[dublin]

It's easy to blow $500K or more on certification of even a well-designed product, especially if you actually use UL for your testing (never again!) Yep, I've worked at a startup that did that.

If you don't have everythign done in China, certification is a racket: In addition to at least $60-80K minimum (for CE, which helps get UL/ETL if you need them), you'll be paying $5K/Quarter/factory for audits, and $2-5K just to open the report for any changes, including things like changing your company address!

You can't hate the bastards that run this industry enough. I have no problem with complying with reasoniable rules, but I have a big problem with shakedown protection rackets, which is what this is...