Amazon, you will do a total recall of bad stuff sold through your site, watchdog barks Amazon has been ordered by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to take full and proper responsibility for recalling faulty and dangerous products sold by merchants through its website and app. The order [PDF] this week directs the internet giga-souk to develop a remediation plan to notify those who have purchased …
About 2 years ago I was looking at buying kettle leads and figure of 8 leads for a set up I was making for my home office. And I'm perusing Amazon and not only were the prices for the leads more than what CPC or even the poundshop near me were selling them for - they were all illegal. The photos showed that the earth pin was sleeved. Big Clive on that there YouToob also had some cables where they have a fuse but the fuse is fake.
Since then I will tell anyone who listens not to buy electrical items from Amazon. It's just not worth the risk.
The problem with sheathed earth pins other than being totally non compliant is that some sockets, especially MK, make contact high up on the pin, so the sheathing completely disconnects the earth... not that it matters with chinese stuff, they seem to regard the green yellow wire as an unnecessary embuggrance
I once bought a copy apple magsafe charger from Amazon and the mains lead it came with was horrendously bad. The conductors were about the thickness of a human hair, blue and brown reversed inside the plug (admittedly doesn't really matter for AC but if you can't get that right...) and the fuse fell apart when I tried to remove it from the plug. The fuse was also empty (no sand to contain the arc). This was about the time I first read about fake fuses so I thought I'd have a quick look and ... 100% success rate, or failure rate depending on how you look at it.
I pointed this out to Amazon customer services who made a big song and dance and insisted on taking the whole lot back. Which was annoying because I had plenty of spare power leads but at the time no serviceable magsafe charger. Probably did me a favour though, who knows what the charger would have taken out with it when it inevitably failed.
I don't think they pulled the line from sale though, so a pretty token gesture.
I've almost completely stopped buying from Amazon in the last couple of years. The alphabet soup of brands selling the same stuff as each other just makes searching on the site for a quality product extremely frustrating. And I see the free shipping tier in the UK has gone up to #35 instead of 25 (and your order still defaults to the *paid* option even when eligible). Admittedly I did just make a rather large purchase (of a well known quality brand) but only because it was some 10% cheaper than the next best retailer and I got 6 month 0% finance. Annoying, but cost of living, yadda yadda.
My brother bought a cheap magsafe connector from Amazon. Which caught fire. Fortunately while he was there. So he complained to Amazon and got his money back.
But they didn't stop the seller. And then when he looked he realised that they had 100s of 5 star reviews, many of which were identical or from accounts with only one review - and those crowded the few 1 star reviews. The ones like his that said things like, "mine caught fire". His 1 star review didn't last on their page for more than a few hours, before being crowded out by more fakes.
So every day he went to their page and flagged fake reviews as spam. You'd see the real ones for a bit, then the fakes came back. After a few weeks, Amazon killed the seller.
So he did a search, and found a new seller, with the same product, and the same fake reviews. Which he reported as spam. He spend about 3 months, maybe a couple of times a week, of what was probably chasing the same seller across Amazon, reporting their fake reviews as spam and after a few weeks they'd get killed off and then come back with a new company.
The other problem say for munnoch above is this:
Admittedly I did just make a rather large purchase (of a well known quality brand) but only because it was some 10% cheaper than the next best retailer
Because Amazon consolidate all the goods in their warehouse - you're at the mercy of the crooks. Because Amazon mix up the legit product form the good retailers with the fakes. So their warehouses are full of fakes in a process of "Chinese roulette" - where it doesn't matter what price you pay or what vendor you use, the product they've accepted from the fraudsters contaminates all the good stuff.
I remember this from trying to buy Sennheiser headphones. I was putting together an order to get free delivery. Every day I looked there was a new company selling them at one third the RRP. So I'd put that in my basket for later. The next day it was gone, so I did it again. After 3 or 4 days I realised what was going on. But as they were sold as legit, even though Amazon killed the sellers (probably after a request from Sennheiser) if their stock had got into the warehouses, even Amazon wouldn't know which product had come in from them. Hence I won't buy electronics from Amazon.
And you cannot report fake goods. I bought a wifi mini-pcie card, which when it arrived, it was a junk card with the genuine label attached. So I tried to leave a review pointing out it was fake. The review was blocked. I resubmitted, carefully not using the work "fake". And that was blocked as well.
So, you will not see a review of an item pointing out it's fake. It's "against our community guidelines".
