As Brits prepare to flee the country for sunnier climes this summer, consumer safety group Electrical Safety First (ESF) has dropped a rather shocking travel advisory: those bargain-bin travel adaptors flooding online marketplaces might just kill you. ESF tested 14 adaptors from AliExpress, Amazon Marketplace, eBay, and TikTok Shop, and every single one failed to meet UK safety requirements. Some, it says, could expose users to serious electric shock or electrocution. Because nothing says 'holiday vibes' like a potential 240-volt wake-up call.

The six basic travel adaptors tested lacked safety shutters, missing fuses, and had oversized pin holes - all fire hazards. The eight universal adaptors were even worse: six allowed multiple sets of pins to extend simultaneously, meaning you could accidentally plug into a UK socket and a foreign one at the same time, which is a great party trick until the lights go out permanently. None met required dimensions or mechanical strength; some pins snapped off under force, leaving broken bits in sockets that would then require a brave soul to fish them out - at risk of electrocution.

Online marketplaces responded with the usual corporate choreography: Amazon said it had removed the flagged products and would 'refine our controls'; AliExpress said it was contacting affected customers for a recall and would restrict listings showing all pins extended; eBay boasted of AI monitoring that has 'prevented millions of potentially unsafe items from being listed'; TikTok claimed 99.5% of violative products are removed before listing. Yet ESF argues the government should do more, calling for online marketplaces to be made legally responsible for products sold on their sites. 'Shopping in the UK is currently far too dangerous,' said ESF product safety engineer Giuseppe Capanna.

Consumer group Which? recently reported similar dangers with phone chargers. 'It's appalling that online marketplaces continue to fail to prevent dangerous products from reaching consumers, despite countless warnings,' said Sue Davies, head of consumer protection. Capanna's advice: if a universal adaptor lets multiple pins extend at once, that's your cue to run. Also, if you can see internal parts through socket holes (no shutters), or the packaging has spelling mistakes - yes, really - put it down and back away slowly.