Amazon can now be held responsible for dangerous products sold on its platform

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — A US safety regulator announced Tuesday that it voted unanimously to hold Amazon responsible for faulty or unsafe products sold by third-parties on its website and app.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission, tasked with ordering companies to recall dangerous products sold in America, said it found more than 400,000 defective products sold on Amazon’s platform that the online retailer now must recall or face legal consequences.

More than 60% of sales in Amazon’s stores come from independent sellers, the company said in January, and the battle over who should be held liable for these products when they fail has been battled in court for years. But the CPSC Tuesday said an administrative law judge sided with the agency, ruling that Amazon acted as a distributor for third-party goods, and the company’s notifications to customers that products they purchased had a “potential” safety issues were insufficient to protect consumers.

The ruling today underlines the CPSC’s crackdown on products it views as unsafe. The agency’s acting chairs were appointed by President Joe Biden.

The products specifically included in this order include carbon monoxide detectors that fail to alarm, numerous children’s pajamas that could catch fire and hair dryers that could electrocute people if dropped in water.

“Amazon failed to notify the public about these hazardous products and did not take adequate steps to encourage its customers to return or destroy them, thereby leaving consumers at substantial risk of injury,” the CPSC said in a statement Tuesday. “Amazon must now develop and submit proposed plans to notify purchasers and the public about the product hazards, and to provide refunds or replacements for these products.”

In a statement Tuesday, Amazon said it was disappointed by the decision and plans to appeal.

“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,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Our recalls alerts service also ensures our customers are notified of important product safety information fast, and the recalls process is effective and efficient.”

CPSC said Amazon now has to submit a proposed plan to notify consumers about the faulty products and removing them from online shelves.

The agency first sued the mega-retailer in 2021, when it said it was cracking down on Amazon because it has limited ability to force a recall of foreign products.

“Today’s vote to file an administrative complaint against Amazon was a huge step forward for this small agency,” former Acting Chairman Robert Adler said in 2021. “But it’s a huge step across a vast desert — we must grapple with how to deal with these massive third-party platforms more efficiently, and how best to protect the American consumers who rely on them.”

During the proceedings, the administrative law judge ruled that Amazon acted as a distributor, dismissing the company’s argument that it wasn’t acting as one the way it is defined in the Consumer Product Safety Act.

CPSC also argued that Amazon’s actions after the lawsuit – sending messages to initial buyers about “potential” safety issues and providing Amazon credit instead of a refund encouraging a return or destruction of the product – wasn’t enough. The judge agreed, CPSC said.

Amazon said in a statement that, when notified about the potential safety issues, it “swiftly notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and refunded them.”

CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report.

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