Yup. I've even had an (Amazon rather than Temu) power-strip-and-USB combo noticeably sparking and tripping the apartment circuit breakers when plugged in just 6 months after purchase.
Could we interest you in some amazons choice fuses? never more be concerned about replacing a fuse! as these ones, simply wont need replacing! (they survive 5-10x their rated current)
It's a little amusing that he's seemingly linked to the dangerous fuses using his Amazon affiliate links. Hey, may well make a buck if someone's going to buy them anyway, right?
I think the affiliate links work such that any product bought when the lead into the site is the affiliate code will generate affiliate rewards. So even if you don't buy the crap that's linked, maybe you'll buy something else and that counts.
Amazon is does zero quality control on listings, it's just AliExpress which larger margins. At least the reviews at Aliexpress often include exhaustive detail & photos by the terminally skeptical.
I think the line should be much earlier than that. But even with this very thin line, like the parent said, the deficient products are everywhere. Just look at the recalls in any major store here (Carrefour, Action, Leclerc). And that's for the main brands/distributors, go into any bazaar or market and you'll find the exact same products you find on Aliexpress/Temu, but with 10x price markup, like the parent said.
Don't get me wrong. I think companies should be held to higher standards: i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system.
There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products.
The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses.
The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their technology or raise costs to exclude new entrants. The rules are often inefficient or poorly conceived with bad cost/benefit ratios. And companies making products that are dangerous but nevertheless comply with the rules will point to their checkbox compliance to dodge liability.
The problem with the first one is that it doesn't work well against companies outside the jurisdiction, because then you can't sue them, and the importer will be a small entity that just files for bankruptcy if you try to sue them. But the second one has the exact same problem. They sell products that don't comply with the rules; if you try to fine them they're outside the jurisdiction and the only thing in the jurisdiction is a fungible importer that will dissolve if you try to go after them.
In that environment the thing that actually works is the third thing. Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones. But this is the thing the second one inhibits, because then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted. And then customers are stuck choosing between the overpriced incumbents and the far cheaper foreign suppliers that may or may not be safe, with many people risking the latter because they have so much lower margins.
EU CE requirements are generally (outside some universally more regulated domains like medical devices) pretty lightweight to deal with, and pretty sensible. I've gone through them, and honestly the biggest pain is finding the applicable standard. Otherwise you basically just need to follow the standard and write up how you think your design follows it, and stick it into a drawer, most likely never to be seen again. You usually have to cause a very notable problem or be very obviously breaking the rules to get the regulator's attention.
How does that help you if someone is drop shipping fire hazards and trying to prosecute them means they just dissolve and create a new shell company?
Also, how does it get you anything over simple liability for fraud and harm? Why does the honest seller have to write a document if nobody is going to look at it and the dishonest one is going to skip doing it anyway?
I think the point of the parent, correct me if i'm wrong, was precisely that current EU regulations are insufficient in protecting customers and really not a burden to put any product on the market, and that anyone arguing regulation is against the little guy is talking in bad faith.
We've already tried the third one in the US before the FDA. A ton of people kept dying.
Milk was filled with borax and formaldehyde, coffee was cut with sawdust/charred bone/lead, spices were often 100% counterfeit.
The market (heavily) incentivized fraud.
In New York, in one year (1857), 8000 infants died to "swill milk" [0].
The second option (FDA and regulation) wasn't lobbied for, and the Food Bill of 1902 actually failed through heavy (counter)lobbying initially [1], until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 [2] passed.
Invoking 1857 is not a valid argument really, cause consumer priorities were different. Cheaper with some level of risk (which today's American, or German would consider excessive) was preferred option hence the market response as it was - at least it's a reasonable guess.
In less rich countries it is how things work right now.
Industries dump toxic waste into waterways if they can get away with it in the US today (literally today [0]). I agree that I might not be specifically worried about borax milk if FDA was reversed, but I would absolutely expect risky shortcuts in food offerings.
The incentives in the market has never changed. That's what regulation is for, shifting market incentives/forces to favor consumers/society.
Pollution is an externality. If Alice hires a company to do "Hydro Excavation" and they pollute Bob's water, even if Bob knows all about it and is entirely opposed, he can't prevent it by not patronizing them because he isn't a party to the transaction. So the solution to this has to be to prohibit pollution.
Product safety is about information. When Bob knows that a particular brand of milk is adulterated with chalk, he doesn't buy it. Which means that all you need for this is product labeling and liability. If the ingredients list chalk, the customer who doesn't want chalk doesn't buy it. If the ingredients don't list chalk then the seller is not in compliance if the product contains it. If the battery is unsafe then you can both not purchase it because the reviews concluded it was unsafe or sue them if your house burns down. And the compliance process is simple: You list the actual ingredients on the label and have responsibility for damages caused by your product. No massive regulatory bureaucracy with thousands of pages of rules, just liability for fraud and harm.
