Consumer champions Which? have issued a warning over 'energy saving boxes' which have been for sale online on sites including eBay and Amazon. Sellers of the devices claim they can cut your energy bills, but Which? says tests show they do not work and could be dangerous.
Amazon and eBay have withdrawn a number of the products from sale.
The devices plug into a mains socket and sellers say they work by 'smoothing’ household voltage and ‘optimising’ the performance of appliances. But Which? says its lab found no evidence that they work and found the boxes may be dangerous as they do not comply with British electrical safety standards.
The Office for Product Safety and Standards has issued four separate recall notices for similar devices on AliExpress, eBay, Wish and Motex.
Which? bought and tested six devices from Amazon and eBay after finding 110 on sale at a cost of between £10.99 and £23.64.
As well as finding no evidence the devices worked, all failed basic UK electrical safety standards and could be a potential fire and electric shock risk. Four of the plugs contained an unknown substance.
An eBay spokesman said: "We closely monitor UK, EU and US product safety databases and when unsafe products are added to these databases, we ban them from our site and update our block filters, which aim to prevent them from being relisted. These filters blocked 7.4m unsafe listings in 2021."
eBay says it has strict policies that make clear sellers must not mislead buyers.
An Amazon spokesman said: "We have proactive measures in place to prevent non-compliant products from being listed and we monitor the products sold in our stores for product safety concerns."
