I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few charger

I recalled that when in 2015, working for another sourcing shop working for likes of BestBuy/Futureshop/Target/London Drugs I was asked to tear down few chargers for them. I found that diodes in parallel are surprisingly common around the industry. This is such a thing which you are pretty much told on day 1 of any electronics course that it is impossible to not to know. My only thinkable conclusion was that people keep doing it on purpose. Other extreme cost cutting measures I saw were things like LEDs being used in double role as a diode. Wire wound around PCB used as inductor. Plug pegs being directly soldered to the PCB. Near paper thin plastic with holes from molding defects. Through hole components being soldered to each other. Flybacks without feedback. A 555 coaxed into use in a charger circuit. You cannot come with any of that unknowingly, nor will you find any of that crap on the open market easily even in China. It's pretty much an engineering equivalent of a "controlled flight into terrain," a direct result of suppliers being consciously directed into "stripping to the last cent" of the products by such unwitting buyers.