no warning, and they are still selling that item. Both the price and the dimensions should be indications that it's false advertising, but they continue to be a seller. They were selling mig welders for about £30, and the shipping alone would cost that much.
Makes sense considering these cheapie Chinesie suppliers make eBay and Amazon a lot of money. Such a shame we live in such a money driven world. Oh well, the most we can do is just not buy from them and advise people against buying from them and inform the public of the potential dangers or scams of cheap products like this.
In my opinion Amazon is far worse than eBay for this - with eBay you can usually tell ahead of time when you're getting crap and individual sellers have their own feedback ratings. With Amazon inventory is co-mingled to the point where counterfeits are mixed in with real hardware and because they (Amazon) act like a major supermarket people don't think they're buying crap that will kill them.
One of the reasons why I avoid buying such strings of lights is their horrible construction. The box, the wires, the connections - everything welcomes terrifying consequences; it looks like they designed and manufactured them as a disposal decoration which you new buy every Christmas until it burns down your apartment/house, or you get killed, or your pet chews it and get killed by it. The other reason is that their flashing is painful to watch.
So you need an insulation transformer to run this set somewhat safely. The flasher circuit is totally useless, I would just remove it. It might be interesting to add a capacitive dropper in series.
that's what I tend to do when I get them, remove the controller and add a capacitive dropper with smoothing and a fusible resistor on each mains wire, that can make a bit safer set of lights glowing at nice low level that don't shimmer.
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I bought a set last year through a company advertising on FACEBOOK - i left a facebook comment stating the lights were dangerous and within 5 minutes i was reported for 'harassment' and got an official facebook warning - and they removed my comment .
That sounds like Facebook. Pretty much nothing but fraud at this time of year.
report to your local trading standards
that is typical of FaceBook. If you pay then FB protects you no matter how deceitful. It is a paradise for scammers
I've been banned on Facebook and Twitter, for my political comments.
They care about the $$, not the people
Clive, you might just have saved my family’s life. I bought this exact set from eBay a few weeks ago. I hadn’t got round to putting them up yet as they were so tangled.
The same unconnected fuse,no sand in the fuse either, at that point I just put them in the bin. So again …thank you.
Great work Clive, if rather depressing. The fake fuse issue is now so big it's hard to get genuine fuses (with sand in, correct ends and right blow current), but actually bypassing the fuse completely is a new one!
Actually, why even put a wire in the fake fuse? Could be a plastic rod with writing on it.
If you see some of Clives older videos, it is not that uncommon they bypass the fuse entirely, unfortunately.
You just gotta wonder how North Americans haven't basically all been killed by non-fused electricals by now...
Here in the U.S., lots of devices (space heaters, fans, christmas light strings, etc.) include a fuse in their plug, even though our plugs aren’t universally required to be fused.
Depressing indeed. Evidently "Build Back Better™" in the current year means burn the house to the ground. You will be building back, but not by your choice, or even better for that matter.
I saw the title of this video, and immediately thought: "EXCELLENT!" Nice to know that the supply chain troubles haven't completely disrupted sources of dangerous christmas cheer!
It's a Christmas Miracle!
No checks at UK customs anymore. Things are only gonna get better, great times for conmen and smugglers 😎
What gets me is that they went out of their way to design a UK plug that holds a fuse, but doesn't use it. You'd think it'd be easier just to use a premade plug that actually works, or to just design it to use the fuse (since they basically already did), but no. I'll give them the rest of the safety issues, it's all laziness and cost-cutting. But the plug is just malicious. And this is coming from an American, who's accustomed to not having fused plugs... with the interesting exception of Christmas lights.
I would have been really interested to see the inside of the plug. Part of me wonders if they are taking a (albeit non compliant, because of the Earth pin) standard plug design that would normally require a fuse, and shorting the fuse holder, or is it a non standard design where the fuse holder is not part of the circuit.
When the UK government mandated that all commercial electrical devices for plugged use must come pre-fitted with a plug, they doomed us to cost cutting measures. This led to moulded plugs becoming the norm, and with it, a massive amount of danger. We have no idea what is going on inside most plugs. So then you have the internal struggle of "Do I say hang the warranty, cut off the moulded plug and put on a known safe plug, or cross my fingers and hope the plug is good".
