Amazon failed to adequately alert more than 300,000 customers about serious risks, including death and electrocution, that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found in testing more than 400,000 products sold by third parties on its platform.
The CPSC voted unanimously to hold Amazon legally responsible for defective products from third-party sellers. Amazon must now come up with a CPSC-approved plan to properly remove the dangerous products — including highly flammable children’s pajamas, faulty carbon monoxide detectors, and unsafe hair dryers that could cause electrocution — that the CPSC fears are still widely used in homes across the United States.
As Amazon scrambles to come up with a plan, the CPSC summarized the current 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 the dangers.
In these messages, “despite conclusive evidence that the products were dangerous” by the CPSC, Amazon only warned customers that the products “may not meet” federal safety standards and only “potentially” posed risks of “burns to children,” “electric shock,” or “exposure to potentially dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.”
Typically, a retailer would be required to specifically use the word “recall” in the subject line of such messages, but Amazon avoided using that language altogether. Instead, Amazon opted to use much less alarming subject lines that read, “Attention: Important Safety Notice Regarding Your Previous Amazon Order” or “Important Safety Notice Regarding Your Previous Amazon Order.”
Amazon then left it up to customers to destroy the products and explicitly advised them against returning them. The e-commerce giant also gave all affected customers a gift card without requiring proof of the destruction or providing adequate public notice or informing customers of the actual dangers, as may be required by law to ensure public safety.
Additionally, Amazon’s messages did not include photos of the defective products, as required by law, and did not offer customers any way to respond. The commission found that Amazon “made no effort” to track how many items were destroyed or even to keep minimal track of the “number of messages that were opened.”
However, Amazon still believes these messages were appropriate solutions. An Amazon spokesperson told Ars that Amazon plans to appeal the decision.
“We are disappointed by the CPSC’s decision,” the Amazon spokesperson said. “We plan to appeal the decision and look forward to presenting our case in court. When the CPSC initially notified us three years ago about potential safety issues with a small number of third-party products that were the focus of this lawsuit, we quickly notified customers, told them to stop using the products, and refunded their money.”
Safety obligations “evaded” by Amazon
The CPSC has additional concerns about Amazon’s “insufficient” solutions. It is especially concerned that anyone who received the products as gifts or purchased them on the secondary market was likely not informed of the serious known dangers. The CPSC found that Amazon resold defective hair dryers and carbon monoxide detectors, showing that secondary markets exist for these products.
“Amazon has made no direct attempt to reach consumers who obtained the dangerous products as gifts, used items, donations, or on the secondary market,” the CPSC said.