Ah, ETL, a real trap....
About a year ago ETL was all over the news (or vice-versa) because their
widespred corruption was exposed in several high-profile cases. They
typically charge fees that are about 1/2 of what UL testing costs, but many
of their labs were found to be nowhere near the US standards for "NRTL's"
They also could not produce a document trail that showed that many of their
tests were ever performed at all. Repeat customers were found to  have been
given much less stringent testing at lower cost. I investigated a
competitor's ETL listings also, and found them allowing the makers to
display their marking on horrfyingly dangerous equipment that had never been
tested- because a product name was used that was similar to an altogether
different listed product. If not for the politics of the day, they would
have lost their US national recognition last year. Oddly enough, ETL was
owned by an overseas company, and it's primary market was US.

IMHO, they are a really sloppy conglomeration of budget test houses, and
theyhave shown me that are overly laxed when it comes to testing products
that impact their bottom line.
There may be some ETL facilities that are more professional, so I can't
apply this to every location.

I have also tested them by sending several identical requests for quotes,
and received completely different responses regarding cost and the list of
required tests.

It seemed to me at the time that they must have all the people who were ever
discharged by UL for incompetence working for them.

This is a real concern, because US law is such now that no primary powered
equipment can be sold in the US unless it is either listed or approved by a
Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory. I believe ANSI sets up the
standards for the Lab Certs.
If the law were inforced, we'd lose many, many products instantly. If the
Labs were made to maintain real qualifications, we'd lose 1/2 of the
capacity to test these products.


We're currently using ETL to test to UL standards.
> Our products
> are ETL listed.

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