how you compare your own expertise vs that of entire teams of electronics engineers that do testing day in, day out with special-purpose equipment in dedicated labs.
No, you just don't get it. I don't compare or equate my expertise or observations with "entire teams of electronics engineers that do testing day in, day out with special-purpose equipment in dedicated labs", in fact I like working on and repairing equipment designed by such people because I can admire and learn from their efforts. However, I don't confuse high-quality products made by such companies with rubbish hacked together on a shoestring by third rate hacks. There are many impediments to producing a high-quality product, and when there is intense pressure to meet cost control and time objectives, quality standards become minimal requirements that just have to barely be met--if that. My distrust of these low-buck purveyors of proven unreliability is not based on technical expertise, but rather first-hand experience of how corporations and their management function.
I am such an idiot, I prefer to rely on independent certification processes.
You just cited examples of companies you would avoid because of egregious failures of their independently (to a point) certified products. I just had a UL certified product cause a fire due to piss-poor construction of a connector. If you accept a single certification test of a product from company at the bottom of the market (with a history of failures in the
jqs test and questionable ethics regarding omitting parts) as positive proof that it will provide sufficient protection to the user in an extremely harsh, dangerous environment, well that
is idiotic.