Family Sues Amazon After Counterfeit Hoverboard Catches Fire, Destroys Home (wtsp.com) 253
Three weeks after unboxing a hoverboard, it burst into flames. But is Amazon partly to blame?
tripleevenfall quotes The Tennessean:
A Nashville family whose $1 million home was destroyed earlier this year in a fire caused by a hoverboard toy is suing Amazon saying the retail giant knowingly sold a dangerous product...
The lawsuit says the seller of the hoverboard listed online, "W-Deals," is a sham organization that is registered to an apartment in New York City that has not responded to requests from lawyers in the case. It alleges the family was sold a counterfeit product from China instead of a brand with a Samsung lithium ion battery they believed they were buying from Amazon . It says Tennessee product liability law holds a seller responsible if the manufacturer cannot be found.
Genuine Samsung Battery (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure that's really an improvement...??
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Good grief - they should be THANKING Amazon! A genuine Samsung battery could've taken out the whole neighborhood!
Re:Genuine Samsung Battery (Score:5, Funny)
Except (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazon wasn't the seller. Their opening of their platform to 3rd parties is what almost made me stop using them. If I want to buy from Joe Schmoe there is ebay. Amazon should not allow 3rd party sellers, plain and simple
Re:Except (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Amazon opened their platform to third parties, Amazon is almost certainly providing "material assistance" (or whatever the proper legal phrase is) to those sellers. Without Amazon, it is far less likely buyers would've had access to that seller.
Re: Except (Score:2)
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What if they were transported along a toll road at some point?
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most toll roads are owned by the state.
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You say most. Let's assume for this particular exercise it's one of the apparently few privately owned ones.
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Fully private or one of leased ones?
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Re:Except (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon lists it on their storefront. Amazon handles the financial transaction. Amazon profits off of each sale. Amazon often ships the thing out to you even if it's a third party. Amazon is supposed to vet the 3rd parties they work with. Amazon is on the hook.
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Re: Except (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Except (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on who is on the bill of sale. If I see "Amazon.com" on my credit card statement, Amazon sold it to me. In Craigslist case, CL is not selling anything through their site, they're just listing. E-Bay is a bidding site that also makes it clear who you are actually purchasing from but depending on how they handle the sales, E-Bay COULD be on the hook. Amazon will handle all sales for sellers including warehousing and shipping, Amazon is a store just as much as Wal-Mart is.
Re:Except (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on if Amazon was acting as the Merchant of Record or the Seller of Record. The MoR is a 3rd party entity who is financially liable for the transaction, allowing the original retailer to sell in multiple regions without having to worry about tax and currency issues. The MoR assumes the financial risk for chargebacks etc., but not liability for the product itself.
The Seller of Record is a 3rd party that actually owns the complete transaction. In effect, the original retailer sells the product to the SoR, who then resells it to the buyer. The SoR therefore takes complete legal ownership and liability of the whole transaction.
Re:Except (Score:5, Insightful)
Is eBay also supposed to vet 3rd parties? What about Craigslist?
Those services make no pretense of being the seller. In some cases, Amazon redirects you to another site, or makes it clear that Amazon themselves don't have the product and offer you a list of 3rd party sellers' Amazon storefront. In those cases, you can argue that Amazon has reduced responsibility. Sometimes the page lists a 3rd party as being the seller, but if you don't pay attention to the small print, you would think you were just buying from Amazon. At other times it says that the order is being fulfilled by Amazon, though it's not clear whether they're buying products directly from the manufacturer or there's some 3rd party in the supply chain.
Either way, if I can't have confidence that the products I'm buying on Amazon are genuine, I'm going to buy a lot fewer things on Amazon. I would suspect that I'm not alone.
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Amazon is supposed to vet the 3rd parties they work with.
Says who? Is eBay also supposed to vet 3rd parties? What about Craigslist?
Amazon is on the hook.
Says who?
Says who?
Says Amazon. Amazon has an actively policed (so they claim) program for 3rd party sellers. There are eligibility requirements, application processes, and varying terms based on on what you're selling, how you're listing it, your volume, etc.
The truth of the matter is Amazon knowingly and eagerly welcomes fraudulent listings for bogus products from 3rd party scammers because on the whole, it's profitable for Amazon.
Re:Except (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, law almost universally agrees, the person you give the money to in order to get the item is the seller. Note, you don't pay eBay for your wins (not including any 3rd party payment services owned by eBay). eBay connects you with a seller, not doesn't directly take payment and dispatch the item, as Amazon (and you supermarket) does.
