Amazon failed to properly warn more than 300,000 customers about more than 400,000 products sold by third parties on its platform that were tested by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and found to pose serious risks, including death and electric shock.
The CPSC unanimously voted to hold Amazon legally liable for defective products from third-party sellers. Amazon must now develop a CPSC-approved plan to properly recall dangerous products that the CPSC concerns are still widely used in homes across the country, including highly flammable children’s pajamas, faulty carbon monoxide detectors, and dangerous hair dryers that pose an electric shock hazard.
While Amazon scrambles to put plans in place, the CPSC outlined the ongoing risks to consumers:
Instead of recalling the products sold between 2018 and 2021, Amazon sent customers messages that the CPSC said “downplayed the severity of the risks.”
In those messages, Amazon merely warned customers that the products may not meet federal safety standards and “potentially” pose a risk of burns, electric shock, or “exposure to potentially dangerous levels of carbon monoxide” to children “despite conclusive testing showing the products are dangerous” by the CPSC.
Typically, merchants are required to specifically use the word “recall” in the subject line of such messages, but Amazon avoided using that word altogether. Instead, Amazon opted to use less alarming subject lines such as “Attention: Important Safety Notice Regarding Past Amazon Orders” or “Important Safety Notice Regarding Past Amazon Orders.”
Amazon then left it up to customers to destroy the products and explicitly discouraged returns. The e-commerce giant also offered gift cards to all affected customers without requiring proof of destruction, proper public notice, or notification of actual danger to customers, as required by law to ensure public safety.
Moreover, Amazon’s messages did not include photos of the defective products, as required by law, and did not provide a way for customers to respond. The Commission concluded that Amazon made no “effort” to track the number of items destroyed, or even the bare minimum effort to monitor “the number of messages opened.”
But Amazon still believes those messages were an appropriate remedy, and an Amazon spokesperson told Ars that the company 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 the CPSC first notified us three years ago that a small number of third-party products at the center of this case had potential safety issues, we immediately notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and provided refunds.”
Amazon’s ‘avoided’ safety obligations
The CPSC also has concerns about Amazon’s “inadequate” remedies, particularly because people who received these products as gifts or bought them on the secondary market were likely not informed of the known and significant dangers. The CPSC found that Amazon resold defective hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, proving that a secondary market for these products exists.
“Amazon does not directly engage with consumers who acquired unsafe products through gifts, hand-me-downs, donations, or secondary sales,” the CPSC said.
