lets see
food that kills pets
seafood with everything bad in it
toys with lead paint
fake everything
port scanning from china
what would you do if they quit?

Yup Elfa-X, maybe you'll get hit by a bus. I hope you can appreciate the irony, lol ;)

Andy makes perfect sense. Since I studied in electronics a bit, I never bought a charger for anything anymore. It's costs less than 4 American dollars to produce one on your own. And since it's home made, you can even interchange the main capacitors to charge any device that needs it... So now I can charge any device as long as I know where the leads are on the said device's connector.
30$ for a charger! Now that is a margin!

The CE mark is behind so much of this. It sounds like a nice idea in principle, a single europe-wide mark to identify goods that meet the standards. The effect of Europe being such a huge market makes it effectively a world-wide standard too... problem is, in Europe, customs and trading standards folk aren't allowed to touch any imports carrying the CE paperwork. They aren't allowed to inspect them on the dock or question that paperwork, or test the goods before allowing them to be sent on. The CE mark was designated as inviolable and abslutely trustworthy.

Except it's worth bugger all. The way CE is certified is through "self-certification" or through highly dubious third-party verification at the factory source. The reliance is entirely on the producers. European producers are, of course, regularly inspected to make sure they're complying with all sorts of regulations, but foreign producers taking part in the CE scheme aren't - and it's become increasingly clear that they're abusing the scheme on a massive scale. The US doesn't trust the CE mark any more. They inspect goods carrying it just like any other imports, and they can ban the import of defective goods. We can't. if it's got a CE mark, EU member states cannot stop it and have to try and police it inside. Even then they meet up with the constant reminder of the fact that these things are carrying the inviolate CE mark... random inspections of these goods at the border would knock all this stuff dead, but that's too sensible for our bureaucrats. There was never a problem that a government couldn't make worse.

That just seems like an efficient way of curbing the never ending stream of loud mouthed British adults, lol. ;)

Oh come on, chargers shouldn't be £15. They shouldn't even be £5. Get half-way sensible prices and people will stop bothering with fake versions.

Oh the Irony!

whats this under this item? £4.99 chargers, Ce aproved and everything.