Sorry, sudden tangent to a rant!
Regardless, it it's more than a bit annoying that somebody comes up with this sort of crap, and cares nothing about the consequences. It also annoys me that it brings out the unsavoury side of me that doesn't object to connecting those people's nipples to a high voltage as punishment.
@@damionlee7658 as an american we just use the molded ones, I've always found the UK's tradition of mounting plugs to be pretty cool and unique.
@@damionlee7658 But why not have one government mandated safe design that can benefit from economies of scale? seems like that would be the cheapest and safest, while also not requiring soldering and wiring skills.
@@poiu477 in a way, we were there. The UK plug standard (BS1362) had effectively created a situation where plugs were incredibly similar from one plug manufacturer to the next. Plugs were (and still are) cheap, and easy enough to fit with just a basic screwdriver (or more often a dinner knife).
Even so, there were "fake" plugs that didn't meet the BS1362 standard making it into the supply chain. It seems that taking action against importers and stockists of these plugs was not the way the government wanted to handle things. So the device manufacturers inherited the cost of attaching the plugs. But I suspect the driving force that got us to these single piece moulded plugs that are on most devices, was the cost of attaching the plug, rather than the plug itself. Because of that, a single mandated design that could potentially reduce the cost due to scale production wouldn't really make any difference if you still require people to manually wire the plugs into the cable.
Manufacturers of electrical devices would want it to be a design where they don't require a person inserting wires and tightening screws to attach it. So we still end up with these horrible moulded plugs, where the consumer can't see inside it. In effect, making it a lot easier for these unscrupulous manufacturers of dangerous electronics that do not meet standards to make and use fake plugs.
Personally I would happily scrap the legislation that requires plugs be attached by device manufacturers, making it easier to have legislation that made these single piece moulded plugs illegal.
@@poiu477 The short answer is that we do have an array of safe to use designs for different purposes. Our plugs are regulated to be safe so lon as they pass trading standards checks, which some online retailers bypass(such as Ebay).
For instance some products dont require an earth pin connection as the product is doubly-insulated by design (symbol = one square inside another square) and so the plug is simply moulded with a plastic earth pin to open the shutters. Some products have unique plugs and sockets as an anti-tamper measure (UK hospitals will have some of these so that the cleaners wont bother unplugging certain life-saving appliances).
Generally you don't need a soldering iron to wire up a UK plug either, that's mainly a US thing. The plugs you can take apart with a screwdriver are quite cheap to scale up while still being very safe and easy to re-wire (screw-driver, 10 minutes and maybe a pair of scissors cheap) while moulded plugs generally just need a fuse change (though the earth pin can snap under stress so needing to cut the end off and replace it with a standard plug isnt rare).
I remember buying an LED necklace while I was at Disneyland years ago for like $25. I spent the better part of a few hours waiting in line analyzing the circuitry; it was remarkably close in design to those large stars you have. I'm betting it was over 90% profit for Disney, if not the better part of 99%
A few years ago my uncle wanted me to look at some Christmas lights he'd gotten new from a flea market. It turned out they'd stopped working because there was zero strain relief on the mains wires going into the control box, and just moving them around had broken the solder joints. It was also far too thin of a wire. I refused to fix them and told him to throw them away. I think selling cheap imported Chinese crap is probably a pretty common thing at flea markets now, and people just assume that anything you buy in this country must be safe. Same with junk off of Amazon. Some places will even put counterfeit UL stamps on stuff, though, so you just never know anymore.
i bought some on ebay this year opened up string wire broke multiple places unwinding them. asked for refund and all they wanted to offer was 4 quid. ended up setting trading standards on them got refund and the store vanished.
…and that’s the crime.
It’s ok to import them, but illegal to sell & use them in many countries.
The counterfeit CE mark has become so common here that if it wasn’t so dangerous it’d be almost laughable on some of the items I’ve seen it stuck on to.
We refer to it as the ‘Chinese Export’ mark now
For the UL thing I believe there is supposed to be an number registered to the product that is supposed to be able to looked up to confirm the certification.