I did that for a USB c lead that melted inside my phone... fortunately no damage done to the phone but i got quite a bad burn from the end.... it had shorted internally and the smell of burning plastic woke me up fortunately.
Left a 1 star review stating exactly what was happening, all entirely factual.
"Please edit and resubmit your review
Hello Chip,
We could not post your review because it does not meet our community guidelines.''
"Amazon mix up the legit product"
A while back I bough a "genuine Sony PS5 controller". The packaging was very good, but the controller itself was an obvious counterfeit and didn't work properly from the outset so I sent it back, got a refund and bough one from Currys/PC World. That one worked fine. I also had an issue with a third party electronic Amazon item that failed just outside the 30 day return period. Both Amazon and the seller more or less said "tough shit". After you've been shat on by Amazon a few times it is time to buy elsewhere.
Don't even get me started on their delivery drivers. Dumping stuff on the doorstep in full view of everyone walking past and they couldn't even be arsed to ring the door bell. Dump and run.
I also had an issue with a third party electronic Amazon item that failed just outside the 30 day return period. Both Amazon and the seller more or less said "tough shit"
Andy Non,
What 30 day return period is that?
I'm assuming you're in the UK, as you used PC World.
Anything bought online has an automatic 14 day return for whatever reason you like. That's when you have to tell them, they have to get it back within 14 days (if they want it). But that only covers changing your mind.
If you buy something that fails, then it has to be of merchantable quality and so should last 12 months. Or up to 5 years for more expensive items. So if it breaks within a year they should be replacing or repairing.
If you bought via Amazon, and paid Amazon, then your legal contract is with Amazon and they can't palm you off on the seller. Who're often in China and care nothing about UK law. Technically it applies to them, but can't be enforced. So Amazon should refund you. If the item was over £100 - your credit card company are jointly liable with Amazon (your section 75 rights). Which is great, because they have lawyers.
" if it breaks within a year they should be replacing or repairing"
Yes indeed, but with both Amazon and the third party supplier both refusing repair / replace / refund, rather than getting litigious with them (too much hassle) I've simply withdrawn my custom. A customer shat up doesn't come back again, and it has cost them dearly with lost sales as I used to buy lots of things from them, they were my default go-to store. Not any more. Store of last resort and only for cheap hard to find items at that. Gone are the days of buying TV's, computers, gaming consoles etc from them. They have lost my trust.
Andy non,
That's a shame. My experience up to now, has been that Amazon customer service themselves were very good. So even when the vendor tries to fob you off, the magic words with Amazon of, "my legal contract is with you under the Sale of Goods Act" should work. Because the law is that your contract is with who you pay. I've never had to say that to Amazon, and when I helped someone who'd bought some dodgy Chinese tat - just telling the Chinese company that UK law said that had to refund it, and if they didn't he'd go to Amazon customer service to fix it, got them to refund the goods.
I always thought the next thing to go at Amazon might be their customer service. Another reason I make about 2 orders from them a year, and it's mostly books and CDs. I'm old, I admit it.
I don't blame you for abandoning them. But it's always good to remind companies that we know our legal rights - it usually makes them do the right thing without having to do more than just tell them. As they often know, but some try it on anyway - and knowingly set an illegal returns policy.
My experience up to now, has been that Amazon customer service themselves were very good.
That's not been everyone's experience.
I avoid Amazon for anything valuable or potentially dangerous, or available within, say, 100 miles of here.
I picked up an Amazon replacement MagSafe charger a few years ago as I wanted to have one permanently plugged in at my desk whilst the original was in my laptop bag.
When charging, the cable between the block and the MacBook would get really hot. Also, if it was plugged in the trackpad on the MacBook would play up, with the mouse pointer stuttering and jumping all over the place. I didn't notice this as first as I had an external mouse and keyboard plugged in at my desk, but needless to say the thing went back as soon as I spotted it.
I'll only buy original chargers now, or if it's a generic USB C type thing, I ensure it's from a trusted brand. It's just not worth the risk (as Mark Fixes Stuff from YouTube can attest).
We got an "Apple" charger from Amazon. Curiously, the charger we received didn't actually have the Apple logo. After some digging, I found out one very important fact:
At the time (don't know about now), Apple didn't sell ANYTHING on Amazon. But there were plenty of product listings saying otherwise!
It's not just Amazon; half the electronic components bought online are on the wrong side of iffy.
