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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.
I'm not sure that's really an improvement...??
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
Amazon is full of counterfeit Chinese goods with no validation of their fitness for purpose. They need to be held accountable to protect US consumers - otherwise they are enabling Chinese manufacturers to bypass US consumer law and safety regulations.
... at trial and all of the appeals, I wonder if they will just pull out of Tennessee entirely?
More likely, they will lobby either the Tennessee legislature to change the law or lobby Congress to make sure state laws like this don't apply to them unless they "have a physical presence" in that state, then they will make sure they don't have such a presence in Tennessee so the law won't apply to them in the future.
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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.
I don't even think they'll stop letting people sell through them. They're in it for the long game, which is completely dominating all retail. This isn't even a bump in the road.
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Insurance companies fight you tooth and nail, often for years. Especially on a big payout like a burnt down house. Every year they delay inflation bites into the payout and you get more desperate to take whatever they'll give.
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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?
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What makes you think they didn't have home owner's insurance? What makes you think that the policy - like so many that most people have - would truly make them whole, financially? Most policies don't. And none of them will replace family heirlooms, in terms of their sentimental value, etc.
That said, Amazon didn't make this batter, and makes the third party vendor responsible for the assertions they make about product suitability and safety. Now, if Amazon KNEW that the vendor was lying, and Amazon didn't give them the heave as they do to thousands of vendors, regularly, that's another matter. But Amazon's not responsible for a third party misrepresenting things, just like they're not responsible for a death when a criminal uses a steak knife from Amazon to kill somebody.
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It was a $1 million dollar house. They've got to sue for $30 million so there will be something left after the attorneys' feeding frenzy.
Have gnu, will travel.
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".
1) They sneak in 3rd party resellers. Lots of other sites allow 3rd party resellers - Newegg, Sears (almost entirely 3rd party), eBay, etc. For the most part, they make it damn obvious you're buying from a 3rd party, not from the site itself. Most of them even let you exclude 3rd party sellers with a single click. Amazon shows the seller name in easily-missed text in the middle of the product listing - very easy to miss. It's easier if you have Prime, as many 3rd parties don't support Prime. So you'll search for a product, click on one listed with Prime shipping, and when you go to put it in your cart you notice it doesn't have Prime shipping because Amazon has silently substituted a 3rd party seller. And I haven't been able to find an option on Amazon to exclude 3rd parties.
2) Contamination of their supply chain. This is based on hearsay, although my personal experience seems to support it. Have you noticed the "Sold by xxx and shipped by Amazon" tags on some products? The way that works is the 3rd party seller sends their inventory to Amazon. Amazon stores it in their warehouse, and when you buy from that seller, Amazon ships it for them. The problem is Amazon seems to co-mingle 3rd party inventory with their own. So if you order a SD card, Amazon's computers grab the nearest available SD card whether it be from Amazon's inventory or a 3rd party's inventory. Your go through the effort of making sure you're buying the SD card with Amazon as the seller to try to get a genuine one, and you still end up getting a fake sent to Amazon by ConterfeitsRUs. I've basically given up buying commonly counterfeited items like flash drives from Amazon. I pay the extra to get them from a local retailer whose supply chain hasn't been contaminated this way.
if you don't like it you need to bring back more manufacture (not the jobs, Americans make too much, it'll mostly be robots). And if you're gonna bring back manufacturing you're either going to have the kind of pollution that gives people cancer or a large and powerful gov't apparatus that monitors and punishes factories for polluting. Neither of which is palatable to Americans.
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i have seen some inferior imported products that are normally found on ebay creep their way in to amazon, what happened to the FTC making sure products are safe? when something like this family's house burning down goes ignored or thrown out of court it sets a bad precident that encourages more faulty products to be sold in the USA, and if you dont agree i bet you will when it is your property thats destroyed because of poor quality products self destructing and taking out your entire home
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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).
Go ahead, define "selling in Tennessee", I dare you. I don't think you can; not with any sincerity. If I order something from a webpage of some Chinese based outfit, and tell them to ship it to Massachusetts, are they "selling it in Massachusetts"? No rational person would think so.
So they should have to invest $20k just to protect themselves from faulty products? I've never seen a home with sprinklers.
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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).