Cool to see you here! I remember your meddle mod api back from the 1.9 snapshots
The wife order some of these last week from eBay.
The plug is different to the one you have Clive, doesn't even have a fake fuse, it actually looks like it's caught on fire. The circuit board is less and doesn't even have the extent of stuff on yours. Truly shocking but safe to say I said to the wife these are in no way being plugged into the house. I wouldn't even these plug into my worse enemy house.
Full refund from the seller on eBay.
Yet look what it ended up like 😂
That is the fastest way to improve the electric safety standards right at the production lines. If enough customers reject (and report!) these Death Traps, it will hurt the manufacturer financially. It's a pity that so few people are able to check their purchases for safety violations.
"The wife order some of these last week from eBay." - And she is one of probably thousands who have done so. Your wife obviously didn't know how dangerous this crap is, and she isn't expected to.
It is up to arseholes like eBay and Amazon to do the ethical thing and ban dangerous goods for sale on their respective sites. If I'm not mistaken, isn't this part of their respective "standards"?
@Jeremy Head Rather than politely ask for a refund, report the trader (who knows exactly what they are illegally importing) to Trading Standards. When enough reports come in they take direct action.
An advantage to having Xmas in summer in the Southern Hemisphere - we run Solar Powered Xmas lights ;) Mind you, it does get late in the evening before you can see them running :)
Thanks for sharing how it can be for you guys at your side of the world. I never really thought about those consequences. I usually just remember how unusual it would be to us northerners to experience December as the hottest month of the year.
@@TrondBørgeKrokli Yes feel pity for all the store Santa's, sitting there in a felt suit, with them generally losing a few kilograms of weight over the 2 week period. Though many of them compensate by drinking beer to excess as well.
@@TrondBørgeKrokli Just wait 14,000 yrs. then you'll experience winter in July it thanks to precession of the equinoxe. ;)
@@redace001 😆😁Haha, that would be something I don't know if I want. Anyway, I would need reincarnation to do something like that, unless we could live as long as we wanted, as long as we didn't die from accidents or other kinds of violent causes.
@@TrondBørgeKrokli You could probably use a zero point energy pen to stay alive (that won't work) but hey, think if what number Playstation would be on then!
This is quite disappointing, not that they are making cheap dangerous stuff, but that they are making it even more dangerous by faking security features to make it look less cheap than it really is.
You can see the IP44 and double insulated symbols on the plastic case, i'll wager there is a CE mark there as well. It makes a total mockery of the system and Ebay and Amazon should be prosecuted for failing to sell safe goods. We bang on about facebook putting profit over user safety, same should apply to these two online tat bazzars.
They're great...
...as a demonstration of how not to design a product!
Why? There's idiots buying it, so why shall one bother?
/s
That control box is practically unchanged since the 1990s, with the exact same chase patterns too (combination, in waves, sequential, etc...). I did a teardown of one many years ago when the string went bad, and I distinctly remember the thyristors/TRIACs being TO-220 or a similar package, rather than the flimsy little TO-92's seen here. I guess when switching LEDs there isn't a need for the larger components.
They came at quite a premium back then though, I think I remember paying close to $20 US for a simple string of 140 bulbs.
Best part of eBay is how much dangerous (aka fun) stuff is available on it! I got a couple strings of these lights a while back and the little controller housing, with mains-referenced everything barely inside, seemed to be made of a 1mm thick material that had the approximate physical properties of a stiff variety of cheese.
"You feel like its the static mode but then it starts to fade away"
Never words so true have been spoken
Related: I saw a weird thing on Amazon. It's fire extinguisher patches that go on outlets. (firecop/kordo, appears to be south Korean I think) In this age of fake fuses and faked UL stickers I gotta wonder if that concept would work?
Thanks Big Clive. You're a public service!
They’re also still selling radioactive “zero point energy health” pens, so how is this any different?
There's zero point to those pens :D
I hope those pens are never banned. Its literally the only way someone can get a sample of thorium for an element collection that isn't in a sketchy form like a antique gas mantle. The mantles are fragile and can easily release the thorium oxide. Those pens are sealed by a press fit or screw thread which is much safer.
