Family Sues Amazon After Counterfeit Hoverboard Catches Fire, Destroys Home (wtsp.com)

Three weeks after unboxing a hoverboard, it burst into flames. But is Amazon partly to blame? tripleevenfall quotes The Tennessean: A Nashville family whose $1 million home was destroyed earlier this year in a fire caused by a hoverboard toy is suing Amazon saying the retail giant knowingly sold a dangerous product... The lawsuit says the seller of the hoverboard listed online, "W-Deals," is a sham organization that is registered to an apartment in New York City that has not responded to requests from lawyers in the case. It alleges the family was sold a counterfeit product from China instead of a brand with a Samsung lithium ion battery they believed they were buying from Amazon . It says Tennessee product liability law holds a seller responsible if the manufacturer cannot be found.

Comments

Except

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon wasn't the seller. Their opening of their platform to 3rd parties is what almost made me stop using them. If I want to buy from Joe Schmoe there is ebay. Amazon should not allow 3rd party sellers, plain and simple

Re:Except

[93 Escort Wagon]

Since Amazon opened their platform to third parties, Amazon is almost certainly providing "material assistance" (or whatever the proper legal phrase is) to those sellers. Without Amazon, it is far less likely buyers would've had access to that seller.

Re:Except

[guruevi]

Depends on who is on the bill of sale. If I see "Amazon.com" on my credit card statement, Amazon sold it to me. In Craigslist case, CL is not selling anything through their site, they're just listing. E-Bay is a bidding site that also makes it clear who you are actually purchasing from but depending on how they handle the sales, E-Bay COULD be on the hook. Amazon will handle all sales for sellers including warehousing and shipping, Amazon is a store just as much as Wal-Mart is.

Re:Except

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem is that you may attempt to buy the item "Sold by Amazon" and wind up with a 3rd party seller's item anyway. To save warehouse space, Amazon has started commingling their own direct fulfillment items in the same bins as 3rd party sellers' products. When you place an order, the order picker (or a robot) just grabs one from the bin and ships it to you. Whether you get a legitimate item sourced directly by Amazon, or some knockoff piece of junk supplied by a 3rd party, is luck of the draw.

I think this has been going on in one form or another for some time. It seems that if Amazon is out of an item, and there's another brand/third party item they think is equivalent, they'll ship you one of those instead. Nicely, if the other item is half the price, they don't adjust your bill. Wouldn't want to confuse you. ;-)

It's sad how far we seem to have regressed when it comes to consumer protection. Any more, I assume the really large retailers (Amazon, big box home centers, etc) are cheating me. If I'm buying something and I don't mind cheap and cheesy (it happens), I'll buy from them for the convenience and sometimes lower price. Otherwise, I'll try to find a local business to buy from, or a smaller online retailer who seems large enough to be trustworthy but not so large they can afford to screw their customers.

I'm a cynical bastard by nature, but I was surprised at how much higher quality the things I buy often turn out to be, often even within the same brand (not sure what's behind that, but it's happened several times).

Caveat emptor indeed.

Re:Except

[nine-times]

Is eBay also supposed to vet 3rd parties? What about Craigslist?

Those services make no pretense of being the seller. In some cases, Amazon redirects you to another site, or makes it clear that Amazon themselves don't have the product and offer you a list of 3rd party sellers' Amazon storefront. In those cases, you can argue that Amazon has reduced responsibility. Sometimes the page lists a 3rd party as being the seller, but if you don't pay attention to the small print, you would think you were just buying from Amazon. At other times it says that the order is being fulfilled by Amazon, though it's not clear whether they're buying products directly from the manufacturer or there's some 3rd party in the supply chain.

Either way, if I can't have confidence that the products I'm buying on Amazon are genuine, I'm going to buy a lot fewer things on Amazon. I would suspect that I'm not alone.

Re:Except

[harperska]

It depends on if Amazon was acting as the Merchant of Record or the Seller of Record. The MoR is a 3rd party entity who is financially liable for the transaction, allowing the original retailer to sell in multiple regions without having to worry about tax and currency issues. The MoR assumes the financial risk for chargebacks etc., but not liability for the product itself.

The Seller of Record is a 3rd party that actually owns the complete transaction. In effect, the original retailer sells the product to the SoR, who then resells it to the buyer. The SoR therefore takes complete legal ownership and liability of the whole transaction.

Re:Except

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention they are allowing tons and tons of fakes and shoddy merchandise to be sold with pretty much ZERO vetting. I have seen in just my shopping there fake flash cards and sticks, shoddily rebuilt laptop batteries being sold as new product, fake mikes/guitars/amps, products that could easily not just rip someone off but seriously maim or kill. You look and there are dozens of complaints and...Amazon don't do shit apparently.

So I'm sorry fanboys but I like Amazon, have bought thousands of dollars in gear from Amazon (NEVER from their third parties) and the computer I'm typing this on was 100% built from parts I got from them but since they have allowed third parties? They have become a real minefield with tons of shoddy shit that I doubt even eBay would allow. I can easily see how someone who didn't know that you can't trust the fact that you are on a site that clearly says "Amazon" does NOT mean you are actually buying from Amazon could get a seriously dangerous product thinking they were buying the real deal. Hell you can't even go by price because tons of them are trying to pass the fakes off as real and thus charge real prices for them!