My state has required fire sprinklers in new residential construction since 2011.
we should be able to go after the companies that SELL CHinese products. Walmart, Sears, K-Mart, Target, etc should all be held responsible for selling garbage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
" ... It says Tennessee product liability law holds a seller responsible if the manufacturer cannot be found. ..."
Assuming that's true and complete, Amazon, who handles the cash for the transaction, is on the hook.
Regardless, when you sue someone, you sue everybody who even looked like they were near the situation in question, to get at the deep pockets when the losers are found to be jointly and severally liable. It's up to each of them to convince the courts they should be dropped from the suit. So, regardless of what happens next, Amazon is going to be chased in this case.
Coverage vs payout are very different things. I've used car insurance twice and tried to use home once. The two car companies cost me several grand for two cases where I was rear ended and for the home owners it was made clear to me I wouldn't get close to my deductible.
I know one guy who made out OK within insurance, but for the stupidest reason imaginable. He's a dummy and bought one of those $3000 rent-to-own laptops (e.g. a $600 laptop that they mark up to $3k because if they can't legally charge that much interest). It got stolen and the insurance company called the rent to own place to get the 'value' of the laptop, which of course was $3k. He used the money to buy a decent laptop for real.
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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).
I had to look up what they were talking about in the article. It's not a hoverboard (obviously). It's one of those sideways-scooter balancey-board thingies that kids have these days.
Not sure why they are talking about a hoverboard.
Well amazon does have warehouse their and maybe even there own branded trucks / vans.
Amazon = eBay, only sometimes even worse.
This is what I say to everyone. I don't even bother trying to explain anymore, for most people it's just better to understand Amazon that way. Specially for people who never bought there and still have this image that everything sold at Amazon comes directly from Amazon and are all guaranteed by the company.
Of course, if Amazon wanted to stay away from all these shitty products, they would've created the Marketplace as a separate thing. But it's obvious that they wanted people not to notice the difference. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see the results of this lawsuit. The difference between Amazon and eBay is that Amazon used to be it's own store, and it still sells their own products. eBay always was about providing a venue for people to make business. It's well understood that you are not buying anything directly from eBay.
And Amazon also does a shit job of letting costumers know about the reputation and quality of products sold by their shitty selected vendors. Selected as in who pays a bigger part of their scam, I imagine.
Here's the funny thing: in the past 4 years or so that I've been shopping on eBay, I've never had a single problem with the products, including external batteries, lots of electronics with LiPo batteries in them, and whatnot. And just in case it happens, I also got a fireproof pouch from eBay to keep stuff in it. xD
Amazon, on the other hand, I had problems with fake SD cards, they now have implemented some weird system of pre-charging import taxes that are often waaay above the actual value. Sometimes they return a small percentage of it (like 3 months after the fact), often times they simply don't. And most of the products still cannot be sent to my country anyways, so there's that.
The only advantage Amazon offers to people living in my country is that their products arrive generally faster than stuff bought from chinese stores on eBay... but that's only because they use companies like Fedex, UPS, DHL and the like that are all basically running a scam here in Brazil. They will rip you off here when it comes to charging tax, extra costs, and storage fees you never asked for. They basically hold your products hostage. On average, I'll pay 1.5x to 2x the tax costs, which usually sums up to 110%+ the product value plus shipping, when a product comes from Amazon. It arrives in a week or so. From eBay, it comes via regular mail, so I pay whatever the government actually charges, which ranges from 60% to 100%. It can take anywhere from a month to 6 months because it depends on the goodwill of governmental agencies, but it gets here, and there's no extra bullshit charges.
And this is why I haven't been buying anything from Amazon. The last thing they had going for them was reliability for countries like mine.
Of course, Amazon couldn't care less about the little money coming from countries like Brazil... it's cheap change for them and they have demonstrated it well enough with their horrible policies regarding overseas shipping. But yeah, the way Amazon incorporated marketplace into their main store and started selling all these products that seem to have an even worse quality control than eBay, it's quite telling.
They are not hoverboards they do not hover what so ever that ride on wheels firmly planted on the ground. Call them motorized skateboards, that more closer to what they actually are.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Drywall often has burn times of an hour or more which should delay spread (much better than say tiling your basement. I think the bigger issue than timber framing is actually insulation, both fibrelass and spray foam burn very fast.
