Fake Apple Chargers Fail Safety Tests (bbc.com) 121
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.
I only buy legit UL listed supplies now (Score:2, Interesting)
I found cheapo USB chargers from Amazon have huge inrush currents and make big sparks when plugging in. UL listed power supplies have inrush current limiting which prevents this.
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I found cheapo USB chargers from Amazon have huge inrush currents and make big sparks when plugging in. UL listed power supplies have inrush current limiting which prevents this.
A guy I know who makes charging circuits told me you can get up to 30 volt spikes with some of those cheep-ass chargers off Alibaba. The same goes for USB connectors in cars. I've fried to mobile phones, one by connecting it to one of those cigarette plug to USB adapters, the other one by plugging it into a built in USB charger in my car.
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well, i suppose this works until the chinese figure out how to fake the "UL" symbol. oh wait.
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UL? Is that like a marking on a case that can be easily faked like every other marking on a case?
Hell I got a water filter with a perfectly forged TUV certificate one day. The only thing that gave it away as fake is that the TUV certificated shows the water filter was perfect, except the high quality German made filter for 5 times the price didn't achieve 100% of anything. In fact in some cases the filtration numbers were listed to 4-5 significant digits. 99.993% particles etc.
Your UL markings are worthless
Re:UL Is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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>> The US represents the single largest single market in the world
Nope.
For industry products, it's a small and stable market.
For mobiles, it's still big, now second to China
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>> That makes NO sense: UL Certification means Underwriters Laboratory did the testing. Another NRTL cannot by definition, UL certify anything
Perhaps, but they certify with their stamp according to "UL" STANDARDS, which are called such because originally UL wrote the national safety standards.
This name confusion is causing widespread misunderstanding, and this confusion is the only reason UL is asks for twice the price for the same service.
>> They are the laboratory that the insurance industry g
Amazon's responsibility (Score:4, Informative)
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I wouldn't mind if they disclaimer'd how things really are. "This stuff is untested, unvetted, unknown. We don't know anything about this source and will never verify if they're actually [manufacturer]. We're really just letting them post the product and collecting our slice." Better money in pretending otherwise, of course.
This is not entirely Amazon's fault, this is much more the fault of the concept of voluntary self regulation by industry. These days the manufacturer just sticks a CE marking on them to certify that the product complies with applicable standards. There are no men wearing white lab coats in test institutes testing these products unless the manufacturer does it voluntarily himself. The idea is that anybody who sells crap products will quickly be fingered for that and disappear from the market. However, there
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>> These days the manufacturer just sticks a CE marking on them to certify that the product complies with applicable standards
Nope.
Does not work that way any more.
With the new EC regulation, the importer in EU has the responsibility of the CE conformance, so he is liable. It could well be Amazon in some cases.
Amazon is liable for what they sell.
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If it's Amazon itself selling them, yes. If it's a different company listing them on Amazon, no. Amazon is a platform. The seller is the one making the sale.
Amazon could be proactive and protect their image by policing it, but that's their option as the owner of the platform.
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If Amazon takes the money, then they're the seller. Full stop.
What if I buy it from eBay using Paypal? Then Paypal takes the money, so they're the seller. Full stop. Right?
Should eBay be vetting everything sold on their platform? Should Paypal be vetting everything bought or sold using their platform? What about Visa and MasterCard? Should they be vetting? If not, then what makes Amazon different?
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A better brick and mortar analogy would be a shopping mall. Is a mall liable for all products sold by individual stores in that mall? In the Amazon marketplace, the individual retailers are the actual sellers, and simply "rent space" in the Amazon platform like an individual store does from a shopping mall.
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Amazon's Marketplace sellers are not Amazon suppliers. There IS a legal entity for service providers that is distinct from retailers.
Someone facilitating payment and listing services only is not a product merchant. Amazon has a responsibility to vet its Marketplace sellers, including those found to be selling counterfeit or unsafe products, but it has no obligation to vet inventory or conduct affirmative investigations into every product listed for sale. What you're describing is the responsibility of a r
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>> Should eBay be vetting everything sold on their platform?