Amazon should not allow 3rd party sellers, plain and simple
Not without some vetting, or for limited products (like self-published books).
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Amazon should not allow 3rd party sellers, plain and simple
Not without some vetting, or for limited products (like self-published books).
Even if Amazon vets, what's to stop shady sellers from acting all legit then shipping something inferior to the products they showed to Amazon? Amazon would end up as the bad guy because they were their ones who gave their seal of approval. Never going to happen.
When something is fashionable and expensive at Xmas an evil seller can make money and vanish before anybody figures out what's going on. There's no way for Amazon to stop that.
Re:Except (Score:5, Interesting)
So what stops them from scamming Amazon buyers? Amazon has your home address, and the desire to sue you if you defraud its customers. They can't stop someone willing to use their home address to commit mail fraud from. But they can certainly aid in the prosecution of them, which they can't do now.
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Not for the past 15 months (Score:2)
On July 20, 2015, eBay spun off PayPal.
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Yes. I am guessing you never bought an Amazon Alexia... She will threaten to kill you if you dont buy things.
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The big problem is that you may attempt to buy the item "Sold by Amazon" and wind up with a 3rd party seller's item anyway. To save warehouse space, Amazon has started commingling their own direct fulfillment items in the same bins as 3rd party sellers' products. When you place an order, the order picker (or a robot) just grabs one from the bin and ships it to you. Whether you get a legitimate item sourced directly by Amazon, or some knockoff piece of junk supplied by a 3rd party, is luck of the draw.
I think this has been going on in one form or another for some time. It seems that if Amazon is out of an item, and there's another brand/third party item they think is equivalent, they'll ship you one of those instead. Nicely, if the other item is half the price, they don't adjust your bill. Wouldn't want to confuse you. ;-)
It's sad how far we seem to have regressed when it comes to consumer protection. Any more, I assume the really large retailers (Amazon, big box home centers, etc) are cheating me. If I'
Sue for what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They likely have home insurance and will be reimbursed. If anyone has a right to sue Amazon it will be the insurance company, to reclaim the money they paid out to the homeowners.
It is possible their insurance did not cover the total loss as well as any damages bryond monetary.
It never does (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It never does (Score:4, Informative)
Plus, if I sue, I can recover the sentimental value of the items I have that were hand crafted by my great grandparents back in the day where if you wanted to sit down, you made a chair, or sat on the ground, a feeling known in the modern era by those who must build the IKEA chair if they wish to sit. Plus, everyone sues for "mental harm", hoping to get a $300M judgment.
Ever had to actually use it? (Score:2)
I know one guy who made out OK within insurance, but for the stupidest reason imaginable. He's a dummy and bought one of those $3000 rent-to-own laptops (e.g. a $600 laptop that they mark up to $3k because if they can't legally charge th
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Re:Sue for what exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
Could be worse, at least they didn't get the oblig. bobcat... [xkcd.com]
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Defendant ordered to reimburse plaintiff the full cost of the defective hoverboard.
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They likely have home insurance and will be reimbursed. If anyone has a right to sue Amazon it will be the insurance company, to reclaim the money they paid out to the homeowners.
Well, if someone torched the place I'd hopefully get the apartment value from the insurance company, but the tort for setting it on fire with me in it as well as heirlooms, memorabilia and other items of personal importance seem worth suing over. It all depends on the degree of culpability, not saying they're going to win but it's not a slam dunk dismissal.
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But you don't know that they do. Many do not.
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They likely have home insurance and will be reimbursed.
And then next year their premiums will treble or more. Insurance is primarily there to cover you against things that are either accidental or your own damned fault. That's to say nothing of the fact that the insurance payout will be substantially less than the cost of everything that was lost. I assume you've never had your car written off.
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China (Score:5, Insightful)
China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.
Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?
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China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.
Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?
Because they've bought off a whole hell of a lot of people, but using cheap Chinese shit is good for the US company's short-term bottom line...which is all today's executives look at because that's what their bonuses and stock options are tied to.
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Not good for everyone's economy in the US by the way. Craftsmanship used to be a sought after trait and those people are out of work.
Short term. What they don't see is those out of work workers are no longer buying cars, or appliances, or most of the consumer products that keeps the economy humming.
Because they manufacture just about everything (Score:2)
Re:China (Score:5, Insightful)
China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.
Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?
