Stewart Baker wrote:
All fine in principle, but here in the UK, nobody is enforcing the EMC
legislation.
It's true that nobody is enforcing it effectively against grey imports.
On the other hand, those are only a small minority of sales. The vast
majority of sales come from responsible manufacturers, through
responsible distributors.
In Europe, the distributors provide the most effective enforcement of
manufacturing standards for consumer goods. This is because consumers in
Europe have strong legal rights which are directly against the
distributor. If there is a manufacturing defect, then in most cases the
consumer has a legal right to reject the goods and demand a refund from
the distributor. (Some distributors still try to fool customers into
going back to the manufacturer, but most consumers are becoming much
more savvy about the law. Refusal to give a refund *will* bring down
heavy enforcement from the consumer protection agencies.)
The faulty goods then become the distributor's liability. Even if the
issue is eventually resolved with the manufacturer, the time and trouble
eats up everybody's profit margin. To avoid such situations as far as
possible, distributors routinely demand formal declarations of quality,
including compliance with all applicable standards.
That still isn't to say that every declaration of compliance is
truthful, or that the technical standards themselves are totally
effective - far from it! - but even the present situation is a whole lot
better than nothing.
--
73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek
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