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Amazon failed to adequately alert more than 300,000 consumers about serious risks, including death and electrocution, that the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found with more than 400,000 products sold through third parties in your platform.
The CPSC voted unanimously to find Amazon legally guilty for defective products from third-party sellers. Amazon will now have to expand a CPSC-approved plan to recall harmful products, adding highly flammable children’s pajamas, faulty carbon monoxide detectors and unsafe hair dryers that can cause electrocution, something the CPSC fears because they are still in use. widely in homes throughout America. Training
As Amazon works to expand a plan, the CPSC has summarized the dangers of the procedure for consumers:
If the [products] remain in the possession of consumers, young people will continue to wear sleepwear that could ignite and lead to injury or death; consumers will unknowingly rely on faulty [carbon monoxide] detectors that will never alert them to the presence of lethal carbon monoxide in their homes; and consumers will use the hair dryers they purchased, with no coverage other than immersion, in the bathroom near water, leaving them vulnerable to electrocution.
Instead of recalling products sold between 2018 and 2021, Amazon sent messages to consumers saying the CPSC was “downplaying the severity” of the dangers.
In those messages – “even though the products are being tested as unsafe” through the CPSC – Amazon only warned consumers that the products “may meet” federal protection criteria and only “potentially” pose risks to health. “burns to children. ” electric shock” or “exposure to potentially harmful levels of carbon monoxide. ”
Normally, a marketer should use the word “remember” in particular in the subject line of such messages, however, Amazon has avoided using this language altogether. Instead, Amazon opted to use much less alarming themed lines that read, “Attention: Important Safety Notice About Your Order Placed on Amazon” or “Important Safety Notice About Your Order Placed on Amazon. “
Amazon then let consumers destroy the products and explicitly discouraged them from making returns. The e-commerce giant also provided a gift card to the affected visitor without requiring evidence of destruction or providing good enough public information or informing consumers about real dangers, as would be required by law to ensure public safety.
Additionally, Amazon’s messages included images of the defective products, as required by law, and allowed consumers to respond. The commission found that Amazon made “no effort” to track the number of pieces destroyed or even minimally track the “number of opened messages. “
Amazon still believes those messages were adequate solutions. An Amazon spokesperson told Ars that Amazon plans to appeal the decision.
“We are disappointed by the CPSC’s ruling,” the Amazon spokesperson said. “We intend to appeal the ruling and look forward to taking our case to court. When we were first notified three years ago through CPSC of potential protection issues with a small number of third-party products amid this lawsuit, we temporarily informed customers, asked them to prevent the products, and gave them a refund.
The CPSC has further considerations regarding Amazon’s “insufficient” remedies. The Committee is particularly concerned that anyone who won the products as gifts or purchased them on the secondary market is likely not to have been informed of the known serious dangers. The CPSC found that Amazon was reselling defective hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, demonstrating the lifestyles of secondary markets for those products.
“Amazon has made no direct attempt to target consumers who have received harmful products in the form of gifts, secondhand items, donations, or on the secondary market,” the CPSC stated.
For years, Amazon tried unsuccessfully to argue that it was not required to include a recall because it was allegedly not legally considered a distributor within the meaning of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). However, the commission was not convinced. through Amazon’s argument that it was simply a “logistics provider” for third-party sellers, which would have given Amazon shelter from product liability under the Consumer Safety Act. However, rather than simply providing logistics, the CPSC concluded that “Amazon controls the entire sales process. “
“The really extensive history before us establishes Amazon’s control over those products, beginning with receiving products from a component fulfilled through Amazon at an Amazon fulfillment center, and storing that stock until “it is purchased. ” and ships to a consumer. ” the Commission said, concluding that “Amazon cannot avoid its obligations under the CPSA just because part of its expanded facilities involve logistics. “
After CPSC’s testing, Amazon stopped allowing the directory of those products on its platform, but this and other responses were deemed insufficient. Thus, over the next two months, to protect the public, Amazon will now have to expand a plan to “educate” shoppers and the public about the risks of the products” and “encourage the removal of those harmful products from consumers’ homes,” the CPSC said.
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