Be Excellent To Each Other

(Italics mine)

So, my questions are these:

Is that a worthwhile statistic? Is it not the same as saying 'as many as nine in ten'? As many as could mean a lot less than the given number.

Plus, as many as one in ten electrical items bought online can result in a fire? It does go on to say that you should be especially careful when buying outside of the EU, but I don't believe that anywhere near 10% of electrical items are bought from outside the EU (And we all know they really mean 'from China').

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11849914

Never 1 in 10 items bought from dodgy websites and from outside the EU are dangerous?



Pointless scaremongering and having found out who Intertek labs are I'm not sure if the BBC haven't taken a small section of a legitimate study and run with it. That or copied it from the torygraph again who have some utterly shocking tech reporters (your on my list chap who recommended norton as the best antivirus 6 months ago.)

BBC should have just gone "this is what happens when you buy from dodgy sites online" and showed pictures rather channel the daily mail.

It doesn't, the way I read it at least, say that the sample was taken from dodgy websites and non-eu websites. I would have thought that most electrical items in the UK were bought from Amazon, Argos, currys/dixons/comet, PC world, the Apple Store, Gamestation and the like.

But that statistic said that of 2,000 people asked X% said they'd bought something online that caught fire. That assumes that they have each only bought one item for the resulting statistic to make sense. I'm not saying that makes the numbers OK, but badly reported.

‘As many as 1 in 10 could end up decimated.’

Sounds like rubbish to me. There just aren't that many fires caused by appliances!

However, that is in large part due to the CE safety regulations. And I could believe that 1 in 10 electrical items bought at this time of year are not CE compliant - stuff that comes direct from Hong Kong is often not. So those items at least have a higher risk of some sort of safety hazard.

However, a lot of these gadgets are going to be battery powered. So are very unlikely to be able to go on fire anyway.

My guess would be: scare story copied from America (where electrical standards and quality of appliances is dreadful), or deliberate conflation of "no CE mark" and ACTUALLY BURST INTO FLAMES ZOMG.

[insert witty ipod nano pun here]