I have a bunch of the exact same ones! Surprisingly durable for being a low-end design.

I strip them down and use them as compact 5 volt power supplies for odd projects. Two wires in, two wires out and when sealed in clear coat epoxy very durable.

 

Siri.... Priceless.

 

More on counterfeit Apple chargers, this time a larger, Macbook brick:
http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html

 

For me I just head to my local fleamarket and get wall to usb adapters for about a $1 a piece or less.. But most units only provide 1amp or less and anything better comes a s risk of being a POS unit.. So I am kind of lost too as to spending money on a quality unit or just make quality unit my self ..

 

"Works" versus "works well" versus "meets high specs" seems to be the point of argument. If you have an application that only requires 250 mA the cheap "fakes" would appear to work just fine most of the time.
By "fake" do we mean claims to meet Apple specs but does not? agreed, "fake" is fake. Otherwise cheap is just cheap. Can you believe the specs that come in print? Just because it says "1 Amp" doesn't mean it will perform at all input voltages.

 

The video I linked in post #1 does an excellent job of showing the performance shortcomings of the fakes. They won't support fast charging (>300mA or so) and many folks report that the touchscreen goes dead due to the noise on the power supply. The potential safety issues of the fakes are also addressed here.

I'm not against cheap chargers, just selling them as something they're not.