TradingStandards

No 'hoverboard' is safe from UK Trading Standards
by
Jamie Rigg
12.17.2015
"Hoverboards" are getting a pretty bad rap of late, and not just because their common name is annoyingly misleading. Several UK retailers have stopped selling the things due to serious concerns over battery safety -- they have a habit of spontaneously combusting, you see -- with Amazon even advising customers to bin their potentially dodgy models. A number of airlines won't carry them, the US is scrambling to regulate the fad, and earlier this month UK Trading Standards announced it had seized over 15,000 unsafe devices at sea ports, airports and postal hubs since mid-October. This hasn't seemed to dent their popularity much, however, with Trading Standards telling BuzzFeed that figure has now spiked to 32,000 in just a few weeks.
Over 15,000 'unsafe' hoverboards seized at UK borders
by
Nick Summers
12.03.2015
Self-balancing scooters. Hoverboards. Whatever you want to call them, they're now a smash-hit in Britain. Companies are now scrambling to offer cheaper and sleeker versions in time for Christmas, but there's a problem: the majority are unsafe, according to Trading Standards. Officers have examined more than 17,000 "hoverboards" at sea ports, airports and postal hubs since October 15th. Of these, more than 15,000, or 88 percent, were deemed dangerous due to "a range of concerns" related to internal batteries and cut-off switches, chargers, plugs and cabling.