EE Recalls ALL Power Bars due to fire risk; offers £20 voucher to compensate

EE is probably regretting ever offering customers a free Power Bars, creating no end of problems and negative publicity since they were first introduced in April.

Since then, there have been reports of potential and actual fire-related incidents, that prompted a recall of an entire batch of portable chargers (marked E1-06) in August, and more recently EE has stopped swapping them out in stores altogether.

Today, time has been called on every power bar. And EE wants them ALL back – all 1.4 million of them.

That’s right, rather than get a fully-charged replacement for your depleted Power Bar when visiting any EE store, you’ll now be asked to put it in a special bin at the entrance, and collect a £20 accessory voucher (usable online) for your troubles.

EE will be contacting anyone that texted for their Power Bar from today, and using the press and social media to make sure everyone is notified.

Customers are also warned not to continue using the Power Bar before returning it (either to charge a device, or charging it), which sounds like a good idea if the photos below are anything to go by.

I was never a fan of these things anyway. With a paltry 1A output, and a lousy 2,600mAh capacity (much of which is lost when transferring power to another device, meaning you couldn’t even get one full re-charge), I opted to just use mine as a LED torch.

To be fair, it worked very well as a torch because the battery was good for days and days of usage between charges. However, in the last few weeks I noticed that when activating the LED lamp, it ended up being stuck on permanently, before failing completely. So it wasn’t even good for that.

It’s lucky I didn’t just chuck mine in the bin, although technically we were all told that these were on loan, and we could be charged if we didn’t return them in the future. Well, now it seems that time is here – somewhat prematurely.

It’s a shame it didn’t work out for EE, and hopefully the company that supplied these sub-standard accessories to the network will be presented with a hefty bill for all the inconvenience caused to everyone, including those who suffered real injuries.

More info: EE Power Bar Recall