My favourite example is that I bought a couple of 18650 protected batteries online years ago for a DIY project which were minutely the wrong length, being longer than a non protected cell but minutely less than a protected cell should have been. I was mentally debating bodging the battery holder by bending the battery clip in the holder out a bit, before deciding to do something I hadn't to that point done before. I disassembled one by slicing the plastic cover off to see what was actually in it.
Instead of the cutoff protection circuit, it had a cardboard spacer which had flattened a bit, and a bit of bent wire running to the cap. I can't help but think that this is why there are so many lithium battery fires; protection circuitry gets omitted to save a few pennies and to be dammed with safety laws. This is of course completely illegal, but how can you actually get any recourse?
silly interpretation on Amazon's part. If I bought something at a brick and mortar store, some in the US have sublet shelf or floor space and someone just puts there producrs there. Guess what? If it was recalled they wouldn"t get to claim they were just doing logistics for this stuff.
Oh but they do.
Far too many retail products in the U.S. must now be sent directly to the maker. It's rather hit and miss. Some brick and mortars will honor the warranty, some will not.
It's far safer to assume everything in America is a scam and then slowly whitelist from there.
of enshitification. Their customer service goes from bad to brazenly worse. They don't give a feck about their customers. I only deal with Amazon now to buy cheapish items I can't source elsewhere or obscure books. They've lost out on £ thousands of sales to me alone as I shop around more and buy locally.
You've got me wondering now. I needed some 10 amp plug fuses recently and ended up buying them from Amazon. I did wonder at the time if they would be cheap Chinese tat with a bit of wire inside instead of proper rated fuse wire. I'm increasingly suspicious of items from Amazon.
The UK fused plug top is a bit of an anachronism though. No other country does it like us (except the ones that use the same design).
Blame the ring main final circuit that lets us squeeze 32A out of a cable designed for a maximum of 25A. Which means the breaker won't think of tripping until you get to almost 100A by which time those dodgy fuses will be glowing red hot. Elsewhere you tend to find a larger number of final circuits each with a lower rating which obviates the need for a fused plug top.
This is one reason I down-rated my ring mains to 16A. Its pretty uncommon to need large portable loads these days so its never been a problem (kitchen and utility room not withstanding).
Yes. As far as I know there's nowhere that bans ring mains. They're occasionally used in the USA too, as it allows far more sockets in a room than spurs.
Unlike "wild leg" transformers, which are explicitly banned in the rest of the world.
Ring main also has the great advantage of being able to test the loop impedance from the breaker panel, instead of having to find the end of the spur.
As far as I know there's nowhere that bans ring mains
Hadn't heard of ring mains. I think I might pack a couple of portable RCD/fuse with UK plugs attached if I were to visit blighty.
I would hope ring wiring wouldn't comply with AS/NZS 3000:2018 but it is a rather long read to check. :)
Without engaging the little gray cells one obvious vulnerability: should the ring be broken the conductors of resulting two segments could be overloaded.
This is incorrect. The NEC currently requires GFCIs basically anywhere near water. Some US jurisdictions have additional requirements. That includes bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, basements, garages, and exterior receptacles.
If you have any evidence showing a significant reduction in actual risk from putting GFCIs in non-wet locations, I'm sure we'd like to see it.
AFCI breakers are also required for most interior receptacles in dwellings.
As well as Australia and New Zeleand, they're also in building codes across Western Europe so presumably it does offer protection (or perhaps it's just regulatory capture by big RCD).
Off the top of my head it would immediately help in the US for those people who insist on creating the annual yuletide deathtrap.
Personally I would insist on a rewire if I somehow managed to buy a house which isn't protected by RCDs everywhere.
IANAL: in the EU: if a product is proven faulty or even sold without proper approval (aka "illegal") the selling party needs to recall it, and return these to the manufacturer.
If it is made clear on Amazon.com that Amazon is not the actual seller but just providing a spot in the "shop window" for another party, it is up to that party to make the recall (maybe even via Amazon).
So I see why Amazon is somehow reluctant to comply - if a similar regulation exists in the USofA Amazon can only be held accountable for the products sold by themselves.
If it is made clear on Amazon.com that Amazon is not the actual seller but just providing a spot in the "shop window" for another party, it is up to that party to make the recall (maybe even via Amazon).
The issue for Amazon is they've muddied the waters for themselves through providing payment processing, associated services, etc - they're not an ebay-like marketplace. They also perform stock aggregation. If you are selling <product> through Fullfilled by Amazon and another seller is selling the same product, then Amazon will throw all the stock in a single box in the warehouse and just track how much is yours and how much is the other seller's.
