SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20210731-C0907-2147361459. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: Apple Computer MacbookPro (Apple MacBookPro Retina 13-inch Early 2015). Incident: My MacBookPro, serial number C2QQ20A1GM13, since new, has burned the insulation from several charging cables due to being built with a defective charging port. The power port caused arcing due to the contacts never making full contact. On several attempts to resolve the matter, I ended up buying several new chargers thanks to the downtown Portland Oregon Apple Store being condescending [REDACTED]. The actual cause was a manufacturing defect in the charging port, which overheated the conductors. Apple Computer is not even willing to have their product safety department look at the damaged computer or cables to see if a recall is needed to prevent an electrical fire. Part of the issue is the age of the computer, 6 years, and part of it is that I wasn't burned badly enough to seek medical attention during a pandemic. However, I strongly suspect that if the wires get hot enough to burn the insulation off within a day, then fires are likely due to the defective laptops aging. The failures started when the laptop was under warrantee, with the last failure occurring when it was about six years old, and all the failures were caused by a defective power port on the laptop. I suspect that all remaining examples of this product with this defect should be recalled and destroyed.