I had a look and could not find a critical mass for the thorium oxide. So I assume it's rather safe if someone hordes those pens. Maybe I can get enough to build a rtg with their contents. But I want to do more research before I attempt that.
@@heyarno You cant do either with thorium. Its a fertile material meaning it cannot have a critical mass.
Thorium's half life is very long, 14 billion years long, which makes it not very radioactive, which means it will not have any decay heat to give anything power.
RTGs run on heat produced by decaying elements. Elements that produce heat while they decay in large quantities are usually the boogiemen of the nuclear world because they are typically long lived enough to hurt you fierce and short lived enough to be very radioactive.
RTGs basically take hundreds and hundreds of thermocouples and string them together like a massive chain of batteries.
They typically use something with a medium length half life like Plutonium 238 (88 years) cesium 127 (30 years) or strontium 90 (28 years).
You will note the last two radioisotopes are also two major components of nuclear waste and are responsible for most of the radiation hysteria.
Their half lives are much shorter, they are expensive to acquire (Plutonium 238 is just about impossible to get, and its illegal to own any plutonium in the US.)
Cesium 137 and strontium 90 can be gotten, but you only can get a tiny little spec and its in a sealed button. These are for calibrating Geiger counters and cost upwards of 100$ each, also they will most certainly kill you because they can mimic calcium, lodge in your bones and give you a nice steady dose of radiation for the rest of your live.
Why would you want a RTG anyways? They are bulky weigh a lot and don't really give out much power. No more than say what it takes to run a microwave and that's from something that costs millions to build and weighs close to half a ton.
i'd rather use a slightly radioactive pen from time to time than burn down my house (at best, rather than the whole neighborhood), that's the difference
These make my (US) ancient incandescent strings with super thin wire carrying actual current seem safe by comparison.
Also in re meter, my BK at work beeps angrily at you if you enter a voltage range with the leads in the amps or mA jacks.
It has saved me from going bang a couple of times.
My Fluke doesn't do that but my crappy old Radio Shack meter does. Nice feature.
my tektronix meters do that it's super useful.
Those strings may be safer than you think. Due to the thin wire, they often include a fuse in the plug.
ruclips.net/video/K_q-xnYRugQ/видео.html
(Most of that video is a rant about how most extension cords *do not* actually have fuses.)
Fun fact, I found Big Clive when trying to find a way to stop cheap christmas lights doing that horrific flashing and just be static :)
those brown boards remind me of the ol' days.
I wonder if there are Christmas lights on eBay that are just entirely fake: where they've left out the wiring and the LED's and there's just a blank circuit board or a dead moth or a plastic middle finger in the control unit.
I have a bucket full off them in my garage as LED spares all removed from schools during P.A. testing. Often in nursery and reception classes, one school had 8 off the damm things that a teacher brought in from using at her wedding. How there has not been a death or fire is just pure luck. One site had just weaved them into a black felt background, and you could feel the heat from the underated resistors.
Good job removing them. No joke you probably saved some kids lives or prevented a fire at least.
Fascinating! Do the teachers generally understand why you're confiscating their child-cutors?
"WalMart has a reputation to protect" *once tried a small barbecue grill from there that melted itself
People use to be concerned about the transformer getting warm on old style lights but they were totally safe compared to these.
Such dazzling Death Stars ✨ ideal for outside especially in the rain to keep them cool and to get extra special flashing affects 😁
These remind me of 5 net light sets I bought years ago, both mains cables in the plug were black and upon testing, it was shoving rectified mains into a low voltage (single insulation) cable, all 5 were destroyed in due course, 24v is the way forward with regards to safety around my young nephews!
The Danish Court has just ruled to block all access to Banggood because they sell dangerous stuff...
I started watching this with skepticism thinking the lights were battery operated but what you point out is very disturbing. The lights are connected to 240V main with no isolation or functioning fuse sending that 240V into a string of lights that could easily come off and expose the terminal wires. The controller does little to prevent electrical shock and could potentially overheat. I can't imagine how anyone would build or sell something like this.
It reminds me of some stranded wire I bought on ebay that had less conductor and more insulator than it was supposed to. That is dangerous because with less conductor the wire can't carry the required load and could overheat.