Yep. They have to. And they take responsibility.
On the brick and mortar equivalent, you cannot sell a product and decline responsibility (at least not in the EU)
So yes, Ebay and Amazon are liable for what they (re)sell.
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I searched Amazon for "iPhone charger", and sorted the results by price low-to-high. This was the first result that was actually a charger (their search algorithm apparently needs work). https://www.amazon.com/SMTSMT-... [amazon.com]
Right on the page, it says "Ships from and sold by SMTSMT-Store", which means a company called SMTSMT-Store, rather than Amazon, is the legal seller and therefore the entity liable for any quality issues with the merchandise. Amazon in this case is simply the platform hosting a storefront fo
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I bet that's a quality piece of gear there :) $0.01 + $1.99 shipping
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In the UK under UK consumer law, Amazon is responsible for all of these items, whether or not they are sold and fulfilled by Amazon or a third party - Amazon handle the sale and payment, so Amazon are the ones responsible for the sale. This is different to Ebay as Ebay do not handle the payment and you would find it very hard to buy from Ebay themselves.
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>> The seller packs the product and ships the product to you (not Amazon).
The logistics does not matter ( or you could sue DHL if your charger explodes)
The item is sold to from the seller to Amazon, and from Amazon to you, so Amazon sold it to you takes profit, and takes responsibility for that sale.
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The item is sold to from the seller to Amazon, and from Amazon to you, so Amazon sold it to you takes profit, and takes responsibility for that sale.
No, that isn't true. If I buy from Amazon, I pay California sales tax because Amazon has a state presence. If I buy from an out of state vendor, there is no tax charged. And California wouldn't stand for that if there was any way that they could leglly classify Amazon as a re-seller.
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It's no different to brick and mortar in this respect: If you went down to your local Best Buy to find a tab
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Amazon provides listing services so that your items show up on their site.
Amazon provides payment services so that you don't need to worry about credit card processing.
Amazon provides warehousing and distribution if you don't want to handle that yourself.
Those are all services that the Amazon platform provides. These are all services that have been provided to retailers by other companies for many, many years. Amazon is not the seller. They were never the owner of the merchandise at any point in time. T
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Would you seriously argue that B
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Your example isn't really adding any clarity.
Amazon makes it clear who the seller is. Right next to the price it will say "ships from and sold by Amazon". That's clear, right? It may also say "sold by $OtherRetailName and Fulfilled by Amazon". Still clear who the seller is. On the side it may also have "Other Sellers on Amazon". Still clear, right? That's part of what makes Amazon popular. You search for a product and have the option of buying it from a variety of sellers. That's why your example d
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How is Amazon the seller? It's not their merchandise.
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This is Amazon's responsibility. They're selling counterfeit, dangerous merchandise.
I agree. They're selling what they claim to be genuine Apple hardware, but it obviously isn't.
I've bought Apple-branded chargers off of Amazon, and if they burn my house down I'm not going to waste my time hunting down some fly-by-night counterfeiter in China, I'll be suing Amazon.
If Amazon had half a brain they'd immediately recall all of the suspect chargers and replace them. They know exactly who bought them so it's not like they don't know who to contact.
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>> Apple controls and/or prevents the existence of 3rd party chargers with the use patents.
Nope. NOnonono. NO! It simply does not work that way.
Apple controls the market of legal compatible accessories (the high priced ones who pay licence fees), they do not control the counterfeits.
What's inside a fake (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a video taking one apart [youtube.com] and reverse-engineering it to see why it's so crappy.
You get what you pay for.
...laura
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You can't get really good stuff for cheap, but you can get expensive crap, "you get what you pay for" only goes one way.
Better goods are more expensive because they use better materials, better manufacturing, better quality control, etc... You can get cheaper by being good at business and by making economies of scale but passed some point you need to compromise quality.
The problem is that you don't know beforehand if what you buy is good or not. That's what brands are for. The idea behind brands is that the
Re:What's inside a fake (Score:4, Informative)
This related video [youtube.com] shows the insides of a genuine charger. Jump ahead to 9m 40s [youtu.be] if you've already seen that first video showing the innards of a crappy charger.
