US Cracks Down On 'Fulfilled By Amazon,' Citing Sale of 400K Hazardous Items (arstechnica.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) yesterday filed a complaint against Amazon over the sale of hundreds of thousands of hazardous products, including carbon monoxide detectors that fail to detect carbon monoxide, hair dryers without required protection from shock and electrocution, and flammable sleepwear meant for children. The CPSC said it sued Amazon to "force [the] recall" of the dangerous products. While Amazon has halted sales of most of them already and issued refunds, the CPSC said it isn't satisfied with how Amazon notified customers and said the industry giant must do more to ensure that the faulty products are destroyed. The dangerous products were offered by third parties using the "Fulfilled by Amazon" (FBA) program, in which Amazon stores products in its warehouses, ships them to customers, and takes a sizable cut from the proceeds. The CPSC's administrative complaint alleges that Amazon hasn't taken enough responsibility for dangerous third-party products that it ships via FBA.
The complaint didn't mention any specific incidents of injury but said the evidence supporting the charges includes "lawsuits concerning incidents or injuries involving various consumer products identified in the Complaint." It also said that CPSC staff tested the products and found that they don't meet safety requirements. Products that don't meet these requirements pose a substantial risk of injury or death to consumers, the agency said. The CPSC said its complaint "seeks to force Amazon, as a distributor of the products, to stop selling these products, work with CPSC staff on a recall of the products, and to directly notify consumers who purchased them about the recall and offer them a full refund." In a statement provided to Ars, Amazon said it has already removed the "vast majority" of the products from its online store, notified customers, and provided refunds. Amazon alleged that the CPSC hasn't provided enough information about the remaining products. Amazon's full statement reads: "Customer safety is a top priority and we take prompt action to protect customers when we are aware of a safety concern. As the CPSC's own complaint acknowledges, for the vast majority of the products in question, Amazon already immediately removed the products from our store, notified customers about potential safety concerns, advised customers to destroy the products, and provided customers with full refunds. For the remaining few products in question, the CPSC did not provide Amazon with enough information for us to take action and despite our requests, CPSC has remained unresponsive. Amazon has an industry-leading recalls program and we have further offered to expand our capabilities to handle recalls for all products sold in our store, regardless of whether those products were sold or fulfilled by Amazon or third-party sellers. We are unclear as to why the CPSC has rejected that offer or why they have filed a complaint seeking to force us to take actions almost entirely duplicative of those we've already taken."
The complaint didn't mention any specific incidents of injury but said the evidence supporting the charges includes "lawsuits concerning incidents or injuries involving various consumer products identified in the Complaint." It also said that CPSC staff tested the products and found that they don't meet safety requirements. Products that don't meet these requirements pose a substantial risk of injury or death to consumers, the agency said. The CPSC said its complaint "seeks to force Amazon, as a distributor of the products, to stop selling these products, work with CPSC staff on a recall of the products, and to directly notify consumers who purchased them about the recall and offer them a full refund." In a statement provided to Ars, Amazon said it has already removed the "vast majority" of the products from its online store, notified customers, and provided refunds. Amazon alleged that the CPSC hasn't provided enough information about the remaining products. Amazon's full statement reads: "Customer safety is a top priority and we take prompt action to protect customers when we are aware of a safety concern. As the CPSC's own complaint acknowledges, for the vast majority of the products in question, Amazon already immediately removed the products from our store, notified customers about potential safety concerns, advised customers to destroy the products, and provided customers with full refunds. For the remaining few products in question, the CPSC did not provide Amazon with enough information for us to take action and despite our requests, CPSC has remained unresponsive. Amazon has an industry-leading recalls program and we have further offered to expand our capabilities to handle recalls for all products sold in our store, regardless of whether those products were sold or fulfilled by Amazon or third-party sellers. We are unclear as to why the CPSC has rejected that offer or why they have filed a complaint seeking to force us to take actions almost entirely duplicative of those we've already taken."
Inflammable sleepwear (Score:3, Funny)
I'm assuming that inflammable sleepwear is sleepwear that hasn't been drenched in carcinogenic chemicals? I'd like some, please.
Re:Inflammable sleepwear (Score:4, Funny)
I would rather my sleepwear be inflammable than flammable. :)
Re:Inflammable sleepwear (Score:4, Informative)
I would rather my sleepwear be inflammable than flammable. :)
Technically they mean the same thing, but that's English for you.
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Woosh!
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Technically they mean the same thing, but that's English for you.
The word "inflammable" has been banned from many domains.
The military forbids its use as does the DoT. So do many organizations responsible for public safety.
You should not use the word in your own writing. "Flammable" means the same thing without the potential for confusion.
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But we have a perfectly good adjective for the negative: nonflammable. Everyone should know by now that inflammable and flammable mean the same thing.
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Everyone should know by now that inflammable and flammable mean the same thing.
Inflammable and flammable have always meant the same thing. So why should "everyone" be less confused "now"?
Are you willing to bet your life on it? Is it worth risking death just so you can add two superfluous letters?