That is hardly an exclusive problem to china, china just happens to make the vast majority of products nowadays. You don't have to look far to find cars that catch fire or mass tire recalls on faulty products, US contaminated beef or chicken etc etc. They do seem particularly lax on punishment etc but for the scale of it, it doesn't seem any worse than what most companies do the world over where cost and profit are king.
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You don't seem to complain about all the other products you use daily which were all/mostly manufactured in part in China. Obviously there's shoddy shit sold by all sorts of people, but you typically won't buy it unless you have confidence that said shit legitimate enough to assuage your risks. IPhones are made in China. But they're sold by Apple. People like and trust Apple, so Apple has the incentive to make damn sure that their products are high enough quality to match their perception.
The product was so
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China has two major advantages:
1. No effective labour laws. Factory workers apparently don't need breaks, reasonable pay, sick leave, annual leave, accident insurance.
2. No effective environmental laws. Turns out that countries that are happy to turn their own back yard into toxic sludge are more likely to get manufacturing contracts than countries that aren't quite so happy about the idea.
In short, the west has decided to change manufacturing into Somebody Else's Problem.
Note I said "effective". There a
Seller versus platform (Score:2, Insightful)
The lawsuit says the seller of the hoverboard listed online, "W-Deals," is a sham organization that is registered to an apartment in New York City that has not responded to requests from lawyers in the case.
combines with this:
It says Tennessee product liability law holds a seller responsible if the manufacturer cannot be found.
to make liability for Amazon. They still wouldn't be the seller, just because the original seller can't be found. It sounds like they should still be trying to go after "W-Deals".
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You might be right, but Amazon calls W-Deals a seller. That doesn't mean law will also call W-Deals a seller for this particular transaction.
It is crudely like Amazon calls your account number Prime, but a mathematician when provided with the number might find many prime factors of the account number and refuse to accept the account number as prime. A word has different meanings in different contexts, and especially for marketing many words are misused e.g. prime, privileged, Gold/Silver/Platinum, "Free", "
Highlights a couple real problems with Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Contamination of their supply chain. This is based on hearsay, although my personal experience seems to support it. Have you noticed the "Sold by xxx and shipped by Amazon" tags on some products? The way that works is the 3rd party seller sends their inventory to Amazon. Amazon stores it in their warehouse, and when you buy from that seller, Amazon ships it for them. The problem is Amazon seems to co-mingle 3rd party inventory with their own. So if you order a SD card, Amazon's computers grab the nearest available SD card whether it be from Amazon's inventory or a 3rd party's inventory. Your go through the effort of making sure you're buying the SD card with Amazon as the seller to try to get a genuine one, and you still end up getting a fake sent to Amazon by ConterfeitsRUs. I've basically given up buying commonly counterfeited items like flash drives from Amazon. I pay the extra to get them from a local retailer whose supply chain hasn't been contaminated this way.
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i fucking hate the third party sellers on a merchant's web site: amazon, walmart, newegg, etc. I DON'T WANT TO BUY FROM THEM. EVER. if i'm on *amazon* or *newegg* or *walmart* - i want to buy from *amazon*, *newegg* and *walmart*. that's why i went to the damn site in the first place.
if i wanted to buy from some shady chinese guy or roll the dice on whether or not i get a "real" or "fake" product, i would have gone to ebay, for fucks' sake.
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I've basically given up buying commonly counterfeited items like flash drives from Amazon. I pay the extra to get them from a local retailer whose supply chain hasn't been contaminated this way.
So far every flash card I've got from Amazon has been genuine. When I get it, I go straight to the manufacturer's website and register it. I only buy SanDisk or Samsung (depending on whether I care more about cost or random access performance, respectively) and they both have preregistration.
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i agree with this lawsuit because (Score:3)
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We just have lousy import controls that let these products through like nothing. US Customs is simply not doing their jobs to prevent these products from coming in. Somehow Europe manages to stop a lot more of this than we do. This cheap crap also has a high cost to many other industries, including insurance. Our building and fire codes have been upgraded to deal with the cheap stuff which has caused a lot of things to literally explode in price astronomically when it used to be that we could trust certain
impossible to go after CHinese companies, SO... (Score:2)
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Walmart, Sears, K-Mart, Target, etc should all be held responsible for selling garbage.
This is essentially up to the state. California has some protections, but they are often circumvented by these specific bastards. For example, Sears will change the model numbers every year so that they don't have the correct item to replace your old item with... Alas, no state seems to really have adequate warranty protection.