The problem for all of these is that the perpetrator has to be in your jurisdiction. If companies in China are emitting copious amounts of CO2, regulations in Europe can't do much about it. If those companies are making unsafe products that end up on the world market, you can't sue them in the US because they have no real presence in the US. But complex product regulations don't solve that either, because they too are subject to the same problem; foreign companies drop ship things that don't comply. Nor does putting the liability in the wrong place, because generic transportation or payments intermediaries are in a worse position than the government itself to be the ones evaluating things that come over the border.
Consider it this way: Why doesn't US customs exclude unsafe products from being imported from other countries? Consider what they would have to do to actually accomplish that.
> Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones.
.. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.
> then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted.
This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything? And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
> .. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.
How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review? Can you point to even one instance of that actually happening?
> This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything?
Huawei is a pretty conspicuous example of it actually happening. They were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. Meanwhile there seem to be a huge number of other products from the same country with white labels or rotating unknown brands for some reason even though they probably come out of the same factory.
> And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
That there is a difference between regulatory compliance and actual safety is obviously the point. All the incumbents need is for the rules to be complicated enough that compliance requires you to be a massive bureaucracy, or that nobody is really complying but selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.
> How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review?
No need. Just have dozens of companies produce hundreds of new junk products every year. Then there's no way all products can be reviewed, and no way they can be properly reviewed: what's interesting about a review is the failure mode of the products, which you have no idea about when you have 10 new Samsung smartphones coming out every year.
> [Huawei] were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.
Yes, selective enforcement is the problem. Not regulations. Regulations are not strong enough. But they need to be applied evenly. Why is it legal for Apple and Samsung to produce junk, but not Huawei? (rhetorical question, please don't answer) We need proper consumer protection. Any company producing a product should have 10 years or 20 years warranty, and should be legally mandated to produce/sell spare parts for 20+ years (as in, real spare parts, not "replacement motherboard" which costs the entire smartphone).
Suddenly, the junk makers would produce less junk. Maybe there'd only be a new Samsung/iPhone every 5 years, but it would probably be as solid and repairable as older Nokias.
You sure typed a lot to say 'a few kids are going to get the skin melted off their face by an exploding battery, that's just the cost of doing business!'
Notice that you fail to present any argument and are only retreating into indignation at the existence of the problem. You present no viable solution or counterargument to the criticism of the status quo.
Jail the executives and engineers cutting corners. For some reason, you can spend years in jail for cannabis possession or an online post criticizing Macron or the police, but people who actually commit murder and ecocide by cutting costs in engineering products, or who import such bad-quality products face exactly zero consequences.
Then we can't drink our water, can't eat anything from our soil, sometimes can't even breathe our air. But we are the only ones facing consequences while the rich fuckers are partying on yachts.
The engineers are in China and thereby outside your jurisdiction. Likewise the executives of the company that actually makes the thing. The only people in your jurisdiction are tangentially related intermediaries with no real knowledge or control over the product. It's essentially proposing to punish FedEx for shipping a package or PayPal for doing a funds transfer if unbeknownst to them the vendor's product is of low quality. It's desperate and ineffective, because how is the generic transportation/warehousing/payments company supposed to tell if any of a million randos' products are junk?
> i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system
They are not really. If one of the big brand shop is found importing stuff with fake certificate, they’ll experience the same thing. One of the advantage of the stores you mention is that they have a procedure for recalls, and their responsibility is on the line if they sell faulty goods. Good luck getting anything from Temu or AliExpress in the same situation (at least Amazon is very good with this).
So, then again, i'm not defending Temu. That being said, i doubt my local supermarkets face any kind of consequences. I mean, i just have to look at the AMAZING list of industrial scandals here in Europe over the last 30 years to know consequences are zero: mad cow, horse meat scandal, Volkswagen emissions, Uber claiming to not be an employer, Nestlé's "mineral" water, Mediator scandal, 2008 subprime crisis, France Télécom management/suicide scandal, etc etc.
I can't name a single executive that was jailed over this period here in France. Yet if the law was applied justly thousands of executives and engineers would rot in jail and the world would arguably be a much better place because it would provide incentives for companies to actually behave and not destroy our planet and livelihoods. So are companies really taking responsibility for the lives they destroy? Not so sure.
Common sense? What sort of common sense allows you to remotely assess the safety and build of a product? Even if you get a charger in your hand, can you tell?
Can your family? How about your neibhbors? Does anyone you know have this ability?
