RIYADH, 24 November — The commerce ministry will inquire into a complaint made by a mobile phone user about the explosion of his handset the day after he bought a new battery for it. The blast, which occurred while he was asleep, injured him and caused a fire in his bedroom. The battery was bought from a telecommunications accessories shop.
Dr. Abdul Ali Al-Ali, director general of the commercial fraud department at the ministry, said that the ministry will investigate the incident in accordance with the regulations governing such situations.
"The case will be handed over to a committee that handles complaints about commercial fraud and takes penal actions depending on the degree of the damage," he added.
"I was awakened from the sleep by the loud explosion inside the house. At first I feared the gas cylinder in the kitchen had exploded. Then I noticed parts of the mobile scattered in the room," Fahd Al-Ghanim, the victim of the accident, recalled.
Al-Ghanim added that he is not after compensation.
"I just want the news to be published and people be warned about the risks involved in using this kind of battery which might have caused my death if it had exploded while I was making a call," he said.
However, the shop owner who supplied the battery to him said he did not know any details about the battery except that he had bought some packets of batteries from the sales representative of an importing agency in Riyadh.
The importing agent denied the charge, saying that there was no evidence to prove that it was sold by his firm as this brand of battery was imported by several establishments.
The importing agency insisted that no case of this particular brand of battery exploding had been reported before. The batteries may explode if they are exposed to heat or in some other exceptional circumstances, he admitted. He also said a battery will not be usable six months after manufacturing.
Al-Ghanim insists that he used the set in normal circumstances and was never exposed to fire or any thing like that. However, he feared that the battery might have been past its expiry date. The date recorded on it was 30/9/2000, but it was not specified whether this was the manufacturing or expiration date.
