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:

If the [products] remain in consumers’ possession, children will continue to wear sleepwear garments that could ignite and result in injury or death; consumers will unwittingly rely on defective [carbon monoxide] detectors that will never alert them to the presence of deadly carbon monoxide in their homes; and consumers will use the hair dryers they purchased, which lack immersion protection, in the bathroom near water, leaving them vulnerable to electrocution.

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.”

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      One of the biggest trust issues is that you literally cannot buy a product from a trusted seller.

      If 20 sellers sell the same item, Amazon will pool all of those items at their warehouses and ship them to buyers regardless of which seller the buyer was told they were buying from. If one seller provides Amazon with a counterfeit product, every seller is now tainted with that product.

      And if you complain, the site treats it as a mark against the seller, even though they destroyed any evidence of whether the seller was responsible or not by shuffling the items in inventory.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’m not racist… BUT… I will not buy any product until I thoroughly look through the item description, seller profile, and determine that the seller is not a secret shop from some place in China. It’s so quickly slapped together and much of the time, terrible products. I get it. It’s Chinese and they go after speed over quality, but like… Anytime I’ve ever had an issue, the seller was always based in China.

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        This is true, but also on the flip side, if you find your Nintendo DS Lite from almost 2 decades ago, and look at it, and the battery hasn’t turned spicy yet and you look on the battery and see it was made in China… it’s pretty impressive.

        The cheap shit on Amazon however, yeah I wouldn’t trust it tbh.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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          3 months ago

          It’s about who sets the quality control standards. Somebody experienced who cares, or nobody at all? Amazon doesn’t enforce safety.

        • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          My DSi’s battery swelled up and nearly exploded less than a decade after getting it. Still have the DSi, but no battery.

          • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            I have my PSP 2000, PSP 3000, DSLite, DSi, DSi XL, 3DS XL, and New 3DS XL.

            Out of all of those devices, the only ones with bad batteries that were spicy were the PSP 2000, PSP 3000, and 3DS XL. The New 3DS XL was off since 2020 and still had half charge when I powered it on again in 2024, guess I left it fully charged, oops.

            How did the battery nearly explode for you? Even with my PSP batteries that were so badly swollen they actually cracked the plastic shell of the battery, I still think they weren’t near exploding. Did you charge it while it was super swollen or something?

            • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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              3 months ago

              I think I just used the hell out of it as a kid. That DSi got me through a lot of fights between my parents, constant extended road trips, and lack of anything else to do. It swole up so much the battery panel nearly snapped right off and is permanently bent. I still kept using it til it couldn’t hold a charge, because I was a kid and didn’t realize the risk of doing so.

              • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                Ouch! That is scary haha I totally would have done the same though. I’m glad I know better now and I make sure to inspect my devices to make sure the battery looks to be good still.

      • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        It’s not about where it’s manufactured as much as it is about who wanted it manufactured. If it’s from a company that cares about its brand image like Anker, then you’re probably going to get a good product

      • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        To play China’s advocate for a sec… Could this also be a symptom of America’s new alpha sigma trend of drop shipping?

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Only time I ever trust them is when it’s a verified shop from a highly reputable company like Seagate, but even then I don’t trust Amazon.

      Worst thing about buying a budget phone, like I’ve done for my past 3 phones, is that phone stores never have good cases and the only place to find good (as in my phone won’t be destroyed when dropped, case isn’t slippery, and case won’t be destroyed in a week) is Amazon. So I’ve been essentially locked into buying cheap Chinese phone cases there because lack of options for anything that isn’t the newest flagship phone model.

      • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        No idea which phone you have, but dbrand does carry a decent amount of models. However, it is mostly limited to Apple, Google, Samsung, and One Plus. It does suck trying to find some things though. I do try to get things directly from the manufacturer website when it makes sense, but sometimes Amazon IS their website.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Yeah thats how I am, I only buy books from Amazon at this point and even then I use a link from their site or whatever. Also for quick context if you want a manga or light novel from Yen On their website has links for all sellers.