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Not that video. The "genuine" Apple charger turns out to be counterfeit, and not much better than the cheap generic charger. You're only going to be able to tell it's crappy if you're an electrical engineer who's dissected these before...
Bullshit.
In the case of Apple specifically, who is infamous for fixed price products, if you're paying anything other than Apples standard price, it's probably fake. That litmus test alone will identify the fake and potentially unsafe hardware 95% of the time, which hardly requires an EE degree.
Kills me when iMorons will pay the money for a genuine iPhone, only to suddenly turn into a cheap-ass and spend 17 cents on a fucking charger for it, and then get pissed when their expensive cell phone gets fried.
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>> if you're paying anything other than Apples standard price, it's probably fake
Nope. There are many categories.
1) genuine from the brand
2) Genuine but "night shift made" copycats. : come from the same factory (eg. Foxconn,...), same line. These are no counterfeits, they do not bear the trademark. THEY ARE LEGAL.
3) "Genuine" but "night shift made" counterfeits : same as above, but bear the mark, so are illegal counterfeits (in some small countries like hte USA)
4) Licenced compatibles. Bang and Olufs
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>> if you're paying anything other than Apples standard price, it's probably fake Nope. There are many categories. 1) genuine from the brand 2) Genuine but "night shift made" copycats. : come from the same factory (eg. Foxconn,...), same line. These are no counterfeits, they do not bear the trademark. THEY ARE LEGAL. 3) "Genuine" but "night shift made" counterfeits : same as above, but bear the mark, so are illegal counterfeits (in some small countries like hte USA) 4) Licenced compatibles. Bang and Olufsen, Brose. whatever. Compatible, genuine, licenced, and pricey, sometimes cost more then the original.THEY ARE LEGAL.. 5) Good copies that are safe but not stamped as such by approval mark. THEY ARE LEGAL. The best cost/benefit ratio in this list !!!!!!!! 6) Bad copies that are unsafe but not illegal due to trademark, they are illegal due to safety. 7) Bad clones that are unsafe and wrongly branded, thus illegal twice. 8) Very Very Bad copies that are very very unsafe and wrongly branded, thus illegal 3 times, and very dangerous. 9) Scams that only take your money, and don't bother delivering any product at all. At least it's safe.
And let all it takes is a trip to one of many legitimate vendors (to include an actual Apple store) to avoid this. Ironically we don't hear about such a systemic problem of fake iPhones. For some odd reason consumers don't mind shelling out for certain overpriced hardware, but certainly will when it comes to accessorizing said expensive hardware.
As far as a more expensive licensed version (ref. #4), if Bose is blowing up iPhones, then Apple should be severing their licensing agreements. Plain and simple.
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What do you think the brands do?
They buy cheap Chinese crap and put their sticker on it.
This is going to get worse with USB-C (Score:5, Interesting)
With USB-C, this is going to get much, much worse. Apple, Google and HP now have laptops that can get juice from every charger.
However, the protocol for that (USB-PD, Power Delivery) is a digital protocol. So companies that used to build purely electronic chargers will now have to build or more likely buy firmware for their chargers. There's bound to be bugs in there, but we're talking about chargers that can supply up to a 100W of direct current.
I dare not guess how much houses are going to burn down because of crazy power supplies.
Personally, I'm only buying cables and chargers that have been tested thoroughly. You can't trust Amazon reviews, you can't trust big brands, you can only trust guys like Benson Leung and Nathan K., who whip out the protocol analyzer and the benchtop electronic loads.
This is a real good source:
https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com]
And this is the Google Plus page, where they post an analysis every so often:
https://plus.google.com/collec... [google.com]
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Can USB-C charge a beowulf cluster of Samsungs Note 7?
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Can USB-C charge a beowulf cluster of Samsungs Note 7?
My answer is an unequivocal maybe.
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I second this, after having done considerable research on this over the past week. Be careful guys, many well reviewed chargers with 4+ star rating on amazon by lay people (like me) were tested and shown to be outright dangerous.