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According to the summary ... (Score:2)
Assuming that's true and complete, Amazon, who handles the cash for the transaction, is on the hook.
Regardless, when you sue someone, you sue everybody who even looked like they were near the situation in question, to get at the deep pockets when the losers are found to be jointly and severally liable. It's up to each of them to convince the courts they should be dropped from the suit. So, regar
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Huh? (Score:3)
I had to look up what they were talking about in the article. It's not a hoverboard (obviously). It's one of those sideways-scooter balancey-board thingies that kids have these days.
Not sure why they are talking about a hoverboard.
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Amazon = eBay (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon = eBay, only sometimes even worse.
This is what I say to everyone. I don't even bother trying to explain anymore, for most people it's just better to understand Amazon that way. Specially for people who never bought there and still have this image that everything sold at Amazon comes directly from Amazon and are all guaranteed by the company.
Of course, if Amazon wanted to stay away from all these shitty products, they would've created the Marketplace as a separate thing. But it's obvious that they wanted people not to notice the difference. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see the results of this lawsuit. The difference between Amazon and eBay is that Amazon used to be it's own store, and it still sells their own products. eBay always was about providing a venue for people to make business. It's well understood that you are not buying anything directly from eBay.
And Amazon also does a shit job of letting costumers know about the reputation and quality of products sold by their shitty selected vendors. Selected as in who pays a bigger part of their scam, I imagine.
Here's the funny thing: in the past 4 years or so that I've been shopping on eBay, I've never had a single problem with the products, including external batteries, lots of electronics with LiPo batteries in them, and whatnot. And just in case it happens, I also got a fireproof pouch from eBay to keep stuff in it. xD
Amazon, on the other hand, I had problems with fake SD cards, they now have implemented some weird system of pre-charging import taxes that are often waaay above the actual value. Sometimes they return a small percentage of it (like 3 months after the fact), often times they simply don't. And most of the products still cannot be sent to my country anyways, so there's that.
The only advantage Amazon offers to people living in my country is that their products arrive generally faster than stuff bought from chinese stores on eBay... but that's only because they use companies like Fedex, UPS, DHL and the like that are all basically running a scam here in Brazil. They will rip you off here when it comes to charging tax, extra costs, and storage fees you never asked for. They basically hold your products hostage. On average, I'll pay 1.5x to 2x the tax costs, which usually sums up to 110%+ the product value plus shipping, when a product comes from Amazon. It arrives in a week or so. From eBay, it comes via regular mail, so I pay whatever the government actually charges, which ranges from 60% to 100%. It can take anywhere from a month to 6 months because it depends on the goodwill of governmental agencies, but it gets here, and there's no extra bullshit charges.
And this is why I haven't been buying anything from Amazon. The last thing they had going for them was reliability for countries like mine.
Of course, Amazon couldn't care less about the little money coming from countries like Brazil... it's cheap change for them and they have demonstrated it well enough with their horrible policies regarding overseas shipping. But yeah, the way Amazon incorporated marketplace into their main store and started selling all these products that seem to have an even worse quality control than eBay, it's quite telling.
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Now I see why a coworker is so happy now that he got transferred from Brazil to California. It's been three months and he's still grinning like a puppy.
They are not hoverboards (Score:5, Informative)
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UL Listing (Score:2)
A 115 comments and no one has yet mentioned that the device plugged into the AC outlet and it did not have a UL listing.
The problem here is that UL listings (or equivalent) are voluntary and there is no legal requirement for a product to carry one. But there is a common sense requirement. Where were the parents when it came to looking at the product for safety approvals? It was free to ship it back to Amazon if they didn't like what they saw.
And I really believe this "It alleges the family was sold a counte
Counterfeit indeed (Score:2)
Sadly, all products using the name "Hoverboard" are counterfeit at this point in time.
$30 million? (Score:2)
Hmm... ok... from the pictures... I'm curious what justified a house with such a miserable kitchen to be worth a million bucks, but let's assume that a 4000ft.sq. house is worth something. It's Tennessee so the people there a
Re:If Amazon loses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a chance (Score:2)
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Re: If Amazon loses... (Score:2)
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they have at least 2 fairly large distribution centers in TN
Re: If Amazon loses... (Score:2)
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Tennessee has one of the largest distribution systems in the United States. If Amazon pulls out, they're fucking themselves.
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...and even if they do, what's to stop a shady seller from shipping something different that they sent to Amazon for testing/validation?
