Some Retailers Criticize Amazon's Recall of Eclipse Glasses (kgw.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Portland TV station KGW: Amazon issued a widespread recall for solar eclipse glasses early Saturday morning, one week before the August 21 eclipse. That move stunned some sellers who say their glasses are verified safe.... "We recommend that you DO NOT use this product to view the sun or the eclipse," Amazon wrote... "Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively reached out to customers and provided refunds for eclipse glasses that may not comply with industry standards." At least a dozen KGW viewers said they received recall notices from Amazon Saturday... KGW viewer Heather Andersen said she bought two separate sets of solar glasses and learned both were not verified. "I give up," she tweeted...

Manish Panjwani's Los Angeles-based astronomy product business, AgenaAstro, has sold three times its average monthly revenue in the past month. Ninety-five percent is related to the solar eclipse... Panjwani's eclipse glasses come from two NASA-approved sellers: Thousand Oaks Optical in Arizona and Baader Planetarium in Germany. He said he provided documentation to Amazon proving the products' authenticity weeks ago, with no response from Amazon. On Saturday morning, he woke up to 100 emails from customers after Amazon issued a recall for his products. "People have some of the best glasses in the world in their hands right now and they don't believe in that product," he said. "They're out there looking for something inferior." Panjwani said Amazon is temporarily retaining some of his profits because of the recall. He also has almost 5,000 glasses at an Amazon warehouse, which customers can no longer purchase. "That's just sitting there. I cannot sell it and I cannot get it back in time for the eclipse," he said.

Comments

Re:Both ...

[Ecuador]

Thousand Oaks and Baader glasses just got caught up some sort of frantic Amazon response when the retailer realized some people are selling unsafe crap and they don't have the expertise (and don't care enough to source it it seems) to tell the good from the bad.
I tried out of curiosity to order a pack of glasses from an ebay seller in the UK (I'll be going to the US in a couple of days). I got glasses with all the marks (CE, ISO...), through which you could see a CFL bulb and its surrounding glow! If they let that much visible light through, who knows about IR/UV - well I could test, but not worth my time... (Note to readers, through real ND5.0 or denser glasses you would only be able to see something as bright as the filament of an incandescent bulb, nothing else - oh, and the sun of course).
The experiment done, I got a refund and ordered from a proper retailer :) They will complement my Baader Astrosolar filters for the telescope and Thousand Oaks for the binoculars.
It is interesting that Baader had to modify their classic Astrosolar filter that we use in telescopes, in order to get the strict ISO rating, as they allowed a little bit of UV to pass which meant you could take photos at near UV (e.g. Calcium II K-line).