Former fireman shares warning after charger catches fire in his Jedburgh home

Harry Page, who bought a charger for his six-year-old daughter Maisie’s iPhone from Hawick’s Bargain Buys store on Monday, cottoned on to a burning smell and managed to intervene before the burning plug could do any damage.

But he believes it could have been a very different story had he not plugged it into a nearby socket in his living room.

“If that phone charger was in my daughter’s bedroom my house would have been on fire,” Harry said. “We caught it just in time but it could have turned out really badly.

“We plugged it in and smelled the burning plastic straight away. I went across and it was smoking and you could see the flame inside it.

“I unplugged the charger right away and then popped it in again to film what happened next.”

The 28-year-old cleaning business owner and former retained fireman, who lives in Jedburgh’s Bongate with girlfriend Selina Scott and their four children, shared a video of the charger going up in flames on his Facebook page.

“We really wanted to warn people to be careful with things like this,” Harry added. “I put the video of it catching fire online and it got 10,000 views within one hour.

“Chargers causing house fires is something we are seeing too much of just now.

“I would advise people not to buy cheap chargers. I’ve called Bargain Buys in Hawick and they’ve since taken that charger off the shelves.

“This case just shows you how quickly it can happen in the blink of an eye. If we’d plugged that charger in my daughter’s room it could have been a very different story.”

Hawick’s Bargain Buys store manager Vicky Ballantyne told us she has taken the chargers from the store’s shelves and that the company’s head office is aware of the complaint.

“We took those chargers off of our shelves first thing the next morning,” she added. “It’s not an own brand, it’s one we buy in.”

A spokesman for the Huddersfield-based chain added: “Every product we sell goes through a relevant testing process to ensure it meets the legal standards required for that product.

“To date we have sold more than 130,000 units of this charger without any other issues of this nature.

“We have contacted the customer in question and have requested that they return the item so that we can investigate this further with our quality control team.”