This is a particular problem for products which are heavily counterfeited like fragrances. A friend's parents ran such a business and were constantly getting complaints and returns because customers had received a counterfeit product. They knew they'd sent Amazon legit product, but some other seller had shipped counterfeits and they'd all got jumbled in the same bin at the fulfilment centre.
This makes it functionally impossible for the seller to take any sort of responsibility for recalls (e.g. if it only affects a certain production run/set of serials) or dealing with claims of selling counterfeits - because their stock is mixed in with other people's and they don't know what specific item was shipped to their customer.
By both facilitating payments and mixing seller's stock, one can argue that they're taking on a role above and beyond simple logistics. They're more like a brick-and-mortar retailer (like Selfirdges) taking payment on behalf of a concession stand within the store. Sure, the concession stand is independent, but Selfridges are a step beyond just subletting the floor space to the concession. They're providing other services, and recalls would be displayed at store entrances and till - not just in the concession stand.
Because they're mixing the stock, Amazon are taking 100% control and responsibility for the product.
The "seller" Amazon puts on their website has zero control over whether it's their product that gets shipped or not, so they're not a concession stand either. They're a supplier, and Amazon is the seller.
I bought a replacement power supply for a Toshiba laptop from Amazon. A week or two back I received an email telling me it was hazardous, I should stop using it and I should get a replacement along with a link to do so. I followed the link, emailed customer support and received the replacement a couple of days later
The fun part - Ordered on 3 July 2012 (1 item)
I'm not certain I'm happy with the level of service that waits so long to spot the PSU could burst into flames, but once spotted and I was notified it was great
I bought a spare laptop charger for my Lenovo from the souk. It looked almost identical to the OEM adaptor but when plugged in I could feel a slight charge on the lid of the laptop. Ceased using but didn't get around to sending back.
Amazon used to be a good place to find cheaper OEM stuff but now it's all character soup named Chinese companies. I used to think that they were probably made in the same factory and just badged differently. Then I realised if that was the case, they were probably items that failed QA. Either way, l avoid like the plague now.
Amazon claiming to not be the seller is just a ploy to avoid their legal obligations. I buy stuff "fulfilled by Amazon" and everything I interact with is Amazon - the website, ordering process, payment, even delivery comes in Amazon branded packaging. As far as I am concerned, I am dealing with Amazon and noone else. Just because Amazon source the actual product from somewhere else shouldn't let them dodge their legal obligations as a seller.
Amazon certainly want it to appear very much like a uniform experience, to the extent that the shipping terms extend equally to both their "own" sales and "fulfilled-by" sales.
I think this definitely needs regulating, but I think there may be some legal difficulty in making a clear distinction between Amazon and, say, Ebay, which is more clearly a marketplace. I suspect it partly comes down to Amazon being both a platform-provider and a vendor on its own platform. I can see lots of advantages (though perhaps not for Amazon) in forcing it to choose one role or the other.
Also, on eBay you can pay the seller direct. If you use PayPal, they're registered in Europe as a bank, so they're just a payment service - but one that eBay make money from and offer some extra customer service options if you use.
On Amazon you pay Amazon. Hence your legal contract is with Amazon. And Amazon issue the invoice.
100% this! If I'm paying Amazon, Amazon are shipping it to me, and it comes in an Amazon box then I bought it from Amazon. The incidental fact that Amazon have a supplier/stock holding arrangement with some tat factory in China has no bearing on the transaction - they are Amazon's supplier, not mine, and I'm pretty sure British consumer law backs me up on this.
How do you complain anyway?
A colleague wanted her favourite face cream cheap. Saw it on Amazon for £0.46. But £20 delivery and you're only allowed one item - so you can't even buy in bulk to get the numbers to make it cheap. A clear and obvious case of fraud. She only noticed because the Prime delivery page was still showing a £20 delivery charge - so if you're one-click ordering or don't check delivery because you've got Prime - you get ripped off. I think the list price is £12 - so it would be cheap even if she could buy 2.
So I clicked on the seller. They had hundreds of products at penny prices, all at £20 carriage. They also had about 100 5 star seller reviews and then 10s of 1 stars. All the five stars had the same language, the top ten were from the same account - but for different "cheap" products.
No complaint or customer service button on the seller. The reviews can't be clicked on to report them as obvious spam. I clicked away to see if I could find a customer service email address. When I tried to click back - the seller had disappeared - I'd copied the link and that no longer worked. But the same product was now available from a new seller - also at £0.46 also when you click on the seller with loads fo good reviews you can't click on.