It just doesn't feel like Christmas until I've been shocked by some ridiculously unsafe lighting product at least once. Good old single insulated/kind of insulated/never grounded has always been the standard for US decorations.
Think of how many families will be saved from these hazardous items because containers full of these are trapped on ships anchored off the coast of Long Beach !
Christmas + Clive, my second favourite combination behind whiskey and ice.
Thanks Clive. I love it when you take things apart.
"always so pleasing dangerous" hahaha i love it. I bought 4 or 5 sets of these cheap leds (only red leds) from ebay about 3 years ago now for 2 euro a set, still working fine, a wire came loose on one set so i soldered it back but that is the only issue i have come across (aside from the constant risk of electric shock) Very very surprised they have lasted for this long
I would not trust to use them in or outside the house simply to not have it burned without beeing insured...
@@elvinhaak ah sure be grandd, I am just so surprised they have lasted this long
I had a housing "inspector" try to make me get rid of all my lovely 1960's MK bakelite plugs because "pins not sleeved".. their provided sample "suitable replacement" was the nastiest cheapest garbage I have ever laid eyes on.
I have stuck with my MK plugs.. if it lasts 50 years it's good enough for me.. and the pins don't wobble.. plus unlike the "replacement" they don't melt when you put a fan heater on them.
In the U.S. about 140,000 people are injured by Christmas decorations each year. About a dozen are outright killed. Happy Holidays!
Luckily you have only 120V there :D
I don't know why, but I just love these teardowns of dangerous products.
I love how everyone knows that controller, and everyone hates it. Some people just get too lazy to click on the button 7 times and accept the flicker.
And that moment when you think its steady-on, you go away and it starts fading... hate it every time
You should start your own safety certification organization, with your face as the seal of approval. See how long before it starts appearing on these products.
The Chinese would just fake that as well, because what you gonna do about it ? Invade ?
It's crazy how it's cheaper to manufacture a fake plug.
The sleeved earth pin is what bewilders me. I would think it was actually CHEAPER just to have a simple brass rectangle than to mould one with a recessed part for the plastic sleeve. Unless they can make a saving on a couple of grams of brass per earth pin?
@Simeon Walker Noticed that the 'fuse' says FUSE on it in capitals; UK plug fuses don't say 'fuse' on them at all, just the rating and British Standards number 1362...
@@zh84 I suppose that’s possible, but wouldn’t they just use a full plastic earth pin then?
Basically the only good thing about these from a safety point of view is the moulded cord grip on the plug, the rest is rubbish. The vendor should be prosecuted by trading standards or BSI for selling such dangerous stuff, but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without a set of dodgy lights. Before I forget Clive, seasons greetings to you and thank you once again for all your superb content.
Thanks for sharing big Clive and making the general public how dangerous these are as I have always gone for battery operated led Christmas lights apart from my fibre optic Christmas tree which I bought from b and m a few years ago
Great work Clive.
a) of course eBay didn't give a toss, they are American: all that matters is profit.
b) I really don't understand the plug, surely it costs as much to make that fake plug as a real one.
Not just profit, they don't give a toss because the American way of thinking is to leave people do whatever the fuck they want with their money, and let them live their lives without constant interference from nosey air thiefs who want to control every aspect of everybody's lives.
ebay is luxemburgean but that does not matter. they get the provision for every item sold and so they go on. they don't care. just like amazon doesn't care and sells same crap.
I bought an anglepoise type lamp on ebay thinking it would be hard for them to mess up a basic lamp. Eventually it started flickering for no apparent reason so I pulled it apart and found that the terminals in the fitting had fallen apart so the wires were loose. The insulation had gone brittle and fallen off so the bare wires were floating around inside the metal casing which of course wasn't earthed. Then I found the plug wasn't fused either so the thing relied on the 32A breaker for protection. I'd never have used it if I'd known what to look out for when I bought it.
I've had a set I purchased from Amazon back in 2017. I've used them every year since and always on the static setting.
Only this year, half of the stars have failed and then, while browsing RUclips, I saw this video and have since unplugged them.
I'm definitely going to mod them though, as I have 20m of warm white copper wire style Mini LEDs which I couldn't find a place for them this year.
Clive, brilliant, thank you - would love you to hack the plug apart and show the internals for the fake fuse. Keep up your superb work.