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No, they should be liable as a seller. How they cover that liability is up to them.
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No, but they should heavily vet anyone who wants to sell on their site.
If they offered an optional vetting service, how much extra would you be willing to pay? Would you pay even more for "heavy" vetting?
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How will they prevent people from:
a) Lying to them?
b) Shipping something inferior to the stuff they showed Amazon during the vetting process?
An official Amazon "seal of approval" would just make things much worse for everybody.
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Only in that they POSE as a store, not an agent. False advertising.
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That said, Amazon didn't make this batter, and makes the third party vendor responsible for the assertions they make about product suitability and safety. Now, if Amazon KNEW that the vendor was lying, and Amazon didn't
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It was a $1 million dollar house. They've got to sue for $30 million so there will be something left after the attorneys' feeding frenzy.
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I haven't been in many million dollar homes, but I don't think I've ever seen a house with a sprinkler system (not counting for the lawn).
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I haven't been in many million dollar homes, but I don't think I've ever seen a house with a sprinkler system (not counting for the lawn).
My state has required fire sprinklers in new residential construction since 2011.
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So they should have to invest $20k just to protect themselves from faulty products? I've never seen a home with sprinklers.
Re:No sprinklers? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they should have to invest $20k just to protect themselves from faulty products? I've never seen a home with sprinklers.
Not just faulty consumer products, but cooking fires (most common cause of home fires), faulty heating equipment (tied with cooking fires for fire related fatalities), electrical and lighting faults, intentionally set fires, and smoking related fires. If you're buying a million dollar 4,000 square foot house, why wouldn't you make a safety improvement that's shown to save lives (and can safe the structure itself, but that's a lesser concern). If you care about your family's safety, go above and beyond fire codes. I bet the granite countertops in the kitchen in that house cost more than it would have cost to put in sprinklers.
I've seen many homes with fire sprinklers, my state requires them in new construction and I've known people that retrofitted them (usually with a new home purchase in combination with electrical upgrades since the sprinkler system itself is only about half the cost of the retrofit, the other half is drywall repairs).
This family didn't even have linked smoke detectors throughout the house, which led to a delay in evacuation:
Both children initially confused the sounds of the blaze for someone breaking into the home. They thought they heard arguing, according to their parents, but were confused by the sounds of their pets and the vocal warnings of the downstairs fire alarms.
In my home every smoke detector is linked (through hardwire and/or RF links) and every one alerts at the same time -- everyone in the family knows that if they hear them go off to leave the house *immediately*. 2nd floor bedrooms both have escape ladders. Oh, and the house has a sprinkler system, which was one of the things I looked for when buying. And yes, we do yearly fire drills.
It may seem like over the top paranoia, but my brother lost his house to a fire caused by a furnace fault, he and his family all got out (he and his wife had to go out the 2nd floor window, fortunately the kids rooms were on the first floor and they escaped through a window), but the speed with which it went up made me realize that it's true what they say about fires - every second counts. By the time the fire department got there (about 7 minutes after they were called), the home was fully engulfed and was a total loss. Spending time debating whether or not that sound you hear is really the smoke detector can make a significant difference in getting out safely. Fire is the 3rd leading cause of death in the home (after falls and poisoning).
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Trees grow quickly compared to rocks. It's all about the renewable ya know.
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Fibreglass melts rather than burns, but it still leaves a big open cavity for fire to spread.
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My neighbor had a sprinkler system installed while they had a second story bedroom/bathroom added to their $400k house. Less than a year later it malfunctioned and went off, flooding every room and destroying all their possessions.
I've never heard of a residential "deluge" style system (the kind where one sprinkler head going off triggers every sprinkler in the system), they are typically only used in commercial construction, and even then only in special circumstances (i.e. if a hallway sprinkler goes off, all of the hallway sprinklers trigger, but if a janitorial closet sprinkler goes off, that doesn't set off every sprinkler in the building).
But even if all heads in the system went off, unless they were away from home for an exten
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Go ahead, define "selling in Tennessee", I dare you. I don't think you can; not with any sincerity. If I order something from a webpage of some Chinese based outfit, and tell them to ship it to Massachusetts, are they "selling it in Massachusetts"? No rational person would think so.
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Well amazon does have warehouse their and maybe even there own branded trucks / vans.
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Seems pretty obvious to me that selling something on the internet means you're selling it everywhere that has an internet connection and permission to buy from you.
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and how is that fire alarm going to stop a fire that is to big to put out on your own?