This added to the fact that Amazon pool all goods in their warehouses mean that it's impossible to avoid fakes - it's impossible to report fakes and frauds and I am very reluctant to deal with Amazon anymore. I just haven't found new sites to use for things like CDs and books to replace them.
I was looking for a cheap sound-level meter a few years ago, and came across one that looked promising. Lots of 5-star reviews. On reading the reviews, though, almost all of them were for a multimeter. Looks like the seller had hijacked a product page with good reviews, replacing the original description and photos with their own product.
It took over an hour of digging to find out how to report it as bogus. Clearly Amazon doesn't want to know if a listing is fake!
Ridge Wallet founder posted something on social media in the past couple of days that even with a patent and valid court order for all counterfeit goods to be stopped Amazon does nothing. Amazon even went as far as to demand he stop contacting them regarding illegal products. The kicker is that his patented Ridge Wallet is in a category on Amazon called "Ridge Wallet for Men", so Amazon knows what's happening and just doesn't care as long as they get paid.
In UK here. Bought something fairly high powered off Amazon, a hand held clothes steamer. It was 120V with a USA plug. My partner did not check the rating, but luckily asked me about the plug before hunting down an adapter.
This is downright dangerous, and they should be held to account everywhere.
Amazon has engaged in bait-and-switch since it's inception.
I remember back in the day when they were mainly just a book seller. They priced their books (with free shipping) at exactly 1p below the price you would pay for the same book from a bricks-and-mortar store. As places like WH Smith often had to order in things that they didn't have directly on their shelves, it was often quicker and more convenient to just buy from Amazon.
Once the traditional booksellers started feeling the pinch, and reduced their stock still further in order to diversify, Amazon then dropped the free shipping, but they still maintained their customer base, because, hey, I can order it and it'll just turn up. They then introduced Prime to extract more money (although I'm certain that I get my money's worth - it doesn't take many orders to recoup the cost of a Prime subscription, and I reckon they lose money on the free shipping for me almost every month)
I feel they are now doing something similar with almost everything they sell. I used to feel reasonably safe buying from Amazon, because I thought they would take responsibility for things they sell, but it is noticeable that there are more dubious products appearing on their site all the time, and like everyone says, their prices are no longer the reason to buy from them.
I have had some excellent deals by being quite cautious, but it's getting more and more difficult to filter out the dross.
Peter Gathercole,
It's not bait and switch to only be 1p cheaper than the opposition. And Amazon had the advantage of convenience. Plus the often had deals. They were never super cheap on books, but often were with CDs. Plus I've never had Prime, and almost never paid delivery - so long as I was willing to take the slow delivery and order more than £20 (now apparently £35).
Prime still seems like pretty good value to me - if you use Amazon even a moderate amount. It's just that I'm not finding them cheap for CDs anymore - possibly nobody is (and I should start buying music digitally). I don't trust them for small electronics. And when I had a Prime trial I didn't find much to watch, partly because it's hard to see what's available from what (when you click on it) turns out not to be free after all.
"Are there actually any safe, good quality items for sale on Amazon these days?"
Certainly yes. I bought such a thing the other day. A box of consumable things of my preferred regular brand. Putting aside the possiblity that they could be counterfeit, I would call them a safe, good quality item.
Of course, despite entering the exact make and model into Amazon's search, I still had to wade through all the crud which makes it akin to walking into a real shop and saying "a bag of walkers cheese and onion please" and the shop assistant replying with "certainly ma'am, we have salt and vinegar Smith's, our own brand beef, multipack bags of hula hoops, some blue cheese, catering sized packs of dried onion powder, walking trousers, Gary Lineker's biography and a text book on modern methods in gene editing. Would you like to walk through our infinitely huge shop browsing the same 7 items over and over on infinite loop but all at bafflingly slightly different prices, except for that one tiny £1 item bizarrely priced at £500?"
The infrastructure of massive website, mega warehouses, distribution vans and collection lockers seems to have blinded the authorities to the fact that if Amazon was a stall on a local market selling all this crap, it'd be raided and shut down within hours by trading standards officers, the stock would be confiscated and destroyed and Honest Jeff would be facing a court appearance and massive fine.
And that is the perfect demonstration of the so-called auto-regulation of capitalism. It doesn't.
You shouldn't need a law to remove hazardous products from your listings, Amazon. Defending your right to not do so just demonstrates (as if that was needed) how little you care about the consumer and how much you care about your profits.
We knew that anyway, so go for the law. It's the only thing that will curb your capitalist enthusiasm.