So this is 100% Amazon's fault. They opened the floodgates to the scammers, even allow the scammers to use their warehouses and distribution, and get a cut of every fake and shoddy product sold, so I don't see how they can argue they are not responsible when they are the ones that allowed the scammers to flourish and aided them in every step along the way.

Sue for what exactly?

[JoeyRox]

They likely have home insurance and will be reimbursed. If anyone has a right to sue Amazon it will be the insurance company, to reclaim the money they paid out to the homeowners.

Re:If Amazon loses...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hope they drop out of the 3rd party seller program. I've made it a point to not buy from 3rd party sellers after problems dealing with them in the past.

China

[rossz]

China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.

Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?

Re:China

[Rick Zeman]

China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.

Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?

Because they've bought off a whole hell of a lot of people, but using cheap Chinese shit is good for the US company's short-term bottom line...which is all today's executives look at because that's what their bonuses and stock options are tied to.

Re:China

[bloodhawk]

China has a long history of selling dangerous products. From poisonous pet food to exploding electronics. When confronted, the Chinese government's response is "what a shame, we'll do something". The "something" is to rename the company and do it all over again.

Why the fuck does China have most favored nation trade status?

That is hardly an exclusive problem to china, china just happens to make the vast majority of products nowadays. You don't have to look far to find cars that catch fire or mass tire recalls on faulty products, US contaminated beef or chicken etc etc. They do seem particularly lax on punishment etc but for the scale of it, it doesn't seem any worse than what most companies do the world over where cost and profit are king.

Re:China

[ADRA]

You don't seem to complain about all the other products you use daily which were all/mostly manufactured in part in China. Obviously there's shoddy shit sold by all sorts of people, but you typically won't buy it unless you have confidence that said shit legitimate enough to assuage your risks. IPhones are made in China. But they're sold by Apple. People like and trust Apple, so Apple has the incentive to make damn sure that their products are high enough quality to match their perception.

The product was sold through Amazon. If you ask the vast majority of Amazon users, they'll say when you buy from Amazon.com, you're buying Amazon. It is only in Amazon's best interest to tighten up and compensate buyers for potential losses due to shoddy products sold through their service. Otherwise, it'll end up much like Ebay has: the shit hole of fraud and bogus products on the internet. I can't name a single friend who still uses EBay after many years of use. Too much BS.

Seller versus platform

[SilentChasm]

I'm not sure how this:

The lawsuit says the seller of the hoverboard listed online, "W-Deals," is a sham organization that is registered to an apartment in New York City that has not responded to requests from lawyers in the case.

combines with this:

It says Tennessee product liability law holds a seller responsible if the manufacturer cannot be found.

to make liability for Amazon. They still wouldn't be the seller, just because the original seller can't be found. It sounds like they should still be trying to go after "W-Deals".

Re:No sprinklers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been in many million dollar homes, but I don't think I've ever seen a house with a sprinkler system (not counting for the lawn).

Re:No sprinklers?

[hawguy]

So they should have to invest $20k just to protect themselves from faulty products? I've never seen a home with sprinklers.

Not just faulty consumer products, but cooking fires (most common cause of home fires), faulty heating equipment (tied with cooking fires for fire related fatalities), electrical and lighting faults, intentionally set fires, and smoking related fires. If you're buying a million dollar 4,000 square foot house, why wouldn't you make a safety improvement that's shown to save lives (and can safe the structure itself, but that's a lesser concern). If you care about your family's safety, go above and beyond fire codes. I bet the granite countertops in the kitchen in that house cost more than it would have cost to put in sprinklers.

I've seen many homes with fire sprinklers, my state requires them in new construction and I've known people that retrofitted them (usually with a new home purchase in combination with electrical upgrades since the sprinkler system itself is only about half the cost of the retrofit, the other half is drywall repairs).

This family didn't even have linked smoke detectors throughout the house, which led to a delay in evacuation:

Both children initially confused the sounds of the blaze for someone breaking into the home. They thought they heard arguing, according to their parents, but were confused by the sounds of their pets and the vocal warnings of the downstairs fire alarms.

In my home every smoke detector is linked (through hardwire and/or RF links) and every one alerts at the same time -- everyone in the family knows that if they hear them go off to leave the house *immediately*. 2nd floor bedrooms both have escape ladders. Oh, and the house has a sprinkler system, which was one of the things I looked for when buying. And yes, we do yearly fire drills.

It may seem like over the top paranoia, but my brother lost his house to a fire caused by a furnace fault, he and his family all got out (he and his wife had to go out the 2nd floor window, fortunately the kids rooms were on the first floor and they escaped through a window), but the speed with which it went up made me realize that it's true what they say about fires - every second counts. By the time the fire department got there (about 7 minutes after they were called), the home was fully engulfed and was a total loss. Spending time debating whether or not that sound you hear is really the smoke detector can make a significant difference in getting out safely. Fire is the 3rd leading cause of death in the home (after falls and poisoning).