The product was first reported in 2022, yet despite repeated Which? safety tests revealing risk of electric shock, fire, or explosion, online marketplaces have continually allowed it to be sold, most recently by B&Q marketplace.
It's the latest in a string of investigations that commonly find cheap, unbranded electronics bought from online marketplaces to be unsafe. And with growing numbers of traditional retailers launching marketplaces, Which? is calling for the government to urgently introduce new laws to make these marketplaces legally responsible for the products sold through their platforms, to prevent consumers being put at risk.
Find outThe electric plug-in heater that could start a fire
All of them were unsafe. Two of the heaters melted on testing and posed a fire risk – in one case the built-in plug broke away from the main body of the product. And all five posed an electric shock risk for anybody using them.
Despite reporting this heater and seeing the initial listings removed, it has repeatedly made its way back onto online marketplaces – apparently avoiding their safety checks. Perhaps these identical looking unbranded models were safe? We bought two more in November 2023 from different sellers on eBay, and our tests showed the same problems – risk of electric shock, fire or explosion. Plus a structural examination of an additional heater from a different seller confirmed our suspicions – it didn't just look the same on the outside, but practically the same on the inside, too.
B&Q marketplace shows the same old problems
Identical looking heaters are still doing the rounds online, and our latest tests of an unbranded model bought through B&Q marketplace show that all of the safety problems we first highlighted over a year ago are still there. It looked like all of the others and was just as unsafe when we tested it.
The packaging included a picture of the heater being used in a bathroom, which is forbidden under building regulations. All of the required product markings were missing, and the, ‘Do not cover’ mark was hard to see and too small.
And among the problems we found with the manual was the lack of a warning about using near baths or showers. The heater was badly made with poor quality soldering and no fuse to protect from an overcurrent fault.
On one of the samples we tested, when we took the heater out of its box the live plug pin was pointing up at 30 degrees and clearly wouldn’t fit into a plug socket. Finally, on another sample, the distance between the live pin and the outer edge of the plug was less than half the distance it needed to be for the plug to be safe.
Our view of this heater bought from a seller on B&Q marketplace is that it presents risks of electric shock, fire and explosion and fortunately, following our investigation, it has been removed from sale.
What is B&Q marketplace?
Like a growing number of high street and traditional online retailers, B&Q now has some skin in the online marketplace game. Launching its platform in March 2022, B&Q Marketplace currently has 400 sellers listing 340,000 products and in less than a year from launch, the new platform accounted for almost a quarter of B&Q’s online sales.
But in the rush to start selling, what is being done to stop unsafe products like the heater we have tested from being sold through the B&Q marketplace site? We can see that prospective sellers can’t start selling immediately and that all applications to become a seller are reviewed by B&Q’s team. But it’s unclear whether B&Q does anything to make sure the products being sold under its name are safe or what background checks it does on the sellers applying to join.
The unsafe heater we bought was sold to us by Jaoyeh Trading, a company registered in Swansea. A quick Google search shows that 91% of the 155 reviews provided for Jaoyeh on Trustpilot give the company just one star. Jaoyeh customers had posted their complaints about late deliveries, refunds and replacements not happening and items being received that are nothing like their descriptions.
Dangerous heater still being advertised and sold online
Worryingly, these heaters were still being listed by Amazon and eBay despite them knowing that there was a problem with this kind of heater for more than a year and a recall being issued. We also found them on Etsy and OnBuy priced as low as £8.99.
We also found dozens of pictures and listings for doppelgangers of the heaters that have repeatedly failed our tests through Google, and a report on the Which? Scams channel showed an identical looking heater apparently being attributed to Elon Musk, and online advertorials promoting it claim ‘This is how thousands of Brits are heating their homes and slashing electricity bills’.
The dangers of unbranded electronics bought from online marketplaces
It’s not just heaters that we’re concerned about. Every time we test unbranded electrical goods bought from online marketplaces (or products from unknown brands or less well known brands) we find many that are simply unsafe to use that pose a danger to anyone who owns them. Because of this they shouldn’t be sold in the UK.
But despite the safety problems that are so easy to find with unbranded products sold through online marketplaces, UK consumers still place considerable faith in these platforms.
A recent Which? survey told us that seven in 10 people who had bought from an online marketplace in the past two years were confident that the marketplaces would ensure that only safe products are listed. And 63% told us that they trusted marketplaces to remove products that are unsafe.
