Travel Technology - Ever have your charger catch on fire?

It didn't happen on a plane but I just had my cellphone charger short and
actually catch on fire on an OBB (Austrian Rail) train today. I had my Treo
650 plugged in to allow it charge while playing mp3s as I've done hundreds of
times before this. And all of a sudden I hear one of the other passengers in
the compartment shout and I see fire coming from the charger. So I quickly
yank it out of the socket via the mini-sync cable and stamp out the fire. It melted the entire plastic casing of the charger and scorched the cable. Fortunately it didn't physically damage the cable though since none of the cell shops here in Vienna have even seen a Treo 650 before, let alone have a spare charger for it.

Fortunately one shop did have a USB charging system for a bunch of different phones and I was able to use the surviving mini-sync cable.

I used one of these VersaChargers for my Treo 650:
http://www.boxwave.com/products/versacharger/index.htm

Mind you I've used this in the US, Argentina, Japan, Austria, Germany
and on Continental flights without any problems. I also used it on an
OBB train a few days ago.

I'm still thinking of getting another one since it's been so handy until now but this event freaked me out a little. Anyone have thoughts on the matter? I'm going to email the company as well and let them know what happened.

I have seen them over heat and smell, but never really seen them go on fire
under normal circumstances. Usually the problem was seen in the countries
where they use higher voltage.. and chargers i've used are one of those
$5 off the street.

Common? Thankfully not, but not unheard of.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerel.html

I'd still be careful of going too far to the low end of quality, especially concerning airline use.

Common? Thankfully not, but not unheard of.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerel.html

I'd still be careful of going too far to the low end of quality, especially concerning airline use.

I dont use the cheap ones in the aircraft.. they are just there
as a spare or replacement for a lost one. Sometimes they are
much better than what you can find at radioshack.

Well I emailed the company and so far I haven't heard back from they yet. The charger I was using wasn't off the street and from what I can tell the company's products have had favorable reviews with their Treo products.

I doubt it was the charger. It was probably a surge on the train that shorted it out that the charger couldn't handle. I put a meter on an Amtrak plug once when I was bored out of my mind, the needle was all over the place with spikes and low points.

Not quite a fire, but I plugged a NiMH battery charger into the 220V socket in India a few months ago with just a plug adapter. Green charging light came on, so I assumed all was well, until 4 hours later when...POP, poof, and a small cloud of smoke. Of course it turned out the unit was 120V only after I took it out and checked! Rather odd how long it took to blow (and it hadn't actually been charging the batteries, just displaying a nice green light until it decided the end was at hand.)

Funny that the one piece of electronics I had with me that wasn't dual or multi-voltage was a modern charger I'd just recently bought before that. Even my 10 year old electric shaver is dual voltage! And this was a nice compact 4 channel charger too. :( (Most 4 battery chargers are 1 or 2 channel only. So if you're charging batteries that are different capacities and/or depleted to different levels, when one fills it'll keep getting full power pumped into it until everything on that channel is full and it goes into trickle charge mode...bad for battery life in the long run.)

I wanted to post a resolution to this matter. I contacted Boxwave during my trip and they wrote back stating they had not heard of anyone else's charger catching fire. However they point out that their Versacharger is only rated for 220V not 240V. Since Austria goes up to 240V they pointed to that as the possible situation but I also suspect a power spike on the train caused the overload. It's too bad really since the USB charger I bought in Austria goes to 240V but is a bit more clunky.

They offered me a free replacement in exchange for my old charger. Since I threw the melted mess away I told them I didn't have it so they offered me 50% off a replacement which I felt was a quite fair offer.

I just received the replacement and while I'll continue to use it domestically and in 110V countries I think I'll be using the USB charger I bought in Vienna for countries that use 220V-240V power.

Never had a charger catch on fire, but I'm thinking about weaning myself from using my Dell on my lap:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

Never had a charger catch on fire, but I'm thinking about weaning myself from using my Dell on my lap:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

Just make sure you keep all the air vents clear. I find this dell incident very unusual.

My very new Dell came with a charger that gets REALLY hot when charging the battery and running the PC. I make sure to always prop it against something so there's air flowing all around it. The laptop itself gets rather hot, too but nowhere near as hot as the charger. It's a Latitude D620...

My replacement Versacharge has just died. Of course it has to be on the road. But at least the minisync cable is still working so as I type away my cellphone is being charged with the USB port on this computer. Unfortunately I didn't bring my laptop so I'll have to hang out in the hotel business center longer than I would like.

I emailed Boxwave and asked them if we could work out a replacement for the replacement. Of note, they now have a Versacharger Pro which moves the USB port to not take up two outlets and supports voltages to 240V (Austria safe!). I put an order in for one of those and mentioned it in my letter to customer service.

I'll report back what the resolution of the story is. In the meantime I'll be using my phone sparingly it seems.

Boxwave just emailed me and offered a free replacement Versacharger and they'll even provide me a shipping label to send the defective one back to them. So while it was a bit aggravating to have the charger die at an inopportune moment their willingness to replace the defective unit is a definite plus in their favor.

If someone's looking for an alternative to igo's products, Boxwave makes a wide range of chargers for phones, cameras, etc.