It's a weird situation too. Because USB-C can charge a phone as well as a laptop, some people might give rave reviews for a charger that is built to charge phones. But some idiot copy/pasted firmware that advertises the tiny charger can deliver 3A at 14,5V or something like that, and the first person who hooks up a laptop will have a red-hot charger.
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USB-C needed some more refinement before release so we have a new set of issues to worry about:
https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
Also, USB-C and thunderbolt etc over this connector end up requiring IC chips in the cables themselves as well. Those cheap USB-A and mini cables are a thing of the past and the same goes for the charger adapters too. USB-C is not an improvement other than it's 2 sided plug. All so we can only have 1 plug for everything... except not everything since thunderbolt 3 will have to b
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I have to disagree. The damn things stop charging if you look at them wrong. It's the least reliable connector I've had to deal with since Nokia PopPort.
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Not my experience; however, I was concerned they should have made it wider with a larger copper surface area since those get dirty (possibly less dirty exposed??)
I also thought a bump on the copper contacts would have been nice with helping insure a good connection... but i've never seen anything do that and I'm not sure why; perhaps some industry wide wisdom?
What BOTHERS ME GREATLY is poor quality USB-C cables damaging hardware. A cheap cable shouldn't be capable of destroying $1,000s of dollars of equipme
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Why will it get worse? Unlike the lightning connector, USB C is an open standard, so anybody - Belkin, Retrack, et al can make perfectly good USB C connectors, w/o having to pay anything to Apple
Well, on one hand it's a much better situation. We get much more choice in what we can buy. There's really good examples too, like this Innergie charger. It's made by Delta (which makes lab-grade benchtop power supplies) and it shows; that charger was very well tested.
However exactly because everybody can make a charger, we'll also get the worst possible stuff for sale.
Even ones that are tested can have problems (Score:2)
I bought an Anker USB C-C cable. I got an LG phone with C, and Qualcomm quick charging on it so I needed some new adapters to be able to charge it at full speed. Gout a couple of adapters, and couple of A-C cables and then said "why not?" and got a C-C cable too. No use for it yet, but I figured I'd get it since I'm sure my next laptop will have C on it.
A few weeks later, Anker sent me a recall notice. Apparently there was a problem in the cables that could cause issues with high power use cases so they gav
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we're talking about chargers that can supply up to a 100W of direct current.
Implying that fake chargers don't exist at the moment? Have you looked on eBay / Alibaba for laptop chargers before?
It can't get much worse than it already is.
Apple problem mostl or platform-independent issue? (Score:2)
That fake chargers cut corners that lead to unsafe designs is not a surprise. However, I wonder if Android devices suffer from a similar problem. Is there something inherent about the Apple design that leads to a higher probability of unsafe knock-offs, or is the current focus on Apple chargers simply a matter of more media attention devoted to Apple at the moment?
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But the strategy of badmouthing the "knockoffs" (directly and by proxy) is lots better for profits!
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Look at the prices of well engineered USB-C chargers. They're on par to be the same price. Putting engineering effort into a product costs money.
The 3 highest rated USB-C chargers linked elsewhere [google.com] cost $35, $39.99 and $39.99.
Re:Apple problem mostl or platform-independent iss (Score:4, Informative)
The closest thing to "something inherent about the Apple design" is Apple's tighter control over production of devices with Lightning and MagSafe connectors through refusal to license relevant patents. Android devices, on the other hand, use standardized USB micro-B and USB C connectors. Licenses for patents that cover standard USB connectors are offered under "FRAND" (uniform royalty) conditions. So any safe USB charger is a safe Android charger.
Re: Apple problem mostl or platform-independent is (Score:1)
This is not an Apple problem, cheap USB power adapters cause significant issues for Android phones and other devices that use USB. The companies making them don't follow the guidelines for USB products any more than they do with lightning ones, and with apple shifting to USB-c, they will see bigger problems just like everyone using USB-c.
Probably the best thing you can do for any device is to but a good quality branded product, often times they are only a few dollars more.
