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It’s all great to buy cheap stuff until you notice that those stickers are poisonous, your hand soap causes cancer and the Wi-Fi broke down because cheap uncert

It’s all great to buy cheap stuff until you notice that those stickers are poisonous, your hand soap causes cancer and the Wi-Fi broke down because cheap uncertified electronics are causing interference all over your building. As someone living in the EU, I am happy that we have product safety regulations which are halfway reasonable. But as someone building hardware in the EU, I sure sometimes hope that I would be allowed to just skip all the environmental, safety, tax, and EMI rules. But that’s the price we have to pay so that we don’t accidentally get poisoned due to other people’s greed. And that’s why, even though it negatively affects my business, I fully support those EU regulations.

mytailorisrich 1y ago
True but bear in mind that most of those things are made in China whether you buy them here or on Temu, or Amazon and may even be the same product from the same factory. Platforms like Temu allow you to buy essentially direct from China and to cut many middlemen. In hardware you have state-of-the-art PCB and assembly providers in China, who don't "skip" anything compared to European ones. Of course you have bad apples, too. So there is a balance between paying more for quality and subsidising inefficiency and middlemen.
- fxtentacle 1y ago
  I don’t think that’s a good example, because for common order configurations Aisler located inside the EU is actually cheaper than JLCPCB or PCBWay. Or was it your intention to point out that when Chinese companies follow all the rules, their price advantage mostly vanishes?
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    > Or was it your intention to point out that when Chinese companies follow all the rules, their price advantage mostly vanishes? The opposite. When they follow all the rules their products are still 10x cheaper and end up sold here either directly through Amazon or perhaps just branded as a well-known European brand (especially for small appliances, many, many products are sourced from white label chinese suppliers). So effectively you end up paying 10x more just for the branding and middlemen.
shivasaxena 1y ago
Yes, disguising this regulatory capture as a concern for consumers on health and safety grounds is a great digression. I have also seen people raise concern about Slave labour for example. This of course ignores the fact that European retailers often sell the same exact goods from the same Chinese factory, but at a 5-10x markup. And as said these goods are often same of better quality that what I would get from domestic retailers. In case of stickers the one from Temu were were of higher quality. If EU was forcing Temu to abide by EU regulations on health and safety I would be all for it. But they are shutting down competition(change in customs rule on small packages etc) so our domestic retailers can stay inefficient and continue to bleed consumers.
- fxtentacle 1y ago
  Try buying a fan on Temu which was actually FCC, CE, and UL tested and certified. Sadly, all of these certifications cost money. That means companies who actually did the certification are forced to charge more for the same quality level. Also, Temu is heavily reliant on infrastructure which was paid for by the taxes paid by local companies. The trick how Temu can avoid paying is by lying on the customs forms and declaring business transactions as valueless gifts. I’m not sure I would call fraud prevention as “regulatory capture”.
  - crinkly 1y ago
    A fun one is some of the phone chargers on there. Someone at work bought one and found out quickly that there was 240V on the USB-C shell. They were lucky it didn't kill them. That was marked as CE / UL etc because the stickers are cheap. Actually tested stuff costs money. Not a lot more but enough to push them down the ranks.
    - pjc50 1y ago
      I've also had this experience; ordered a box of 10 chargers for $20 for the office, and of course they're built down to that price way below any standard of electrical safety. The "shell" was joined in a way that pulling on it to pull out the plug could detach the back leaving exposed live wiring.
tialaramex 1y ago
As someone building hardware, unless it's like medical implants or aeroplanes or something you'll be aware that the E marking is self-certified for most things. You could (it may not be cheaper, depending on industry and volume) do the work to check you're obeying these rules and affix your own certifications. That's not true for a pacemaker or a jetliner, which will both need somebody else to certify them before they can be sold for purpose, but it is true if you make most ordinary "hardware". The rationale is that most people don't want to make shoddy garbage and so they actually want to know what's expected of them and comply, and those who are maybe less than honest can be caught by the usual processes - after the fact admittedly but now they're guilty not of some hard to prove negligence or whatever but of specifically selling goods which wrongly claimed to meet the requirements. My mother used to (decades ago) make stuffed animals for kids. Those needed E marks. One day a mother complained that her child had been injured by a toy, investigators show up, take similar animals for testing and... they're fine because of course they're fine mum had been following the EU self-certification process, testing materials, using proper tools etc. and so she knew it was done properly albeit in this particular case that wasn't enough - without any certification framework my guess is that's a nasty lawsuit and almost nothing she can do to defend herself.
- fxtentacle 1y ago
  I think you nicely illustrate why self-certification doesn’t work with Chinese companies. If your mother makes a mistake, she will get sued. But almost nobody in the EU who got hurt from a low quality product will be able to successfully sue one of those eight letter fake name companies with PO Box in China. That means local companies are forced to spend money to avoid product issues. But Chinese companies can get away with selling known faulty goods.
  - seec 1y ago
    Yep, this is distorted "competition". The actors are not playing by the same rules because one party isn't forced to follow them to the same extent and doesn't have a whole lot to lose if it doesn't follow them at all. The reality is that it isn't just a Temu problem, "free trade" with countries that do not have the same rules is necessarily imbalanced. It seems crazy to me that we impose very stringent rules inside the EU for many things and then allow anyone to import stuff from a faraway country that doesn't have to follow those rules. China has been cheating by definition for many years now and it's just now that people are reacting because it's now clear we have exported all the value creation process thanks to a lack of protection for inside actors...
kmac_ 1y ago
Thank you for your comment. People would be shocked at how many hazards they avoid because of those regulations. I'll defend China here a bit, as they are improving (at the cost of competing with other, less regulated countries, the irony). And the cherry on top: those "cheap" items are heavily subsidized from multiple places, including postal fees. When the local production gets extinguished (and it won't come back easily, as "know-how" people will be retired) those prices will change.