I've got a lot of cheap holiday lights around the house, purchased online, but they're all battery powered or run on 5 volts using quality power supplies.
for outdoors, I use the battery ones from Wilko, they have a timer on too, so you turn em on about 16:30 Hours, and they turn off after 8 hours and then come back on at roughly 16:30 Hours the next day. three Duracell batteries, might need two sets of batteries for the month
Eh... who needs a fuse? With wires that thin, if there's a short, the wires themselves disintegrate!
You're behind on the times Clive. Everything is wireless nowadays. You just got a wireless fuse.
Tesla talked about wireless electrical transmission. Maybe it's here.
The ideal purchase for the first time Ebay buyer....... because repeat buyers are already dead from a burnt out house due to these dangerous lights
Clive if you’re worried about the resistors over heating, just run them outside 😂
Yes
A commenter above did in fact say he saw a ip44 symbol on the little box.
Bought a touch-dimmer module from ebay to replace one that had suicided itself. It was cheap, so I wasn't expecting anything 'flash'. The original one was surprising as to how much safety was packed into it. It had an input fuse, a thermal fuse, a MOV & safety-rated capacitors. The ebay one had NOTHING protecting it (or the user)! Wrote an appropriate product review & within 2hrs, all reviews mysteriously vanished from the sellers page. 😒
Lol. the fake fuse is halarious - to be honest even if connected I suspect the cables would catch fire before the 13Amp fuse blew.
I once tested 'accidentally' those thin wires shorting C25 MCB and actually mcb tripped. They just blew clear off the controller circuit board. Because what happened, was that wires that were soldered to controller pcb were too-long stripped of insulation, and when i twisted the controller, they shorted together. There was a spark and the cable just shot off the plastic case xD blowing C25 breaker. But rest of the cable was intact, not smoking or anything. And the short-circuit current had to be over 200A which i find surprising, considering how thin are those wires and should have rather high resistance.
I remember getting a small set of Christmas lights that was built exactly like this after being roped into giving money to an unnamed charity. It had a melody function (which turned on every time you unplugged and plugged it back in and was exactly like those beeping Christmas cards), and one of the wires came off, killing one of the channels.
Instead of fixing it, I ended up just ripping it to shreds and extracting the LEDs from it.
I think we have to blame our own authorities for allowing this sort of product into the country. Thanks for the thorough work Clive.
If you buy them directly from a foreign source then it arrives as a postal item, how are the authorities meant to control that?
As you kinda mentioned at the end, these would be fantastic candidates for carving up into smaller battery-operated strings, then maybe handing them out as party favors at a Christmas party.
It would be much cheaper to buy the $1 20-LED strings, but maybe put them into housings like this.
@@bigclivedotcom Bah. Since when were arts and crafts meant to be cheap?? 🤪
I've not even got all that far through the video (just after you've investigated the 'fuse') and I'm already horrified that there are so many things wrong. I can only imagine it gets worse from here on in...
I watched your vid last year and decided to stop using the ebay lights. Glad i upgraded, i can safely sleep at night. thanks
I avoid anything electrical on Amazon that is "Sponsored " purchased some 13 amp plug in night lights, out of 2, only one worked, no CE marking, pins were metallic coated plastic. Fully refunded.
Disgusting what's sold here in the UK .
Thanks for sharing.
just take bow around amazon in the first place.
There was a radio ad today to say make sure we look for the ce mark on all electronics. These lights have the ce mark, and of course they do. If these folks are going to make something dodgy, they will not worry about faking a ce mark!!
H-Beam, I usually call them I-beams, doesn't matter they both live next door to each other, if you get the wrong one.
These things are truly lethal crap, a fantastic bit of public information given here Clive.
We ended up with a set of these last year and seeing exactly the same points as you raised, I would not have them in the house.
So for a bit of a laugh (in the name of science) and to prove my point I decorated a very cheaply acquired real Christmas tree and placed it outside. One rainstorm and two days later they’d shorted out to a mass of burnt wiring, tinsel and burning to parts of the tree.
Had this been indoors, whilst it may not have got wet, the resulting fire would have been a lot more intense.
