People sometimes treat a failed appliance as bad news, or worse, as a sign the tester is being awkward. It is neither. A fail is the one outcome that proves the exercise was worth doing.
What happens on the day
When an item fails, we do four things immediately:
- Remove it from service. It is unplugged and taken out of use so nobody picks it up by mistake.
- Label it clearly. A fail label goes on the item, stating it must not be used.
- Record it. The failure, its reason and the reading that caused it go onto your report against that asset ID.
- Tell you. We explain what failed and what your options are before we leave site — not three days later in an email.
The failures we see most
- Damaged flex. Nicks, crushing from chair castors, or cable pulled taut at the plug entry. By far the most common.
- Poor plug termination. Loose conductors, the cord grip clamping the wires rather than the sheath, or strands escaping the terminal.
- Incorrect fuse. A 13A fuse fitted to something that should carry 3A, which means the appliance is not protected at all.
- Failed earth continuity. On Class I equipment, the earth path is the safety mechanism. If its resistance is too high, the protection is not there.
- Low insulation resistance. Often moisture ingress or ageing insulation — common in kitchen and cleaning equipment.
- Damaged casing. Cracks that expose live parts or let moisture in.
Many fails are repairs, not write-offs
A rewireable plug with a loose conductor, or the wrong fuse, is a two-minute fix rather than a reason to bin a £400 appliance. Where a fault is straightforward and the appliance is otherwise sound, we will say so and, where appropriate, correct it and retest — the item then passes on the same visit and is recorded accordingly.
Where the fault is in the appliance itself — degraded internal insulation, a broken earth inside a moulded assembly — replacement is usually the honest recommendation, and we will tell you that too.
What you receive afterwards
Your report lists every failed item with its asset ID, location, the reason for failure and a recommended action. That matters for two reasons: it tells your maintenance budget what is coming, and it demonstrates to an insurer or inspector that the fault was identified and acted upon rather than quietly ignored.
A zero-fail report is not automatically good news
Across a large estate of mixed-age equipment, finding nothing at all is unusual. If you have had several consecutive visits with no findings whatsoever, it is worth asking how thoroughly the extension leads and IEC cables were examined — they are the items most often skipped and among the most likely to fail.
Talk to us about testing that tells you something useful.