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The letters aren't superfluous - they're part of the root, which is the verb to inflame. Are you going to try arguing that "inflammatory", "inflamed", "inflamation", etc. should all lose the leading "in" as well?
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>Visble - Can be seen
>Invisible - Cannot be seen
>Vulnerable - Can be hurt
>Invulnerable - Cannot be hurt
>Accurate - Reliable
>Inaccurate - Unreliable
>Admissable - Allowed
>Inadmissable - Not allowed
>Finite - Limited
>Infinite - Without limit
>Edible - consumable
>Inedible - Cannot be consumed
>Justice - Rightful application of rules
>Injustice - Improper application of rules
>Hospitable - Able to be lived in
>Inhospitable - Unable to be lived in
>Flammable - Can fuel
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You're misunderstanding the root of the word - inflammable things may become inflamed. Related words include inflammation, inflammatory, inflamed, inflaming, etc. The leading "in" is part of the root, not a negating prefix.
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So there should be a word "ininflammable" meaning nonflammable, right?
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The problem is that in latin, in- can mean "not" or "into" depending on the context, and in a far larger amount of contexts it means "not" [wiktionary.org]. Normally this is harmless but in this instance the word can actually result in confusion that can end in death and destruction. Banish it from the language.
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Don't forget cigarettes in the hands of careless caregivers, or children's toys like the "Easy Bake Oven", or incandescent light bulbs, or siblings learning about fire.
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Or candles, or playing with matches, or barbecues, and the fact that materials can catch fire from chemical reactions or extreme heat.
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I heard police threw a grenade into cradle when they made a mistake and stormed wrong door. In USA of course. Child got burned.
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Re:Inflammable sleepwear (Score:4, Interesting)
Natural fibres are often more flame resistant and more likely to char than burn, than fibres made from flammable oils. So military uniforms are not made from nylon because they do not want a bunch of flaming torches running around the parade ground, does not inspire confidence in the troops. For example cotton and wool, cotton as in denim, wool is better than cotton. Though they do include flame retardant chemicals, the military in it's infinite wisdom, requires military uniforms be dry cleaned, starched and ironed which destroys those flame retardent materials pretty quick. Keep in mind they are stingy with uniforms, so when you get new ones, they become dress ones more formal ones and the prior dress ones, replace the worn out work ones, and no longer have flame retardant chemicals in them, long since dry cleaned, starched and pressed out.
Kids are like drunks, they do clumsy and stupid things, like drag the nylon night gown across a radiant heater, to turn that night gown into a wick and them into a running and screaming roman candles. Adults are meant to know better. You do not fight a fire in nylon clothing unless you want to become a part of that fire. Be aware of the fibres of your clothing your life could depend upon it. In a fire, that plastic jacked, take it off and throw it away, leather jacket you will likely live where others will die, those people running and screaming their clothes on fire, they dying today, you still might live.
Re:Inflammable sleepwear (Score:5, Interesting)
PS the safest space in a fire is where the fire has already been and than means running through the flames to get there. You watch the fire, looking for a break, not no flames, just you can handle the seconds in those flames, you are looking for the burnt out space beyond to get to. Watch your hair and hold your breathe and run on through. You fight bush fires you do it all the time for a breather, get away from the smoke, fresh air at the back of the fire, hot air goes up sucking in more air from downwind. Sometimes it is a bit mazy you've got to work through sections of fire, be aware of your future planned path. When fighting bush fire, you must be aware of where the fire will be, where it is and where it was. Where it will be is not safe, where it was is safe.
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Jokes aside some people have been really horribly burned by clothing. There was a case in the UK a few years back where a girl was wearing a cheap Halloween costume made of synthetic fibres that accidentally caught fire.
Unlike say cotton which tends to singe and is easily put out, this stuff went up quickly and melted onto her skin.
Given that there are often a lot of candles around during Halloween it's best to avoid flammable synthetic fibres for costumes, but people don't want to spend much on cloths worn
Just wait until California finds out that... (Score:4, Insightful)
-This post is known to the state of California to be read on devices containing materials that may cause cancer or reproductive harm.
Re:Not so simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see this as any different than Etsy or Ebay.
Does Etsy or Ebay store items in their own warehouses and have their own employees ship them out?
Re:Not so simple (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Walmart, Newegg, eBay, Etsy, etc aren't listed -- they don't warehouse it. They are just the marketplace for people to list it and have the seller tools to facilitate easier transactions. Once Amazon put it in their warehouse, it became a whole new ballgame.
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As a middleman, they can be more proactive in filtering out shit from the store. They don't care.
They are the seller (Score:2)
The entire sales infrastructure is Amazon. The Website, code running it, distributed cloud platform running it, payment system, delivery truck, warehouse, distribution network presumably all the way back to facilitating imports. If a product sells well, Amazon clones it and undercuts the OEM via 'Amazon basics'. They're also the advertiser, going back to when they were rampant spammers via their affiliate program.
They're
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Amazon plays both sides of the coin, whichever benefits them.
Our products (made in America, not the easiest road and absolutely not the cheapest) got taken down by Amazon because they suddenly needed documentation from the manufacturer. We get that documentation, then the products go back up.
