eBay and Amazon Delist Faulty Carbon Monoxide Alarms (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: Dozens of potentially deadly carbon monoxide alarms have been removed from sale by Amazon and eBay after a Which? investigation found some of them would not have protected their buyers. The consumer group tested four alarms that were on sale on both sites -- including an Amazon bestseller -- and found that they consistently failed to sound when the gas was present.... It said one of the alarms -- the Topolek GEHS007AW CO alarm (£14.99) -- was listed as a bestseller on Amazon. It failed to detect the gas in more than 80% of tests. Three other unbranded alarms that were made in China and sold through sellers on Amazon and eBay for under £10 also repeatedly failed to sound when there was carbon monoxide present... Which? said all four claimed to meet the British safety standard for detecting carbon monoxide.
Both Amazon and eBay have now removed the alarms -- as well as "another 50 lookalike alarms."

Comments

A quality CO sensor costs about $10..15

[gweihir]

Hence when the whole device costs in that range, you can be sure an ElCheapo $1 sensor was used. (Prices from Ebay, so YMMV.) Also, gas-flow is non-trivial, you cannot just put the sensor into a case, put some holes in that case and hope for the best. And actual testing the device is not so cheap or easy too. I expect these fails were "blind designs" were the "engineer" just read the datasheet and build the device without ever doing any real and costly testing.

Re:A quality CO sensor costs about $10..15

[chihowa]

Which is good to keep in mind when buying from domestic brands, but Chinese manufacturers are increasing selling their shoddiest products directly through Amazon now. Some of these are designed directly in China with the intent of cutting costs to the minimum, which is even worse than the average cost-cutting approach used by domestic brands.

Seriously, putting much trust in brand names is silly these days, but buying a piece of critical safety equipment from TOPOLEK, or WINFI, or MODOAO or any of the assortment of identical looking and implausibly cheap sources is more than just naive.