Senators have demanded a recall after a CNN report identified Amazon’s own products as fire hazards.


In a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Friday, Connecticut Senators Richard Blumenthal, New Jersey’s Robert Menendez and Massachusetts’ Ed Markey wrote that CNN’s report on the AmazonBasics product line showed that ” “Continued threat to consumers who have purchased these products until recalled.”
Amazon did not directly respond to senators’ concerns but said “safety is a priority” and that its products meet all applicable safety standards. The company said it takes a number of steps to ensure AmazonBox Six products are safe and of high quality, such as selecting experienced manufacturers, monitoring customer feedback and testing items to make sure it passes safety and compliance standards both before and after it is available. doing. He also directed CNN on a blog post published in response to the investigation.

“We want customers to shop with confidence and if a customer has any concerns they can contact customer service and we will investigate,” the company said.

Amazon as Six is ​​one of the retailer’s popular private label lines, offering more than 5,000 budget-friendly products ranging from cell phone chargers to kitchen appliances. CNN received at least 1,500 reviews on the Amazon website, covering more than 70 items, citing security risks. In those reviews, many consumers explicitly refer to items as potentially dangerous – using words like “risk” or “fire” or recalling the product. About 30 items with three or more reviews like this remained for sale on Amazon.com.

Some AmazonBasics products became unavailable after CNNA began reporting on it, and at least four product pages were completely removed from the retailer’s site – leaving dead URLs called “dog pages” by employees.

An item in a letter published by CNN and written to Bezos, the patron of surgeons of Amazonas as Six, is said by the concerned father to have continued to sell for almost two years after it was exchanged. He eventually paid about $ 1,500 to cover the damage to his home, but the originator remained available – even though more than 40 customers knew the product was a fire hazard, damaged their home or property, or described other hazards.

CNN Amazon pulled the bounce protector from its site weeks after it began searching for the device, but it didn’t seem to provide any notice to consumers, including news reporters who bought it. And he doesn’t post a message on his site about why he was taken down.

Matt Citro says he sent back his Chard Surge Protector so Amazon could investigate it. He never heard anything back, but got paid to damage his home. (Courtesy Matt Citro)

Democratic senators wrote in a letter that “Amazon should immediately stop selling dangerous and defective Amazonbasics products, recall them, and effectively and immediately notify consumers of potential risks,” the Democratic senators wrote in a letter. “Leaving a dead URL and removing these consumer alerts from view is not enough to delete a product’s retail list page. There is no excuse for buyers of these products not to be immediately aware of consumer safety issues.”

Reviews citing risks, representing a small portion of the overall purchase of products, and other factors, can work in some cases, such as in-house user error or faulty wiring, while electronics sold under the Amazon Basics name should rarely bring risks. When well-built and used properly, electrical engineers told CNN.

The senators wrote that given the “array and frequency” of open complaints by CNN, “these mishaps cannot be linked to user error alone.”

Amazon previously told CNN that there are more than 1 million reviews of thousands of products sold under the Amazon as Six line, and that concern is fully investigated and the company acts accordingly.

But senators responded that “if these products meet safety standards adequately, these products will not blow up and catch fire.”

They asked Amazon for detailed information by October 11, asking the company to answer questions about its security process and what steps it is taking to remove hazardous products from its website and customers’ homes. The letter also said that the company should conduct an internal analysis of the steps it has taken so far to determine why it has failed to protect customers.

All three legislators were already concerned about the dangerous products sold on Amazon, writing last year that the company needs to be more aware of what is being sold in its third-party market.

“We are surprised and upset that Amazon has again failed to stop the sale of dangerous products,” they wrote on Friday. “This time, Amazon has taken full responsibility as the creator of the Basics brand.”

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