Thousands of sales later (on top of hundreds of thousands of sales beforehand), a single customer complains and Amazon takes our products down because an unnamed customer thinks
And many more fake products (Score:5, Informative)
These 400K are hazardous and hence CPSC is taking action. Additionally there are millions of fake products. $20 for a terrabyte SD card? Even fake shaving blades and so on. Avoid buying anything that you believe which can be copied. Buying iPhone and low XBox are fine. But avoid buying luxury items, jewellry, SD cards, USB, brand name purses and so on. Too much of a risk of fake items to justify slightly lower price (And probability of it being fake increases with price difference).
Re:And many more fake products (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I don't care if it's a copy, or poor quality (Halloween costumes are one example).
2. It's something that isn't commonly sold elsewhere (German hand tools).
3. It's an Amazon branded item. (I'm sure they won't let others knock off their knock-offs)
4. The manufacturer sells primarily sells through Amazon. (Eufy, Anker) This can still be risky...
5. I absolutely need it delivered next day, and am willing to take the risk to make it happen.
I've started to buy things from Bed Bath and Beyond again, just to be sure I'm getting genuine items.
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The main thing I buy from Amazon is books (specifically books that I haven't been able to find at any of the second hand book shops or charity sales I normally use to get my books).
The cost of these books is generally low, its not going to be a big issue if I get a fake (unlike, say fake computer hardware that could potentially even cause data loss or damage to my system) and Amazon's return policies are such that if I end up with something that isn't the book I ordered then it should be easy to get a refun
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Maybe part of the problem is weak consumer laws. In the UK if you get sent a fake you get a refund and if they want it back they have to pay the shipping cost. In the case of Amazon they just automatically send you a shipping label and you dump it in an Amazon locker next time you pass one.
The law also makes it clear that you only need to return the item, not the packaging. So no worries about blister packs that force you to destroy them or if your cat already made a fort out of the box.
As such there is a c
AFIK Power supplies did not make the list (Score:5, Informative)
And I am sad. I've had a few power supplies (for laptops) that are Chinese clones (one overheated which should not happen if they passed saftey standards from a lab like UL). Many products (especially power supplies) that are built and sold in the US or EU must be certified by a saftey lab. The cloned power supplies also had bad serial numbers and no certs (I looked for them), and yes a power supply could kill you or burn your house down.
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UL won't stop power supplies overheating in every case. UL certification is done on an example of the product supplied by the manufacturer. It doesn't check quality control on the manufacturing side so it's entirely possible for UL certified products to have defects that only affect some or all of the mass produced ones, not the hand picked specimen that was tested.
Have A Look At Thought Emporium on YouTube (Score:5, Informative)
They go into great detail [youtube.com] on the dangerously radioactive "health products" that are freely and widely available on Amazon.
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But Ann Coulter said radiation is good for you. [politifact.com]
I'm not going to visit the Fox News Health Clinic, even if I get windmill cancer [politifact.com] or need a bleach shot. [youtube.com]
Bad News for Smart Customers (Score:1, Troll)
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Warning labels, OMG! Commie hippies are wasting my retinal real-estate!
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'cept you
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Excessive application of warning labels reduces their effectiveness.
Re:Bad News for Smart Customers (Score:4, Informative)
True [epa.gov].
True [yale.edu].
I'm in California and Amazon lets me add denatured alcohol to my cart, but not ozone generators!
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All this came about because of proposition 65. California lets people vote directly on ballot initiatives. So it’s not so much the state as the general public.
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Ozone is dangerous. If you want to kill bacteria and viruses then have a look at Japanese ion generators (Sharp Plasmacluster are good, also Panasonic Nanoe). They don't generate much ozone and work pretty well. I have a Plasmacluster right next to me now and had one in the office for years. Anecdotal but I tended to get less colds and flu than everyone else, despite having a crap immune system.
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Sugar is dangerous here too. I hope you all enjoy letting the government keep you safe from every possible hazard.
They should. I mean you're more than welcome to go back to a time when they added radon to chocolate to give you an inner glow, or cocaine to coke, but yes I enjoy regulations that reduce the ability for corporations to directly profit off addiction and the failing health of its customers. I for one am angry about the denatured alcohol ban, but not as angry as I am about the removal of pure benzene from the shelves. My dearly departed father (cancer) said his dearly departed father (cancer) said it was the
Whose responsibility is it to retrieve them? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the remaining few products in question, the CPSC did not provide Amazon with enough information for us to take action...
Wait, so Amazon are complaining that the CPSC aren't doing Amazon's job, i.e. verifying that the products Amazon are supplying to people's homes aren't dangerous? It's as if they believe that tort law doesn't apply to them. Amazon's lawyers aren't even trying anymore.
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Why ? Duty of proof is on the CPSC to prove potential harm.
Nope. Potential harm from the products has already been proven, which is why there are legal restrictions on them. These are banned products & it's illegal to sell them in the USA. It's probably illegal to sell them in China too, where they're more than likely being manufactured for export only.
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