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Part of what makes these problematic is largely that they're trying to look like Apple products. Apple makes really small power supplies, which makes it much harder to create knock-offs that work. Nobody makes knock-offs of Android supplies; they just make cheap USB power supplies. Because they aren't trying to hit an absurdly small form factor, they don't cut corners to the same degree, and the supplies tend to be more reliable at a given price point. That said, the Apple USB supplies cost $19, and th
Apple bears some responsibility here. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Anonymous Coward:
The victim here is the consumer. Not Apple, and not the counterfeiters, who are both playing a role in the consumer's victimization either directly, by offering unsafe low-quality products, or indirectly, by offering safe but expensive low-quality products. Together these comprise opposite sides of the same coin. Neither manufacturer is harmed in the least bit by their actions; to the contrary, they both profit handsomely, which is precisely why this issue has become so prevalent among A
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The Apple brand also demands a premium.
If you are a counterfeiter, it makes perfect sense to make your knock-off look like an Apple product. You can charge twice as much for it.
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Chargers and cables are not cutting edge technology. The design and safety considerations are well known and stable. Your suggestion that the high price is justified from a research, design, and consumer safety perspective is not supported by actual evidence: for example, a Lenovo laptop charger retails for $55 but an Apple charger retails for $85, yet the Lenovo design has all of the safety and durability features that even the Apple charger lacks: it has strain relief, and it has a replaceable cable th
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third parties already sell legit apple compliant cables that are better than original apple cables and cheaper. you can buy them in best buy for less than in the apple store
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"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."
And their choice of an awful insulation plastic that just falls apart after a year.
And an awful connector design in which the positive wire is pressed tight against a razor-sharp edge of a grounded metal sheet, relying only on that ineffective strain relief to prevent it cutting through the insulation.
As someone who spent half a day with a soldering iron
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Here is a thought:
Design it so you can't hold it... er wrap it wrong. People are going to wrap it wrong, design it so it wraps correctly.
I have a few dell chargers, they are designed to be wrapped and even come with the straps/connectors to hold the wrapped cords in place.
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The translucent AC cables supplied with the yoyo style iBook chargers, some of the candy coloured iMacs, and the graphite G4 towers would degrade over a few years until they flash over and trip your circuit breakers. I haven't had that problem with the DC size cables though, or with MagSafe AC adaptors.
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The DC parts of the yo-yos sometimes degraded in the same way, but the internal sparking just darkened the wires without tripping any breakers.
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It has nothing to do with how you wind it. I've seen Apple power supplies that were never wound up at all where the outer insulation became brittle and flaked off in large chunks. I'm not sure if it was sun exposure
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FTFY.
As far as I'm aware, Apple has never in its entire history built a good laptop power supply:
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Slight correction. I'm not sure if they actually caused fires; they were recalled because they considered them to be a fire risk from overheating, which presumably was caused by shorting caused by the cable failures.
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Especially when you consider that a proper mains adapter probably only has a couple dollars of parts in it. Also that they use proprietary connectors - forces you into their supply chain.
Apple's markup is pretty insane.
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Apple prices genuine ones exorbitantly
I see you've never looked inside an Apple charger. There's nothing exorbitant about it, only a high quality piece of electronics that is unlikely to burn your house down, or do any kind of damage in anyway to any device that it is connected to.
The same can not be said for pretty much any charger cheaper than Apple's genuine one.
consumers don't want to spend $100 or $45 or $20 to replace a charger or cable.
Consumers don't want to spend $19 (actual cost of the charger) to not burn their house down? I mean I get it, it's super expensive. It's a whole 66% of the cost of a comparable Samsu
InOtherNews: Real Apple chargers fail budget test (Score:3)
I replaced my broken apple MB Air charger 3 years ago. Recently it broke again. I repaired mine this time around, with electric connectors and tape. 85 Euros for a charger is freakin' insane, even by Apple standards. The margin on these things must be higher even than on iPhones. Someone should list their global profit percentage on chargers - that would probably be 99.9% vis-a-vis 91% of all Smartphone profits globally. ...
One of the reasons I'm actually happy about moving away from Apple computers now.
