I have a SS relay purchased from Jaycar which is controlled by 12V DC switching 240V AC.
On the output side it has a small 5mA forward current as most SS relays do, but the trouble is that this is enough to keep the load on even when I turn the power to the relay off.

I tried attaching bypass resistors of various sizes (100k, 47k, even 10k) to the mains terminals but that did not help.

I found that the relay turns off reliably if I attach a lamp in parallel with the load.
Although this works I don't like this solution because the lamp draws too much power and also because the lamp is likely to burn out eventually.

I suppose I could go with some low wattage lamp but then I would need something like an opto-coupler or another relay to provide a feedback.
Otherwise if the lamp fails I will not know that the load is still on when I turn the relay off.

Does anyone know of a better solution?

Thank you very much.