Amazon failed to adequately warn more than 300,000 customers about grave risks, including death and electrocution, that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found in tests of more than 400,000 products sold by third parties on its platform.
The CPSC voted unanimously to hold Amazon legally liable for defective products from third-party sellers. Now, Amazon must develop a CPSC-approved plan to properly recall hazardous products — including highly flammable children’s pajamas, faulty carbon monoxide detectors, and hazardous hair dryers that can cause electrocution — that the CPSC fears may still be widely used in homes across America.
While Amazon tries to develop a plan, the CPSC summarized the current risks to consumers:
Instead of recalling products sold between 2018 and 2021, Amazon sent customers messages that the CPSC said “downplayed the seriousness” of the risks.
In those messages — “despite conclusive testing that showed the products were unsafe” by the CPSC — Amazon only warned customers that the products “may not” meet federal safety standards and only “potentially” posed a risk of “burns to children,” “electric shock,” or “exposure to potentially unsafe levels of carbon monoxide.”
Typically, a distributor would have to utilize the word “withdrawal” in the subject line of this type of email, but Amazon avoided using that language altogether. Instead, Amazon opted to utilize much less alarmist subject lines that read, “Note: Important Safety Notice Regarding Your Previous Amazon Order” or “Important Safety Notice Regarding Your Previous Amazon Order.”
Amazon then gave customers the option to destroy the products and explicitly discouraged them from making returns. The e-commerce giant also gave each affected customer a gift card without requiring proof of destruction or adequate public notification or informing customers of actual threats, which may be required by law to ensure public safety.
In addition, Amazon’s messages did not include photos of the defective products, as required by law, and did not provide customers with an opportunity to respond. The commission found that Amazon “made no effort” to track how many items were damaged, nor did it do even the bare minimum of monitoring “the number of messages that were opened.”
Amazon, however, still believes the messages were appropriate remedies. 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 about potential safety issues with the small number of third-party products at issue in this lawsuit, we quickly notified customers, instructed them to discontinue using the products, and issued refunds.”
Amazon “bypassed” security 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 purchased them on the secondary market likely was not informed of the grave known hazards. The CPSC found that Amazon resold the defective hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, which shows that secondary markets exist for these products.
“Amazon made no direct attempts to reach consumers who received the affected products as gifts, second-hand items, donations or through the secondary market,” the CPSC said.