Your turn: How has counterfeiting affected you?

Share your experience about counterfeit electrical products with other engineers.

By Tom Grace, Eaton February 17, 2014

To help identify the most effective ways consulting-specifying engineers can help prevent counterfeit products from entering facilities, we want to hear real-life stories of interactions you have had with suspect products and how it affected your work, your clients, or the facility.

Collaboration from all members of the electrical industry, supply chains, and enforcing governments is vital to tackling this important industry-wide issue.
After all, counterfeit electrical products can result in malfunctions that cause serious injuries and significant property damage, including sparks that can start fires.

According to the NFPA, electrical failure or malfunction was responsible for 47,700 home structure fires and 16,400 non-home structure fires in 2011, representing 13% of total home structure fires and 13% of total non-home structure fires that year.

By sharing your story, you’ll help identify areas that we can work together as an industry to improve. Perhaps you’ll even prevent a fellow engineer from having the same experience.

Please share your story below, or share via social media using #anticounterfeit to tag your post.

As brand protection manager for Eaton’s Electrical Sector, Tom Grace oversees counterfeit awareness, training, and prevention. This involves building awareness of the risks that counterfeit electrical products present to personal safety and the economy with end customers, contractors, inspectors, and electrical resellers.


As brand protection manager for Eaton’s Electrical Sector, Tom Grace oversees counterfeit awareness, training, and prevention. This involves building awareness of the risks that counterfeit electrical products present to personal safety and the economy with end customers, contractors, inspectors, and electrical resellers.