Seized the adapters. That would have been enough for me to be more careful about adapters in the future. Seizing the whole shipment hurts me, but not the supplier.
See my other example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469959
There's any number of things you might not expect, and the receiver is the only one hurt when they are a smaller player.
The burden of truth is supposed to be on the accuser.
Consider if you will - a robber is caught by police in his own house. In this house, they found the items the robber stole. Should they:
a) take the items the robber stole b) take everything
OP is inside of the US, and probably lives here as well. He's not a flight risk, and its totally reasonable to ask them to go through slow bureaucratic means to make sure they get it right.
CBP acts like they are the first line in a war when really they ought to be helping people come into compliance, and track down bad suppliers.
Taped to the wall on the Sault Ste. Marie crossing CBP station:
"We Are The First Line Of Defense"
Why should CBP siege all the electronics if just the adapters are not legal? Sure, if the main electronics also have counterfeit UL marks then they also should be seized, but if the main electronics aren’t counterfeit why should invalid adapters be the grounds for seizing everything else?
You are "trusting" the poster here and assuming there "intentions" are good.
As far as me “trusting” OP on the story, well yeah, it’s a random HN comment. Literally nothing is at stake here. If you’re going to start assuming that OP is lying for HN cred then be my guest, but it seems needlessly paranoid to me.
They don’t know what anyone’s intentions are except to apply electrical components to solving a problem.
Should they stop all electronics shipments? Except for the Apples of the world?
Would that make you feel safer?
The occasional irrational actor isn’t as real a threat to me as my constantly paranoid neighbors and government.
If you bought something and it arrived and was a fake, would you buy from that shipper again?
Where the adapters packaged separately to make that possible? Or are you asking some customs inspector to unbox all your items, remove the adapters, and repack it all?
The only other country I could find with the products was Taiwan, and it wasn't 100% clear if they were just importing Chinese products. They were significantly more expensive.
I don't know very well how patents and intellectual property protection work... But, if there are no suppliers of such a product in the United States (assuming your previous argument as true), then what product is being pirated? if there is none (worth the redundancy), to my understanding, there has to be a vendor whose product is being counterfeited within the united states for it to be taken as an infringement of intellectual property.
Other than that, you were not entitled to a trial? They just confiscated everything and there it ended?
The manufacturer of the AC adapter didn't pay for testing, but put the mark on the adapter. The adapters weren't the main thing I was importing, so I hadn't paid any attention to it in the order process. The technical reason for the seizure was trademark violation.
Do you know what a trademark is? This wasn't a trademark violation, it was a fake certification.
The reason for the seizure is I don't want electronics in my house that could burn it down. UL cetifiies that. That's NOT a trademark. That's a certification.
You really don't seem to understand that you were caught trying to import bogus goods. It's also concerning that you are mixing up terms (trademark vs certification), as it casts doubt on the one side of the story I am hearing from you.
I get that it may not be your fault, but the CBP doesn't know that. They don't have a crystal ball to know that you were innocent of it, nor are they EEs who can figure out that's real and what's not. They also shouldn't be. Use a more trustworthy supplier next time.
I do understand the issues, and would not have sold products using those adapters knowing the UL mark was fake. The cost to get "real" adapters was a trivial portion of the overall cost.
However, that was NOT at all what the CBP was complaining about.