Amazon failed to adequately warn more than 300,000 customers about serious risks — including death and electrocution — that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found in more than 400,000 products sold by third parties on its platform.
The CPSC has voted unanimously to hold Amazon liable for defective products sold by third-party sellers. Now, Amazon must come up with a plan approved by the CPSC to properly recall dangerous products—including flammable children’s pajamas, defective carbon monoxide detectors, and unsafe hair dryers that can cause electric shock—that the CPSC fears may still be widely used in homes across America.
While Amazon is still trying to come up with a plan, the CPSC has summarized the ongoing risks to consumers:
Instead of recalling the products sold between 2018 and 2021, Amazon sent messages to customers that the CPSC said “downplayed the severity” of the dangers.
In these messages—”although CPSC has conducted testing that has concluded that these products are dangerous”—Amazon only warns customers that the products “may not” meet federal safety standards and only “potentially” pose risks of “burns to children,” “electric shock,” or “exposure to potentially dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.”
Normally, distributors would be asked to specifically use the word “recall” in the subject line of these types of messages, but Amazon has avoided using that language entirely. Instead, Amazon has opted to use much less alarming subject lines that read “Attention: Important Safety Notice About Your Previous Amazon Order” or “Important Safety Notice About Your Previous Amazon Order.”
Amazon then left it up to customers to destroy the products themselves, apparently discouraging them from returning them. The e-commerce giant also gave every affected customer a gift card without requiring proof of destruction or providing adequate public notice or informing customers of the actual dangers, as the law would require for public safety.
Furthermore, Amazon’s messages did not include photos of the defective products, as required by law, and did not provide any way for customers to provide feedback. The commission found that Amazon “made no effort” to track the number of items destroyed or even take any minimal steps to monitor “how many messages were opened.”
Amazon, however, maintains that the messages are an appropriate remedy. An Amazon spokesperson told Ars that Amazon plans to appeal the ruling.
“We are disappointed with the CPSC’s decision,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “We plan to appeal the decision and look forward to presenting our case in court. When we were first notified by the CPSC three years ago of potential safety issues with a small number of third-party products at the center of this lawsuit, we promptly notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and issued refunds.”
Amazon’s ‘ignored’ safety obligations
The CPSC has additional concerns about Amazon’s “inadequate” remedies. The CPSC is particularly concerned that anyone who received the products as gifts or purchased them on the secondary market may not have been informed of the serious known hazards. The CPSC found that Amazon resold defective hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, demonstrating that there was a secondary market for the products.
“Amazon makes no direct efforts to reach consumers who receive dangerous products as gifts, secondhand, donated, or on the secondary market,” the CPSC said.
