On 23 Jun 2004 11:21:04 GMT, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:



Subsequently, I had a conversation about this with someone in
the US electrical manufacturing industry. One thing that appears
to be significantly different is people buying products based on
safety/price. His comment was "no one will buy an outlet costing
a dollar, because someone else makes one costing 60c."

Yes, I've had very similar conversations.

This is
quite the opposite in the UK -- I would guess that the more
expensive quality products such as MK and Crabtree have a very
significant market share. Personally, I pretty well always buy MK,
even though there will be a cheaper no-name equivalent on the
shelf just next to it for 1/3rd of the price, and this is by no
means uncommon.

I do the same and have been weeding out the original unnamed fittings
that were installed in the house. I bought quite a lot for kitchen,
conservatory and workshop use and sent lists to several electrical
wholesalers for a quote. Significant discounts can be had on MK so
although the prices are still a bit higher than unbranded stuff, it's
not as bad as 3:1

I've had to use other manufacturer's products such as isolating
switches from Schneider etc. for the workshop machines where MK
didn't have a suitable product, but that is about all.

Anyway, this guy pointed out that his company do
manufacture higher quality versions of many of their products,
but generally these are only bought in Europe -- no market for
them in the US. If anyone here who normally uses UK DIY store
ever gets a chance to wander around the electrical section in a
US equivalent store, you can see exactly what this chap is talking
about.

It really is horrendously poor crap and I am not surprised that it
causes fires.


* I've seen the same issues being raised by US lighting engineers
about US vehicle lighting regs being 40 years behind Europe's,
but the US government won't take any notice as the US vehicle
manufactures don't want to have to redesign their 40 year old
lighting systems.

..andy

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