OPINION: We can’t ignore hazardous heaters any longer
Originally published in The Times Red Box 23 February 2023. Permission to publish sought and granted on 21 April 2023.
When temperatures plunged below zero this winter, the solution for millions of people - perhaps for the first time in some cases - was not as simple as ‘stick the heating on’. The ‘choice between eating and heating’ was suddenly at the centre of the national conversation as families, friends and Facebook groups traded tips on how to keep ourselves and our loved ones warm and fed, without breaking the bank.
This has led to a mini-boom in sales and interest in electric blankets and plug-in heaters. Unfortunately the manufacture, promotion and sale of these devices serves as a test case for everything that has gone wrong with consumer protection regulations that are no longer fit for the digital age.
When we put some of these devices to the test in the Which? lab, the results were shocking. Most could not be legally sold in the UK, while others were so badly made that they melted or posed a risk of electric shock, fire or even causing an explosion.
These hazardous heaters aren’t just buried in the corner of the internet, but sold on well-known online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Wish. Apparently seen by sellers as an opportunity to prey on consumers during a cold winter and fuel crisis, identical products on other sites were also promoted through misleading online advertising on much-used social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, and some heaters were subject to ‘review merging’ - an alternative form of fake reviewing that allows sellers to artificially inflate the number of reviews on a listing - which would have made the product seem more desirable.
None of these three issues - dangerous products sold online that don’t comply with UK safety standards, dodgy advertising promoting them or fake reviews boosting them - are new. Which? has exposed them in successive investigations over the course of a number of years and shared the evidence with the government, regulators and the online platforms. The fact that a product can be subjected to all three practices underlines the need for politicians, regulators, and the tech giants themselves, to finally step in and commit to stopping these problems affirmatively.
So, what does that look like in practice? First, it means tackling the issues at source. When it comes to dangerous products sold online, the regulator, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), has been consistently found wanting. It has been consulting on the UK’s product safety framework since 2021 - and still we await the results. It must recommend that online marketplaces are given greater legal responsibility for unsafe products on their sites and the government must introduce new laws to implement these changes as soon as possible.
Second, the world’s richest tech giants, whose technological capabilities can be frighteningly advanced when they want them to be, seem to hit a cul-de-sac when it comes to demonstrating vigilance over what content appears on their sites. Misleading online adverts, whether they’re promoting heaters that pose a fire risk or bogus investment scams, cause huge financial, emotional and even physical harm to their victims - and yet tech giants drag their heels on ensuring their users don’t see them. The government’s review of online advertising, must ensure that the tech giants that control online advertising have proper systems to protect consumers - with appropriate penalties if they fail to up their game.
Third, at Which? we know all too well about the power of a review. We test thousands of products every year and pass judgement on them, knowing a coveted ‘Best Buy’ can boost a particular company’s sales. It isn’t possible for unscrupulous firms to game our rigorous and impartial tests or to influence our reviews - but it has become far too easy for scammers to infiltrate other well-known sites and insert fake reviews on dud products. Encouragingly, the Competition and Markets Authority has pledged to clamp down on this issue. Consumer protection laws need updating for the digital age and the CMA - like other regulators in different sectors - requires government legislation to hand them those all-important enforcement powers, such as fining companies that break the rules directly. The long-promised Digital Markets, Competition & Consumer Bill is expected to give the CMA these powers - and the government needs to urgently publish it.
Consumers’ vulnerability online isn’t a seasonal concern, but an all-year-round problem. If any good can come from those dangerous plug-in heaters we looked at, it could be that they might just lead to the thawing of the deep freeze that’s set in among ministers, regulators and tech giants to do anything about it. As we’ve found, our finances, emotional wellbeing and even the physical safety of ourselves and our families can depend on them.