Re:InOtherNews: Real Apple chargers fail budget te (Score:4, Informative)
It's worse than that. At work, we use trolleys for charging macbooks. Each trolley has fifteen slots, and fifteen magsafe cables coming from a common power supply.
Except that there is no way to get those cables.
Apple holds the patent. They make exactly as many connectors as they do chargers. They don't sell the connectors or cables separately. They will not allow anyone else to manufacture them. So on every one of those trolleys, for every one of those fifteen bays, we had to sacrifice an Apple charger. We chopped off the connector and had it incorporated into the trolley, and threw the charger body itsself away.
And every time a connector needs replacing - which happens a lot, see above post on how awful magsafe connectors are from a durabiity standpoint - we have to buy another expensive charger, chop off the connector, and throw the rest away.
You can get magsafe connectors on eBay, which I assume come from some knock-off-shop in China who are happily ignoring the patent. Supply is erratic, and we can't use them because they don't come from a known trustworthy supplier.
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Too bad the apple chargers wont fit on a power strip due to their irregular shape.
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They fit on power strips here fine. I'm guessing it depends on the spacing of the strip and the national design of the socket.
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How would that help? The magsafe connectors are still going to fail, and the charger would still need replacing.
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Except that there is no way to get those cables. Apple holds the patent.
All MacBook Pros are now equipped with USB-C so as soon as your current batch is written off, this problem will be fixed. For now, it's a pretty nasty situation though.
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In my experience, those knockoff magsafe cables are completely useless. I had a Macbook power supply where the connector stopped working. I saw a bunch of cables on Amazon for $5 or so, much cheaper than getting a new power supply obviously.
I must have went through at least 5 of those knockoff replacement cables. Several different brands (though who knows if the different brands listed on Amazon all get their product from the same supplier.) None lasted more than a couple weeks.
I eventually broke down and b
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For the same reason every other company that uses Apple does so: We have certain employees with authority and an insistence that they really need Apple and nothing else will do.
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85 Euros for a charger is freakin' insane, even by Apple standards
Yeah tell me about it. $75 for a Dell charger is ludicrous. Wait wrong company? Sorry. 99EUR for a HP charger is insane? Oh they have a cheaper one? Yeah 65EUR for a painfully weak and slow HP charger is just insane.
Oh wrong company?
Yeah I guess the entire industry that produces quality CE and UL listed products that won't electrocute you or burn your house down is mad.
Or maybe (just a guess) there's actually a shitload of engineering and very carefully designed expensive components in a good charger. You k
Apple's warning is true..Danger lurks here.. (Score:3)
I purchased a couple of those white boxy chargers on E-bay and found that if I plug in the thing the wrong way, I get the full line voltage on the case of my apple phone. Those things could have killed somebody! Seriously, they are more than just a little dangerous. I could have died just holding my phone in bare feet while charging.
Once I realized the issue, ALL of them went into the trash and although I'm $10 poorer, I learned a valuable lesson. Don't buy stuff like this from E-Bay. Cheap cables and stuff w/o any active components? Fine... Just NOTHING that plugs into the wall unless you can verify it's not a knock off (which is unlikely to be possible). Shocking what kinds of stuff they get away with selling...
Still, why on earth does Apple run the price of this stuff so blooming high? Seriously guys, I don't mind you making a profit but do you really have to gouge me after I paid retail for that I-device to start with? How much does a 5V power supply actually cost you to produce anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
Still, why on earth does Apple run the price of this stuff so blooming high?
This one is obvious: Because they can (and greed of course!).
Re: (Score:2)
Not exactly... For some apple products the charger can affect how fast the device sucks in power and you don't get the best charging rate w/o using the OEM supplied equipment. Yea, they will charge with any old 5V 500ma USB based charger just fine, only sometimes, for some devices, not as fast.
Prosecution Required (Score:2)
This will only stop if the government regulators get some balls and actually start prosecuting somebody. I bought a 'genuine' apple charger off eBay that was a fake with dangerously inadequate creepages. I told the supplier they had broken several laws, but all they cared about was the negative feedback on their eBay account.
If the govt. crates mandatory safety legislation, they need to enforce it.
I use them (Score:1)