Ouch. I’ve seen video of a Christmas tree going up. All that sap is just oil so they burn like crazy. It was truly frightening how quick the room went up. Less than 30 seconds and everything in the room was alight.
Stuff sold like this should be a prosecution and a jail sentence causes you could be selling someone a death sentence.
In tropical south India we've used these same quality Chinese stuff every year, outdoors, and sometimes they even last a couple of Christmases. Never had a fire but then the humidity is so high it's hard enough to do on purpose. As for electrical safety, I will argue that alcohol made us immune to the puny 230V we get. We just cut off the plugs, splice different sets of lights in parallel, and plug in the now-bulked up wires into some dodgy extension that doesn't have a shutter and isn't waterproof. Our tradition is to pick a tree outside as the Christmas tree (not a conifer, we have tropical trees) and it sometimes rains on Christmas. Not a problem.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 You clearly care as little for your own life as the Chinese do.
@@SodAlmighty I've got a billion replacements ready. But yeah, we are rather casual about electrical safety. Back in the day when the power company was a corrupt socialist mess, the actual repairmen didn't care so neighborhood people would just fix things like blown fuses on the public power distribution lines by ourselves. Well I was young so I watched.
@@SodAlmighty Another (relevant) south Indian Christmas tradition is to have fireworks on Christmas (so much for a silent night). One year we managed to set fire to our nativity scene in the house with a wayward explosive rocket that went right in. Fun times
Great video - thanks Big Clive. I'm not a great fan of over-regulation but JHC this is simply just criminal! Ebay should be held to account!
Wow. Ebay can really be a minefield sometimes! Thanks again for your ongoing mine detector work. I'm sharing this one on my SM. Cheers Clive! :)
Those “static mode but then fade out really slowly” really do my head in.
is it really an effect or just the leds slowly dying?
@@tsm688 - Maybe. Maybe there’s a really slow mode where they only come on for a couple of weeks over Christmas. That’d be my ideal.
I got 1000 LEDs string from Aldi for 100PLN (20-25USD), it uses some kind of a plug-in converter and switching unit (complete with a cheap Chinese IR remote!).
It says it's usable outside and it looks quite safe, especially with the voltage on the string being 12V i think.
A nice feature: other than compulsory blinky modes, it's also a 4-level dimmer and a timer switch.
The packaging cardboard was pretty much in pieces, but it works fine, I think I can recommend that.
We'll see how it stands after a month or so in sub zero temperatures.
"i'm just going to pause momentarily while i untie the knot"
"...right, so i've just consulted my divorce lawyer"
Wow .. the fact the fake fuse was bypassed anyway.. thats just crazy.. absolutely no protection
I guess the sign FUSED on that plug is just a brand name...
I could be wrong but I think that (at least in Australia) if you buy an item from overseas, you (as the importer) are responsible for the compliance of the items to the local regulations. This goes for any item that has to meet any regulation or other compliance requirement.
An insurer may have reason to invalidate a claim if a non-compliant item was at fault.
I use these for a Christmas Lightshow. I took the entire board out and wired them to my own full bridge rectifier. Then I put it back in the box, and glue it all shut. I don't want them to blink because I use a controller to turn them on and off. I thought about doing what you said to make them stay constant, but I wanted noting to do with that crappy board.
I ordered a LED lightbox for artwork years ago, the first plug was broken and unsafe, got a replacement, the next one the plug was apart with internal wiring and components already exposed out of the box. Neither was a fixable thing without buying new power supply, re-wire, needless to say went to another supplier to get one.
ebay is just a marketplace. ebay doesn't sell you anything. It's the sellers there that can offer good or bad stuff. And it's the buyers responsibility to judge whether something is a worthwhile deal or not.
Jesus, the fuse part had my mouth open to the floor.
At least the plug conforms to Chinese BS 1363 (BullShit 1363) Complete with sleeved Earth, a handy fuse holder & free explosive fuse. It’s amazing eBay still gets away with this and scary how many tight budget places like colleges buy non-compliant electrical goods because it’s cheap. And also PAT testers who don’t pick this shite up.