mytailorisrich 1y ago

True but bear in mind that most of those things are made in China whether you buy them here or on Temu, or Amazon and may even be the same product from the same factory. Platforms like Temu allow you to buy essentially direct from China and to cut many middlemen. In hardware you have state-of-the-art PCB and assembly providers in China, who don't "skip" anything compared to European ones. Of course you have bad apples, too. So there is a balance between paying more for quality and subsidising inefficiency and middlemen.

fxtentacle 1y ago
I don’t think that’s a good example, because for common order configurations Aisler located inside the EU is actually cheaper than JLCPCB or PCBWay. Or was it your intention to point out that when Chinese companies follow all the rules, their price advantage mostly vanishes?
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  > Or was it your intention to point out that when Chinese companies follow all the rules, their price advantage mostly vanishes? The opposite. When they follow all the rules their products are still 10x cheaper and end up sold here either directly through Amazon or perhaps just branded as a well-known European brand (especially for small appliances, many, many products are sourced from white label chinese suppliers). So effectively you end up paying 10x more just for the branding and middlemen.

shivasaxena 1y ago

Yes, disguising this regulatory capture as a concern for consumers on health and safety grounds is a great digression. I have also seen people raise concern about Slave labour for example. This of course ignores the fact that European retailers often sell the same exact goods from the same Chinese factory, but at a 5-10x markup. And as said these goods are often same of better quality that what I would get from domestic retailers. In case of stickers the one from Temu were were of higher quality. If EU was forcing Temu to abide by EU regulations on health and safety I would be all for it. But they are shutting down competition(change in customs rule on small packages etc) so our domestic retailers can stay inefficient and continue to bleed consumers.

fxtentacle 1y ago
Try buying a fan on Temu which was actually FCC, CE, and UL tested and certified. Sadly, all of these certifications cost money. That means companies who actually did the certification are forced to charge more for the same quality level. Also, Temu is heavily reliant on infrastructure which was paid for by the taxes paid by local companies. The trick how Temu can avoid paying is by lying on the customs forms and declaring business transactions as valueless gifts. I’m not sure I would call fraud prevention as “regulatory capture”.
- crinkly 1y ago
  A fun one is some of the phone chargers on there. Someone at work bought one and found out quickly that there was 240V on the USB-C shell. They were lucky it didn't kill them. That was marked as CE / UL etc because the stickers are cheap. Actually tested stuff costs money. Not a lot more but enough to push them down the ranks.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    I've also had this experience; ordered a box of 10 chargers for $20 for the office, and of course they're built down to that price way below any standard of electrical safety. The "shell" was joined in a way that pulling on it to pull out the plug could detach the back leaving exposed live wiring.

tialaramex 1y ago

As someone building hardware, unless it's like medical implants or aeroplanes or something you'll be aware that the E marking is self-certified for most things. You could (it may not be cheaper, depending on industry and volume) do the work to check you're obeying these rules and affix your own certifications. That's not true for a pacemaker or a jetliner, which will both need somebody else to certify them before they can be sold for purpose, but it is true if you make most ordinary "hardware". The rationale is that most people don't want to make shoddy garbage and so they actually want to know what's expected of them and comply, and those who are maybe less than honest can be caught by the usual processes - after the fact admittedly but now they're guilty not of some hard to prove negligence or whatever but of specifically selling goods which wrongly claimed to meet the requirements. My mother used to (decades ago) make stuffed animals for kids. Those needed E marks. One day a mother complained that her child had been injured by a toy, investigators show up, take similar animals for testing and... they're fine because of course they're fine mum had been following the EU self-certification process, testing materials, using proper tools etc. and so she knew it was done properly albeit in this particular case that wasn't enough - without any certification framework my guess is that's a nasty lawsuit and almost nothing she can do to defend herself.

fxtentacle 1y ago
I think you nicely illustrate why self-certification doesn’t work with Chinese companies. If your mother makes a mistake, she will get sued. But almost nobody in the EU who got hurt from a low quality product will be able to successfully sue one of those eight letter fake name companies with PO Box in China. That means local companies are forced to spend money to avoid product issues. But Chinese companies can get away with selling known faulty goods.
- seec 1y ago
  Yep, this is distorted "competition". The actors are not playing by the same rules because one party isn't forced to follow them to the same extent and doesn't have a whole lot to lose if it doesn't follow them at all. The reality is that it isn't just a Temu problem, "free trade" with countries that do not have the same rules is necessarily imbalanced. It seems crazy to me that we impose very stringent rules inside the EU for many things and then allow anyone to import stuff from a faraway country that doesn't have to follow those rules. China has been cheating by definition for many years now and it's just now that people are reacting because it's now clear we have exported all the value creation process thanks to a lack of protection for inside actors...

kmac_ 1y ago

Thank you for your comment. People would be shocked at how many hazards they avoid because of those regulations. I'll defend China here a bit, as they are improving (at the cost of competing with other, less regulated countries, the irony). And the cherry on top: those "cheap" items are heavily subsidized from multiple places, including postal fees. When the local production gets extinguished (and it won't come back easily, as "know-how" people will be retired) those prices will change.