Thanks to all of you who so generously and kindly responded to my
request for help, concerning whether my tenant is right to blame a
socket in my apartment for three of his computers "dying".

I went in to the apartment this morning and found:
he had extension leads plugged into both left and right sockets in the
the one double-socket that he said was to blame, that one of these
extension leads had a quadruple-socket at the end of it, AND into one of
those four he had ANOTHER extension lead plugged in, and THAT had a
further two sockets at its end. Furthermore, he had double-adaptors
plugged in at various points. So, all in all, he really had the two
sockets at the wall really overloaded. I flicked out the fuses in the
plugs of the two extension cords and found that they were 13amp fuses,
just LIKE the fuses he had, for example, in the plug of his printer and
his computer! He plainly has no idea of overloading, amperage, and
making sure you have the right fuses fitted. Whether this actually
caused his problem I don't know, but it sure as eggs wasn't safe. I
told him I was very concerned.

Secondly, I learnt that he had bought his computers from shops on a
particular street which is notorious for operating like a vicious bazaar
in, dare I say it, downtown Calcutta! I wouldn't buy from any of these
people: they don't know what they are talking about. They just hawk the
latest electronics. I wouldn't be surprised if they had wold him duds.

Anyway, I insisted that all the extension leads were immediately removed
and that he plugged some of his many bits of equipment into other
sockets round the apartment. And I gave him the idea that I will be
keeping an eye on what he has plugged in and where in months to come.
From a safety point of view though, I agree that it might be wise to
give him notice fairly soon. He's got no idea. And the last I want to
hear is that it's not his printer that's "smoking" but the whole
apartment!

Nell.