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Fake Apple Chargers Fail Safety Tests (bbc.com)
Investigators have warned consumers they face potentially fatal risks after 99% of fake Apple chargers failed a basic safety test. From a report on BBC: Trading Standards, which commissioned the checks, said counterfeit electrical goods bought online were an "unknown entity." Of 400 counterfeit chargers, only three were found to have enough insulation to protect against electric shocks. It comes as Apple has complained of a "flood" of fakes being sold on Amazon. Apple revealed in October that it was suing a third-party vendor, which it said was putting customers "at risk" by selling power adapters masquerading as those sold by the Californian tech firm.
The only reason why there's so many fake Apple chargers and non-compliant cables is because Apple prices genuine ones exorbitantly, and yet they are not designed to be durable. This combination creates a market for counterfeit and shoddy replacement products because when the genuine version breaks, consumers don't want to spend $100 or $45 or $20 to replace a charger or cable.
Case in point: MacBook Pro chargers have been known to suffer from frayed cables due to Apple's insistence on a design that lacks adequate strain relief. This has been a known engineering defect in their chargers since the iBook and PowerBook design over a decade ago, yet Apple has persistently refused to correct this flaw, presumably to encourage people to buy new chargers and make more profit. It would be a trivial matter for Apple to redesign these chargers to make the cable detachable from the brick--something that virtually every other laptop manufacturer does, so that if the cable breaks, you don't have to pay $100 to replace the whole thing and toss the broken one in the trash.
Same problem with iPhone cables. No strain relief. Apple talks about being an environmentally conscious company, but with millions of iPhone users--and almost everyone I know who owns one has said they've needed to replace the OEM cable due to wear--the cost of this garbage is substantial. Then add in the cost of the counterfeits both in terms of waste and safety.
Apple: lower the profit margins on chargers and cables, and make them more durable. You won't sell as much or make as much money, but only then will you be living up to your claims of being environmentally conscious and actually caring about consumers not injuring themselves, because you are playing a role in the fact that your consumers are buying knockoffs in the first place.
well, i suppose this works until the chinese figure out how to fake the "UL" symbol. oh wait.
Ya, there is something inherent about apple that leads to a plethora of unsafe knockoffs. They design their products to need expensive accessories that they then gouge the consumer on. If they really wanted to slowdown the knockoffs, they should start selling at a price that's related to the cost of production.
You get what you pay for.
No, you don't. You can pay all you want and still get crap. That simplistic rule is wrong so often that it's useless. Some of the best software is free, for example.
Any cost conscious product manufacturer uses another NRTL for the small USA market.
Um... no. The US represents the single largest single market in the world, and is roughly 25% of the entire world. No manufacturer can afford to ignore a quarter of the market, any more than they can ignore the E.U. or China.
There are plenty of PSUs which have good safety, and are not UL listed (but UL certified by another NRTL).
That makes NO sense: UL Certification means Underwriters Laboratory did the testing. Another NRTL cannot by definition, UL certify anything
But assuming you meant that the product is certified by a different NRTL: You're ignoring the scope and purpose of an NRTL.
An NRTL can do testing for OSHA compliance. OSHA is only an authority for workplace safety, and nothing else. An NRTL's certification is only valid for an industrial or commercial application, and has no value for products intended for a home.
There are only 17 NRTL's, but even then, they are limited in scope. Each NRTL is only licensed to test a specific set of criteria: For example, the NSF is an NRTL, but it's wholly inappropriate for the group to certify an electrical product. There only a couple of NRTL's licensed to test electrical products.
It's also important to note the origin and continued primary business of UL: UL was formed by and works primarily for the American fire/homeowner's insurance industry. They are the laboratory that the insurance industry goes to in order to underwrite the safety of a product.
UL listing of consumer products isn't, and should never be mistaken for any sort of governmental certification. It's an insurance industry approval, and means you're likely to get a payout should the product cause damage.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.