There is no common sense to be had here. There are people with more specialized information that I have that look into this. There are laws to address this - and I'm pretty sure these laws were written with the blood of folks killed by faulty products.
It's so cheaper that you can buy 2, disassemble one and inspect the electronic (spot thermometer and a cheap ESR tester). it's a charger not a nuclear power plant !
If you ban Temu chargers, people will go to stores to buy the cheapest ones which are identical to the ones on Temu, just for 10x the price.
Edit: Reply to Scroll_Swe as I am rate-limited to posting new comments. The chargers in budget stores are identical to Temu chargers are are frequently recalled.
At least in the UK, the main high-street retailers will only stock goods from reputable brands with a (relatively) decent track record and safety standards. I don't believe there is any intersection between products sold on Temu and e.g. Argos, John Lewis.
Not in The Netherlands. Plenty of stores that stock chargers identical to the ones on AliExpress and Temu. Action, Big Bazar, SoLow.
Edit: Reply to lozenge as I am still rate-limited by HN. Some of them get recalled, the vast majority of them are still being sold and could burn your house down.
This talking point is everywhere in this thread. But bear in mind that you have no clue whether two chargers (for example) are the same without disassembling them and checking. Noname Chinese manufacturers are very good at producing things that are superficially similar to other things. It does not mean that two widgets that look similar actually are.
The main difference with most physical stores is that those will accept responsibility for the stuff they sell, because otherwise regulations would put them out of business.
No, dollar store is a rank above the rankest shit from Temu.
There’s name brand (Apple, Anker, etc → made in China but made well), then there’s off-brand (cheaper than above but still made decently), then store-brand (Harbor Freight and friends, too; cheaper but still functional, not quite as nice), then dollar-store brand (barely functional but usually still “safe”), then Temu-shit (often not fit for purpose and fake certifications, actually dangerous).
A major retailer in my country had to recall thousands of units of kids kinetic sand because it contained asbestos. Are you saying we'd be better off had they not been made to recall these? Or that we'd be worse off had there been more regulation preventing kids from inhaling asbestos in the first place?
Then, that marketplace has no viable business. Society does not owe them anything. Seriously, if your business model requires you to sell illegal stuff, then your company does not deserve to survive. That’s the basics of regulation.
You're assuming the conclusion. Why is it the marketplace platform who should be the police? Should banks have to audit your life before you can open a bank account? Should you be unable to transact with anyone if you're not rich enough for them to justify that expense?
It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.
The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces.
Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.
Just because it isn't toxic doesn't mean it is edible...?
I would not allow my child to eat drywall, but neither do I consider drywall toxic.
i.e. if they started chewing on some drywall, I wouldn't haul them to the E.R. in a panic.
It's all fun and games until your neighbour in a terraced house or apartment building unwittingly starts an uncontrollable battery fire. Electric scooters and those 'hoover boards' from a few years ago are notorious when it comes to that, but plenty of underspecced small electronics will fail spectacularly.
Personally I’m happy to not have to perform that level personal due diligence for all aspects of my consumption and engagement with society and to instead pay more to reduce my risk via regulation, even if that’s less effective.
And I think that sentiment is significantly more representative of the populace outside of some edge cases around speech and vices. The vast majority of people do not want to have to investigate if their food has too much rat shit in it. They want the rat shit out of the meat or the meat not to be on the shelves.
How can you be sure? How can you get the information to know whether or not your children's toys, your medicines, your electic equipment, wall paint, food, and everything else you consume or use is safe?
You can't. So... abstain from everything? Make everything yourself - how will you have time with a job? Will you know the food you grow is safe and that your ground isn't polluted with things you can't test for at home? How about the equipment used to make that food - is the metal in that plow made of lead? Is the engine on the tractor safe?
Your due diligence is only possible because other people - usually with specialized education and/or experience - have made laws and standards to keep you safe. You don't have to personally check everything.
You are believing a lie, then, and seem to have missed the point.
You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowledge. And if you have that specialized knowledge, it'll come at the cost of other specialized knowledge. You can't personally know if that bridge you drive on is safe AND know about the metal in your plow AND know if the light bulb you bough is a hazard AND know that your antibiotic matches the label on the box instead of it being that one you are allergic to AND know all the other stuff is safe.
Everything requires trust in products or services unless you have information.
There are markings that certify that some things are safe according to some standards. You are not in a situation to know what actually is safe or to be able to test it (really, you are not; if you think you are, go talk to your nearest electrical engineer, chemist, or molecular biologist who will provide you several examples of the limitations of your knowledge and abilities). Therefore, trusting those certifications is important, and companies that falsify them must be punished so they stop doing so. It’s not complicated and that’s the whole point of the procedure (and the fine).