Do what I did when they stole a £1300 puter I ordered....
If you have pay monthly payments enabled - then make sure you get what you can from them - its not a credit agreement so will not affect your credit score.
After being refunded, I helped myself to £5k of stuff, paid the 20% then they can swing for the rest.
Make sure you leave in style!
...apparently want to go back to only buying what is available in their local shops. Assuming they have any, or know where they are.
Health and safety is a primary weapon of the state to shut down tech services.
'Proof of destruction' eh? OK. I'll take a hammer to the Lithium cell.
A few years ago, I saw a guy selling a barrel-full of power strips at a flea market. Noticing that most were one particular model, and it looked familiar due to a notice sent around at work, I took a look and then went to grab an authority figure. Sure enough, most of them had been recalled as fire hazards (which presumably is how he got them cheap/free to resell).
Requiring sellers to not sell dodgy, dangerous goods is a good thing, whether online or in-person.
Lots of people on here apparently want to go back to only buying what is available in their local shops
Tron,
Nope. I would like Amazon to go back to what it was 15 years ago, before they brought in the "Z-shops" which filled all the searches with listings for second hand stuff or the more recent updates where everything is coming from China. Often saying it's in stock, but then turning out to be in stock in Shenzen, so shipping really means on a ship, and takes 4 weeks.
Short of that, I'll use other more reliable sites.
One of the nice things about shops, is that they have buyers. This means they choose their merchandise that they're going to sell to you, rather than allow random companies to sell any old shit from a dark corner of the shop. Some of it obviously fucking dangerous, or obvious fakes. Also, becuase they're selling you stuff from their shop, you can pick it up and poke it, to see if you like it. To some extent Amazon replaced that process with reviews from users - but it's pretty clear that the dodgy ones are also allowed to abuse that system with loads of fake reviews of their fake products.
The law of averages means that most people are still getting the legitimate gear, and up until recently Amazon's customer service were there to pick up the pieces. But I suspect because they make their cash out of cloud services now, the shop has become a bit unloved - and so is being allowed to become infinitely worse.
Health and safety is a primary weapon of the state to shut down tech services.
Amazon sold my brother a charging cable that caught fire. Had he not been in the room, his house might have burned down. Had he been asleep at the time his family might have died. Health and Safety is also there to stop that. Which was clearly an illegal and dangerous item, because other reviewers had also said the same thing, but the vendor had hidden them behind a deluge of fake 5 star reviews.
Amazon knew this but did nothing but give him a refund. It was only because he kept going back to the page and reporting loads of the spam reviews that after a few weeks Amazon (or the vendor) finally killed that sales account and started up another one. This is a problem because Amazon allow it to be so. And if they won't fix it, government will have to.
Of course we'd have a few more local shops, if companies like Amazon hadn't been so successful. But there are competitors out there to use.
> "Health and safety is a primary weapon of the state to shut down tech services."
Aside from being a stock excuse for bullshitters covering up their failings, "Health and safety" is also a strawman for those who want to remove regulations in general, e.g. those that stop companies like Amazon selling- sorry, acting as a marketplace (cough) for- dangerous crap that's likely to burn your house down.
And, as noted by the other reply, it's clearly not even working there.
But keep on with the useful idiocy, why don't you?
I had an expensive LED chandelier have its transformer explode and set fire to the ceiling. Fortunately. no major damage done. However, Amazon refused to provide support, offer a refund or to remove the product from the site. They wouldn't even let us update our review as 90 days had elapsed. Caveat Emptor...
Just more government bullshit. Walmart/Target aren't required to track down every person who buys a recalled item in their stores. They put up the notices in a place no one will ever see them and that's it. It's not up to Amazon to have to go through that. Firing off a simple email is more than enough. The product recall is not their responsibility to handle.
BasicReality,
Amazon know who ordered every single item, and where it was shipped to. Walmart and Target do not. Therefore it's a perfectly reasonable obligation that Amazon inform everyone of a recall.
I don't know US consumer law, but in the UK the retailer can't pass on the liability for faulty goods. They sold it to you, that's the legal contract, so they must repair, replace or refund it. That doesn't mean that the manufacturer isn't liable to them, so they would normally cooperate on a recall.
Just wanted to say that I haven't had a single bad experience with either amazon.fr nor .de. I'm not proud of being an Amazon customer, but they're often the only alternative when I can't wait for Aliexpress to get parts to repair an old machine, be it an iBook G4 or a Kenwood P-26.
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