[bmastenbrook]

``I would presume it saying "the power brick is defective" is a really, really good specification about what the exact problem is with regard to a "safety issue."''

I'm suspicious of this explanation. The brick might be defective, but it's the responsibility of the charger to shut down the charge cycle if there's something wrong with the input. Most lithium-ion chargers include an on-die thermistor for this reason. I wonder if the WakeMate folks found one that didn't and also didn't populate an external thermistor to save space or cost.

[shub]

Sounds like someone wasn't practicing defensive electrical engineering (is that a thing? I think it should be a thing).