I tested my suicide cord with a PAT tester device.. just a cord with 3 bare wires connected to croc clips.. It passed with flying colours. (yeah.. sometimes you just want to power only part of a circuit board.. in one case a multi function oven with heaps of mains connected relays and a low voltage transformer section.. didn't want the whole board live.. just the transformer primary)
I can also add they make huge amounts of RF noise, too! Wideband noise & hash.
There’s very little ‘safe’ on eBay when it comes to electrical items. That’s pretty much the norm now. They won’t stop it because they make too much money out of it.
it's the same garbage on amazon ! not to be mistaken as higher quality supplier.
I have these exact same lights! I never used them, they look way to dangerous. I plugged them in for a minute and the plastic smell was crazy lol.
Maybe I will take them apart, good idea.
In my country (Romania) almost all the christmas lights are poorly made and from the first unbox the soder joints from the wires break and make a huge flamey thing on the hole wire. (made in china). Everytime I buy some I open them check the solder joints, resolder them and then I apply hot glue so that they don't break.
They sent 120v. Caused lots of smoke and ruined the Christmas atmos but was still very exciting. Classic Clive 😂
I have reported products to eBay, and I'm thinking that they believe that it's just my opinion on those products. I bought an inverter that the seller claimed was 3000 wats, but it would have been closer to about 300. There was no reprimand, no warning, and they are still selling that item. Both the price and the dimensions should be indications that it's false advertising, but they continue to be a seller. They were selling mig welders for about £30, and the shipping alone would cost that much.
Makes sense considering these cheapie Chinesie suppliers make eBay and Amazon a lot of money. Such a shame we live in such a money driven world. Oh well, the most we can do is just not buy from them and advise people against buying from them and inform the public of the potential dangers or scams of cheap products like this.
Exactly...so the best thing to do is BOYCOTT.
In my opinion Amazon is far worse than eBay for this - with eBay you can usually tell ahead of time when you're getting crap and individual sellers have their own feedback ratings. With Amazon inventory is co-mingled to the point where counterfeits are mixed in with real hardware and because they (Amazon) act like a major supermarket people don't think they're buying crap that will kill them.
100% agreed ! my words were spoken.
The plug also doesn't have the required 9.5mm of plug body surrounding the L and N pins.
Oh the humanity.
I’m going to check my Xmas tree that came with lights installed. It was cheaper than chips…
Dangerooooos…
As DiodeGoneWild would say.
Wow Clive, I didn't know Christmas lights could be so exciting!
Shared this on my Facebook page, hopefully it saves a life. Thank you for showing this.
Just think that this video could save some lives, we just need to post it on social media.
Nice one Clive 😀👍
Ebay is deleting negative comments on fraudulent items. I no longer hold any hope for them as a platform.
That's why I leave positive comments detailing the issues.
Just when you thought a product couldn’t get any cheaper and dangerous, the Chinese take it one step further.
They’re well dodgy!
The vice of knowledge revealed the truth about the fake fuse.
I love this channel
High voltage christmas lights, with added shock risks, how fun
One of the reasons why I avoid buying such strings of lights is their horrible construction. The box, the wires, the connections - everything welcomes terrifying consequences; it looks like they designed and manufactured them as a disposal decoration which you new buy every Christmas until it burns down your apartment/house, or you get killed, or your pet chews it and get killed by it.
The other reason is that their flashing is painful to watch.
These lights provide job security for your local fire department...
These should be only sold as battery or cordless USB rechargeable only. Mains is to dangerous and frankly nowadays obsolete for this application.
So you need an insulation transformer to run this set somewhat safely. The flasher circuit is totally useless, I would just remove it. It might be interesting to add a capacitive dropper in series.
that's what I tend to do when I get them, remove the controller and add a capacitive dropper with smoothing and a fusible resistor on each mains wire, that can make a bit safer set of lights glowing at nice low level that don't shimmer.
I was really close to buying some of these, literally in my basket, so thanks Clive!
Whoa dodged a bit of -a bulle- unplanned excitement there!
Was on my lass’ fb and the amount of Xmas lights being sold on the market place is frightening. Who would take the risk?
I absolutely agree big Clive tell people to take the Christmas lights to trading standards and get the seller prosecuted.
I doubt they would be able to locate the source to do so.