Ok, so it has gotten a little better, but having lived in close proximity to Americans in Africa and so buying their appliances second hand, etc, there were all

Ok, so it has gotten a little better, but having lived in close proximity to Americans in Africa and so buying their appliances second hand, etc, there were all to many cases of people accidentally switching plugs. PC Power supplies used to also be manually switcheable - no autodetect (atleast the ones we had access to in Africa), guessing that's changed. The dangerous examples were cords that didn't have the right end or had changed ends so that you could hook a 110V appliance to a 220 outlet.