Amazon failed to adequately alert more than 300,000 customers to serious risks—including death and electrocution—that US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) testing found with more than 400,000 products that third parties sold on its platform.
The CPSC unanimously voted to hold Amazon legally responsible for third-party sellers’ defective products. Now, Amazon must make a CPSC-approved plan to properly recall the dangerous products—including highly flammable children’s pajamas, faulty carbon monoxide detectors, and unsafe hair dryers that could cause electrocution—which the CPSC fears may still be widely used in homes across America.
While Amazon scrambles to devise a plan, the CPSC summarized the ongoing risks to consumers:
Instead of recalling the products, which were sold between 2018 and 2021, Amazon sent messages to customers that the CPSC said “downplayed the severity” of hazards.
In these messages—”despite conclusive testing that the products were hazardous” by the CPSC—Amazon only warned customers that the products “may fail” to meet federal safety standards and only “potentially” posed risks of “burn injuries to children,” “electric shock,” or “exposure to potentially dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.”
Typically, a distributor would be required to specifically use the word “recall” in the subject line of these kinds of messages, but Amazon dodged using that language entirely. Instead, Amazon opted to use much less alarming subject lines that said, “Attention: Important safety notice about your past Amazon order” or “Important safety notice about your past Amazon order.”
Amazon then left it up to customers to destroy products and explicitly discouraged them from making returns. The e-commerce giant also gave every affected customer a gift card without requiring proof of destruction or adequately providing public notice or informing customers of actual hazards, as can be required by law to ensure public safety.
Further, Amazon’s messages did not include photos of the defective products, as required by law, and provided no way for customers to respond. The commission found that Amazon “made no effort” to track how many items were destroyed or even do the minimum of monitoring the “number of messages that were opened.”
Amazon still thinks these messages were appropriate remedies, though. An Amazon spokesperson told Ars that Amazon plans to appeal the ruling.
“We are disappointed by the CPSC’s decision,” Amazon’s spokesperson said. “We plan to appeal the decision and look forward to presenting our case in court. When we were initially notified by the CPSC three years ago about potential safety issues with a small number of third-party products at the center of this lawsuit, we swiftly notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and refunded them.”
Amazon’s “Sidestepped” Safety Obligations
The CPSC has additional concerns about Amazon’s “insufficient” remedies. It is particularly concerned that anyone who received the products as a gift or bought them on the secondary market likely was not informed of serious known hazards. The CPSC found that Amazon resold faulty hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, proving that secondary markets for these products exist.
“Amazon has made no direct attempt to reach consumers who obtained the hazardous products as gifts, hand-me-downs, donations, or on the secondary market,” the CPSC said.
For years, Amazon unsuccessfully tried to argue that it was not required to issue a recall because it was allegedly not legally considered to be a distributor under the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). The commission was not persuaded, however, by Amazon’s argument that it was merely a “logistics provider” for third-party sellers, which would’ve given Amazon safe harbor from product liability under the consumer safety law. Rather than simply providing logistics, however, the CPSC concluded that “Amazon controls the entire sale process.”
“The substantial record before us establishes Amazon’s extensive control over these products, beginning with receipt of a Fulfilled by Amazon participant’s products at an Amazon distribution center, and storage of this inventory until it is purchased by and shipped to a consumer,” the Comission said, concluding that “Amazon cannot sidestep its obligations under the CPSA simply because some portion of its extensive services involves logistics.”
After the CPSC’s testing, Amazon stopped allowing these products to be listed on its platform, but that and other remedies were deemed insufficient. So, over the next two months, to protect the public, Amazon must now make a plan to “provide notice of the product hazards to purchasers and the public” and “incentivize the removal of these hazardous products from consumers’ homes,” the CPSC ordered.
Amazon’s Recall Plan
It’s unclear what steps Amazon will take next should its appeal fail.
Amazon had a small win when the Commission agreed that it did not have to post the public notice on social media. But Amazon’s plan will have to set up a process to offer full refunds or replacements for any products either returned by customers or proven to be destroyed. And Amazon will have to submit monthly progress reports and retain records to document its recall process adequately.
The tech company had tried to resist the Commission’s efforts to require a return or proof of destruction, arguing that was an overreach. But the CPSC said not only was that condition appropriate, it was necessary to adequately track the ongoing safety risks to communities. In total, approximately 418,818 units of these products were sold on Amazon to approximately 376,009 customers, the CPSC noted, and no one knows how many products were destroyed due to Amazon’s messages.
“Leaving the [products] in consumers’ possession and possibly in the secondary marketplace would be contrary to the CPSA’s purpose of protecting the public against unreasonable risks of injury from consumer products,” the CPSC said. “The Commission finds that conditioning refunds or replacements of the [products] upon return or proof of destruction is authorized by the CPSA, consistent with Commission policy and practice, and in the public interest because it prevents continuing consumer harm.”
Amazon has defended the safety of products sold and resold on its platform.
“We stand behind the safety of every product in our store through our A-to-Z Guarantee, regardless of whether it is sold by Amazon or by one of our selling partners,” Amazon’s spokesperson said. “We have proactive measures in place to prevent unsafe products, and we continuously monitor the listings in our store. If we discover an unsafe product available for sale, we address the issue immediately, and refine our processes.”
But the CPSC warned that Amazon’s safety notices did not go far enough to protect the public.
“Serious injuries or death can occur if the garments ignite while being worn by children,” CPSC warned, while “dangerous levels of carbon monoxide accumulation puts “lives at risk.” And defective hair dryers “present a significant electric shock and electrocution hazard to users and can ultimately lead to death.”
To make up for “significant deficiencies” in Amazon’s initial messaging, mandatory recall notices will likely include “a description of the product (including a photograph), hazard, injuries, deaths, action being taken, and remedy,” provide “relevant dates and number of units” sold, and specifically use “the word ‘recall’ in the heading and text,” the CPSC said.
Amazon’s spokesperson told Ars that “in the event of a product recall in our store, we remove impacted products promptly after receiving actionable information from recalling agencies, and we continue to seek ways to innovate on behalf of our customers.”
“Our recalls alerts service also ensures our customers are notified of important product safety information fast, and the recalls process is effective and efficient,” Amazon’s spokesperson said.
Customers can keep up with Amazon recalls in a designated safety alert section of its website.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
Source : Wired