A 115 comments and no one has yet mentioned that the device plugged into the AC outlet and it did not have a UL listing.
The problem here is that UL listings (or equivalent) are voluntary and there is no legal requirement for a product to carry one. But there is a common sense requirement. Where were the parents when it came to looking at the product for safety approvals? It was free to ship it back to Amazon if they didn't like what they saw.
And I really believe this "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" So they were sophisticated enough to have researched that Samsung Lion batteries were better, but they were not sophisticated enough to notice the lack of a UL listing.
And who was being counterfeited?
My neighbor had a sprinkler system installed while they had a second story bedroom/bathroom added to their $400k house. Less than a year later it malfunctioned and went off, flooding every room and destroying all their possessions.
I've never heard of a residential "deluge" style system (the kind where one sprinkler head going off triggers every sprinkler in the system), they are typically only used in commercial construction, and even then only in special circumstances (i.e. if a hallway sprinkler goes off, all of the hallway sprinklers trigger, but if a janitorial closet sprinkler goes off, that doesn't set off every sprinkler in the building).
But even if all heads in the system went off, unless they were away from home for an extended period, it's unlikely that a sprinkler discharge destroyed *all* of their possessions -- anything in a cabinet would have been mostly spared, as would have things that aren't destroyed by water (clothes, dishes, etc), durable appliances (bathroom fixtures, laundry, kitchen appliances), and typically the home structure itself is salvageable if cleanup and drying starts right away. In contrast, a fire literally does destroy everything in a very short period of time -- nothing was salvageable from my brother's house, pretty much the entire contents of the house ended up in the basement in a pile as the floors and walls burnt through.
If they were away from home for an extended period, then I could see water damage being much worse, but it doesn't take a sprinkler system to cause that kind of damage, a washing machine host failure, refrigerator icemaker failure, or just an old fashioned plumbing leak can cause the same problem.
I live in a residential complex with over 100 separate dwellings, all have sprinklers, there have been 2 accidental discharges in the history of the complex - both were caused by physical damage to a sprinkler head (one was caused by a contractor accidentally hitting it during a remodel, one was from children hitting it with a toy thrown at the ceiling). 7 sprinkler heads have been replaced over the past 20 years due to leaks (4 of them within a year of construction). The HOA doesn't track legitimate sprinkler activations, there's only one recent fire that I'm aware of - someone had a large grease fire in the kitchen (they knocked over a pan of cooking oil and it caught fire on the stove and surrounding cabinetry). They ran outside to call 911 and by the time the fire department had arrived, the kitchen sprinklers had already activated and stopped the fire. The sprinkler activation also triggered local fire alarms to warn residents and called the fire department. The fire department had to beak up the cabinets involved in the fire to look for and hidden fires, but didn't need to use their own water, so damage was limited to the kitchen (with some water damage to the surrounding floor). In contrast, a few years back a nearby apartment building (without sprinklers) had a similar kitchen fire - 2 apartments were destroyed, 17 units had extensive smoke damage and were uninhabitable for several weeks, and 4 other units had water damage.
I imagine the bulk of what they are suing for is emotional distress.
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Sadly, all products using the name "Hoverboard" are counterfeit at this point in time.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Fibreglass melts rather than burns, but it still leaves a big open cavity for fire to spread.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
and how is that fire alarm going to stop a fire that is to big to put out on your own?
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Sounds like they should sue the manufacturer of the smoke alarm.
Seems pretty obvious to me that selling something on the internet means you're selling it everywhere that has an internet connection and permission to buy from you.
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"The lawsuit seeks $30 million in damages and asks a jury to weigh additional financial penalties against the retailer. Nashville Fire Department officials said a hoverboard caught fire on Jan. 9, destroying a 4,000-square-foot $1 million home on Radcliff Drive, near Edwin Warner Park."
... a $900,000 1,100sq.ft. townhouse burned down with all our crap in it, we'd live in a hotel or rent something while it was rebuilt, make a bunch of trips to Ikea and other places and use this as the excuse we've wanted for a while to remodel the kitchen.
