Maybe Joe could set up his own agency and standards lol even for pre-screening.
CSA charges out CAD $425/hour and UL very good quality but top price, even more expensive. This is why people are going with Intertek and other agencies. They really have a monopoly - their own "university/training", expert knowledge system and free access to all standards, senior certifiers etc. They also have quotas and are pushed to make money, pound out the files every month.
Because of this, I shamefully admit to getting chinese assessment and certificate on one product simply because they are fast, efficient, low cost, high volume certs there it's major manufacturing, and if you catch any errors/omissions the quality is fine.
UL/CSA can be terribly slow and expensive, you'll get a junior certifier that knows nothing and then gets hung up on on a small design issue and wastes time dollars. Then the guy gets up to speed and leaves to another department. They'll give quotations but go way over it. No accountability for cost or the results, if in the end they bungle a certification it's entirely the manufacturer's problem/cost, per the signed contract.
[...] One could look at the input current to a multimeter during an ohms-function overload, to see the PTC heat up and settle. [...]
I meant long-term overload, such as mains applied when on the ohms function. PTC holding current might be 10mA? hard to tell temperature in the heatshrink tubing sleeve but it's going be hot.