4 ms·

Dubious quality is one thing, but dubious legality is the stuff that worries me the most. I ordered some food processing gadget, but it does not come with any

by gutnor 8y ago

Dubious quality is one thing, but dubious legality is the stuff that worries me the most. I ordered some food processing gadget, but it does not come with any kind of EU certification (i.e. not stamped or anything) and it is shipped direct from China in a box that says "gift". The same product on Alibaba have different seller and some claim they are selling the "food-safe" one and not others. The brand from China are all mysterious from a foreign buyer point of view, so I cannot even buy from a brand and trust that the brand is serious about its reputation. Anyway, on Alibaba/express, there are often several brand claiming the same product despite using the same picture than another. That's a mess, and indeed if I bother buying from Amazon (instead of Aliexpress), I hope the stuff coming to be at least legal. I can understand some amount of counterfeiting, not the current level though.

stef25 8y ago
> it does not come with any kind of EU certification They're already one step ahead and have just copied the CE Marking logo as well https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-chinese-export-logo/ https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-ch...
- baybal2 8y ago
  When you ship a rebranded OEM product, you don't have to recertify it if the original white box product was. It is ironic how all kinds of certifications, originally conceived as a mean to kneecap Chinese/Asian exporters, now play into their hand. Now, it is Western companies that don't want to develop a thing on their own, or make any original products as such, as that will require them to undergo certification for every self-developed, original product. Unlike with white box designs that were specifically designed for OEM industry, and allow for all kinds of effortless customisation without losing certification, and reaping the benefit of economies of scale (one OEM design being sold to many customers under a single certificate).
John_KZ 8y ago
On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a chocolate from a local discount store (in the EU). Apparently the list of ingredients is a machine-translation of the original (unknown) language. It listed "palm-oil" as an ingredient. Sounds reasonable, but my language has different words for Palm, the tree and Palm, the palm of your hand. Apparently my chocolate was made from oil extracted from human hands. Pretty disgusting. If I had the required time or energy I'd try to file some sort of complain, but unfortunately I don't. Mostly because that's outright dangerous (imagine a potentially lethal allergen lost in machine translation).
- Johnny555 8y ago
  Maybe it was a mistranslation of hand-pressed oil rather than Palm Oil: https://www.piteba.com/en/ https://www.piteba.com/en/ :)

by gutnor 8y ago

stef25 8y ago

> it does not come with any kind of EU certification They're already one step ahead and have just copied the CE Marking logo as well https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-chinese-export-logo/ https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-ch...

baybal2 8y ago
When you ship a rebranded OEM product, you don't have to recertify it if the original white box product was. It is ironic how all kinds of certifications, originally conceived as a mean to kneecap Chinese/Asian exporters, now play into their hand. Now, it is Western companies that don't want to develop a thing on their own, or make any original products as such, as that will require them to undergo certification for every self-developed, original product. Unlike with white box designs that were specifically designed for OEM industry, and allow for all kinds of effortless customisation without losing certification, and reaping the benefit of economies of scale (one OEM design being sold to many customers under a single certificate).

John_KZ 8y ago

On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a chocolate from a local discount store (in the EU). Apparently the list of ingredients is a machine-translation of the original (unknown) language. It listed "palm-oil" as an ingredient. Sounds reasonable, but my language has different words for Palm, the tree and Palm, the palm of your hand. Apparently my chocolate was made from oil extracted from human hands. Pretty disgusting. If I had the required time or energy I'd try to file some sort of complain, but unfortunately I don't. Mostly because that's outright dangerous (imagine a potentially lethal allergen lost in machine translation).

Johnny555 8y ago
Maybe it was a mistranslation of hand-pressed oil rather than Palm Oil: https://www.piteba.com/en/ https://www.piteba.com/en/ :)