Hmm... ok... from the pictures... I'm curious what justified a house with such a miserable kitchen to be worth a million bucks, but let's assume that a 4000ft.sq. house is worth something. It's Tennessee so the people there are part of the weird bible belt. There's probably a window with an impression of Jesus on it that got destroyed in the fire or something like that.
I'll assume that the $1,000,000 home already has fire insurance on it. I'll also assume that if you can afford to live in that house, then you've paid the deductible and the house as well as the sparkly Chinese crap like hoverboards filling the garage and everything else was paid for. This is why you have fire insurance to begin with. Even if Amazon pays the $30 million, the rest of the stuff is already covered by insurance either way. I'm sure if you have an insured million dollar home, you also have health insurance with a low deductible that covered medical and psychiatric treatment. Altogether, the cost of this to the family is likely in the ballpark of $20-$30,000 spread over a period of 5 years. That's peanuts.
So, now they want to sue Amazon for $30 million because of a fire they caused by buying a plastic piece of crap meant to move chubby children around those few times their chubby little asses may actually otherwise be used to peddle a bicycle or make scissor actions with their legs while standing causing them to move towards their destination.
"In addition to costly losses of all of the family's possessions, the lawsuit says the family should be compensated for physical injuries and emotional distress."
Their physical injuries are covered.
Emotional distress.... holy what the fucking fuck. Emotional distress. If my house
If you're the kind of person that can actually afford to live in a house that costs $1,000,000 you're someone who should know how to adapt and see challenges not problems... and your family should be too.
So... what in the name of hell justifies paying $30,000,000 for this? Did they try to bring a case against the company who sold it and when they couldn't find that company, they immediately said "JACKPOT!!!!". There are probably 10,000 lawyers all over America screaming "I'll take the case... If it takes 10 years and 12 appeals, I'll take the case... 50%!!!!"
So you are assuming that Amazon KNEW the product was defective and sold it anyway. What evidence do you have of this? Be specific.
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It may be over the top but the extremes go the other way too. I have 3 fire extinguishers and a fire blanket in my house. They are positioned strategically to fight the most likely sources of fire (in the kitchen, entry to kitchen near my workshop, and at the front entry to the house) yet most people can't be bothered keeping the batteries in their smoke detector charged.
A little bit goes a long way.
Whatever happened to taking personal responsibility for the consequences of your own stupid choices? People buy the cheapest junk they can find so they can save a few bucks. Then they act surprised when they find it's made from cheap parts and shitty overseas workmanship. I bet the same people complain when the government intervenes by banning these shitty products for peoples own safety.
Is it the factories fault for undercutting their competition to manufacture the cheapest product? Is it the workers faults for lack of skill, or not caring because they are overworked and underpaid? Is it the merchants fault for selling the cheapest product people are actually willing to buy? Is it Amazons fault for letting merchants sell low quality products? Or is it the consumers fault for buying the cheapest crap possible? They are all at fault, but the manufacturer wouldn't make, the merchants wouldn't trade, and Amazon wouldn't sell the product if consumers didn't ultimately buy it.
Or just sue the company with the most money.
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That said, Amazon didn't make this batter, and makes the third party vendor responsible for the assertions they make about product suitability and safety. Now, if Amazon KNEW that the vendor was lying, and Amazon didn't give them the heave as they do to thousands of vendors, regularly, that's another matter. But Amazon's not responsible for a third party misrepresenting things, just like they're not responsible for a death when a criminal uses a steak knife from Amazon to kill somebody.
Not sure how it works in the USA, but in the EU liability follows the supply chain. If I buy something from Amazon then Amazon is liable to me, the company that supplied it to Amazon is liable to them, and so on. Even if it's a 'marketplace seller', Amazon took the money, Amazon is responsible. If I sued Amazon, they'd probably settle and then immediately turn around and sue the supplier for the settlement amount plus their costs. If Amazon were sensible, then they'd require that their sellers have liability insurance so that they can't just go out of business and leave Amazon in trouble, but these rules exist specifically to protect consumers against fly-by-night wholesalers that produce something dangerous and then go out of business after paying their execs large salaries when the returns start coming in. The consumer if protected in the other case because if the direct seller goes out of business then the liability reverts up the supply chain.
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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.
The smoldering remains of their million-dollar home seem to indicate otherwise...
I'm pretty sure there is a public service for that...