The safe Russell Hobbs plug-in heater that bucks the trend
The difference between cheap unbranded products bought from online marketplaces and the online and high street alternative was made clear when we tested another plug-in mini heater. We bought the Russell Hobbs 500W ceramic plug in heater (£24) from Dunelm’s site and we tested it alongside the very similar looking heaters bought from B&Q marketplace and eBay.
It looked the same as the online marketplace heaters and we bought it for the same price as the model we bought from B&Q marketplace. But looks can be deceiving.
The Russell Hobbs heater couldn’t be more different to the dangerous heaters we bought from marketplaces. Externally, everything is in order. The package the heater came in carried all of the required markings and electrical ratings as did the heater itself and everything was in order with the manual. And when we tested it for safety, the results were the polar opposite of those we found with unbranded heaters bought from marketplaces.
When we opened it up, all of the electrical connections were good quality, the plug met the required standard and it came with a fuse. And when we tested it, it passed all of our electrical safety and heating tests.
So, unlike online marketplaces, Russell Hobbs appears to be taking all of the required care to make sure the heaters it sells are safe. And the stores selling heaters like this also have a role to play to make sure the products they stock are safe.
We bought the heater online from Dunelm, so we asked the home furnishings retailer what it does to make sure only safe products are sold in its stores and online.
Jeremy Mace, Head of Product Quality & Compliance at Dunelm told us: 'Product quality and safety are of the highest importance at Dunelm. All of our branded suppliers have to go through a verification process to ensure products comply with relevant safety standards, including the General Product Safety Directive and the Low Voltage Directive'.
How do unbranded electronics make their way online?
ut sadly the volume of products flooding the UK market through online marketplaces, and the frequency at which we find issues, means it's a risk that's not worth taking.
We’ve tested unbranded smoke alarms that carry an accreditation mark showing that the alarm has been tested to and has met the official standard. When we looked into this further, it became clear that the accreditation claims were false and that the alarms were likely to be counterfeit.
Our investigation into carbon monoxide alarms revealed seemingly official accreditation documents showing that an alarm had taken only four days to pass safety tests which run for at least three months. And in both cases, when we tested them, we weren’t surprised to see the two alarms fail to detect danger.
And in every test we run where we buy unbranded products from online marketplaces, or where we include the kind of unknown brands that any of us could create, at least some of the products on test are found to be dangerous.
Why new laws are needed to protect consumers from unsafe products
Through repeated safety testing, we’re confident to say that unbranded heaters that look like the ones featured here are likely to be unsafe. If you own one of these heaters, unplug it immediately, return the product for a refund if you can, or worst case, dispose of it responsibly.
Amazon, B&Q Marketplace, eBay and any other platforms listing unbranded heaters that look like this should remove them from sale and stop new listings from reaching their platforms. It’s not good enough for online marketplaces to only remove products when Which? tells them to, they should be taking action to stop them from being listed in the first place.
So, we’re calling on the next government to urgently prioritise legislation to update our product safety laws, and place a new legal duty on online marketplaces to prevent the sale of the unsafe products that are unnecessarily putting consumer safety at risk.
The response to our investigation
After sharing our findings, the seller of the B&Q heater contacted customers to offer refunds and B&Q removed the listing for this heater while it investigates. Amazon is investigating the heater and as we went to press, a listing for an unbranded heater seemingly identical to those that repeatedly fail our tests was still on its site but showing no stock.
Ebay removed the 14 listings for heaters after our approach and Etsy took down the one listing we could find on its site.
B&Q told us:The seller of the B&Q heater, Jaoyeh, asked to review our test results and provided a test report for its product saying, ‘Without evidence of results from an accredited facility, we may need to hold off further investigations.’ It went on to say that customers are more likely to leave negative reviews than positive ones and it has maintained a customer issue rate of 0.001%.’
Amazon saideBay told usEtsy OnbuyHow we tested this dangerous electric heater
We check the box, the instructions and the products for the required markings and warnings. We look for CE or UKCA markings, the contact details for the UK importer, the electrical rating of the heaters and WEEE information about how to dispose of them. We also looked for safety warnings about where to not use them.
We check the external build quality of each heater we test to see how robust they are and we check them internally to find out how electrically safe they are.
The electrical safety tests carried out were taken from BS EN 60335-2-30:2009+A11:2012 Household and similar electrical appliances. The heaters' instructions were checked against the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016 and the requirements of the Low Voltage Directive. And all of the plugs were checked using the BS1363-1 plug gauge and to the UK Plugs and Sockets Regulations (1994).
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/unbranded-electronics-marketplaces-asjRy3W81dzi