4 ms·

Wow. These chargers may literally kill you. Where are U.S. regulators? Where the heck is eBay?

pmjordan 14y ago
CE and UL certifications get checked on import as far as I know. At $2.79, I doubt the author paid any import duty, so the parcel presumably never even went through the relevant office. I doubt regulation on such parcels could be done cost-effectively, it's probably more realistic for eBay to alert users to the problem. But then eBay might lose out on a bit of business and also, the manufacturers probably would get wise to it and print fake UL and CE logos on the device. And even if you educate people on the issue, a 90% lower price will be very tempting for many. You could make eBay legally liable for missing or faked certifications, but that would basically just force them to cut out a bunch of categories of goods. So they'd get listed under another category etc. etc. I don't think there's a solution to this, and only high profile cases of these things actually blowing up in people's faces and electrocuting toddlers will change anything (probably the legal situation, and probably for the worse). If we're lucky, this doesn't happen before China becomes sufficiently developed to introduce and enforce their own, similar regulations. Of course, production of this kind of stuff will then just move to developing-nation-du-jour. Meanwhile: Caveat emptor. Another certification circumvention hack is to import the device as components (which don't require certification) and assemble it in the EU (or US, assuming this hack works there too). Obviously infeasible at that sort of price. A game console maker I won't name here did that with their early devkits for a popular console (maybe they all do it?) to get them to developers quickly. There's no way they would have passed CE certification, as their cases frequently built up a static charge, shocking unsuspecting developers. One even blew up in our office. Nobody told me about that particular work hazard when I took the job...
- zokier 14y ago
  CE markings are generally worthless. There is no certification process for it, importers are free to stamp it on everything. It basically just says that they believe it to be safe, and thus take some responsibolity. And of course if you are importing the device yourself, you are the one taking the responsibility.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  UL is an independent safety lab that has no connection to the US government. US customs has no obligation to check if an incoming item is UL-approved. It's up to the consumer to look for those labels. Obviously counterfeit markings are a problem, that's why you now see more secure UL labels including hologram labels and other tricks.

CE and UL certifications get checked on import as far as I know. At $2.79, I doubt the author paid any import duty, so the parcel presumably never even went through the relevant office. I doubt regulation on such parcels could be done cost-effectively, it's probably more realistic for eBay to alert users to the problem. But then eBay might lose out on a bit of business and also, the manufacturers probably would get wise to it and print fake UL and CE logos on the device. And even if you educate people on the issue, a 90% lower price will be very tempting for many. You could make eBay legally liable for missing or faked certifications, but that would basically just force them to cut out a bunch of categories of goods. So they'd get listed under another category etc. etc. I don't think there's a solution to this, and only high profile cases of these things actually blowing up in people's faces and electrocuting toddlers will change anything (probably the legal situation, and probably for the worse). If we're lucky, this doesn't happen before China becomes sufficiently developed to introduce and enforce their own, similar regulations. Of course, production of this kind of stuff will then just move to developing-nation-du-jour. Meanwhile: Caveat emptor. Another certification circumvention hack is to import the device as components (which don't require certification) and assemble it in the EU (or US, assuming this hack works there too). Obviously infeasible at that sort of price. A game console maker I won't name here did that with their early devkits for a popular console (maybe they all do it?) to get them to developers quickly. There's no way they would have passed CE certification, as their cases frequently built up a static charge, shocking unsuspecting developers. One even blew up in our office. Nobody told me about that particular work hazard when I took the job...

zokier 14y ago
CE markings are generally worthless. There is no certification process for it, importers are free to stamp it on everything. It basically just says that they believe it to be safe, and thus take some responsibolity. And of course if you are importing the device yourself, you are the one taking the responsibility.
joezydeco 14y ago
UL is an independent safety lab that has no connection to the US government. US customs has no obligation to check if an incoming item is UL-approved. It's up to the consumer to look for those labels. Obviously counterfeit markings are a problem, that's why you now see more secure UL labels including hologram labels and other tricks.