A while back I tried to buy a new wifi router. I was sick of having to pay rental to my local ISP, now that we were on fibre and didn’t need any special DSL router. I found a nice one online that ran OpenWrt, was a very nice price, and bought it. Eventually, I got an email from local customs telling me in no uncertain terms that there was no way in hell I was having this device unless I could provide the CE documentation for it, and I could pay to have it destroyed, or get it sent back to the seller. http://www.reglugerd.is/reglugerdir/allar/nr/90-2007 is the local regulation covering this, basically, “All wireless communications devices need to have a CE mark. If they don’t, they’re illegal in Iceland”
Ok, well and good. I understand the general purpose. Reading the actual law, it turns out there’s a massive pile of loopholes if you phrase it right, first and foremost, “this is for my boat” but ok, so be it. The device got sent back, the seller refunded me, nothing lost but time.
I kept looking for a suitable router though, and got used to looking at all the available pictures and sending emails to china asking if the device had a CE mark. I got a “yes” reply on one finally and bought it. Now, the parcel arrived, with this neat sticker on it:
Bad goods
Now, turns out this just means that it’s foreign sourced, and should have tax applied, but I think it’s interesting that this was simply delivered to me, with no request for further information.
Especially as, when I finally opened it up, it didn’t have a CE mark anyway! (Lying sellers? who woulda thunk it!) Ah well. Unevenly applied regulations, nothing new there :(
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