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eBay and Amazon Delist Faulty Carbon Monoxide Alarms (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
Dozens of potentially deadly carbon monoxide alarms have been removed from sale by Amazon and eBay after a Which? investigation found some of them would not have protected their buyers. The consumer group tested four alarms that were on sale on both sites -- including an Amazon bestseller -- and found that they consistently failed to sound when the gas was present.... It said one of the alarms -- the Topolek GEHS007AW CO alarm (£14.99) -- was listed as a bestseller on Amazon. It failed to detect the gas in more than 80% of tests. Three other unbranded alarms that were made in China and sold through sellers on Amazon and eBay for under £10 also repeatedly failed to sound when there was carbon monoxide present... Which? said all four claimed to meet the British safety standard for detecting carbon monoxide.
Both Amazon and eBay have now removed the alarms -- as well as "another 50 lookalike alarms."
Both Amazon and eBay have now removed the alarms -- as well as "another 50 lookalike alarms."
Put the alarm in a sealed box and add an item that is glowing/smoking (e.g. a cigarette will do). Within a minute or two, the alarm should sound.
That is how I tested my alarms before mounting them.
Hence when the whole device costs in that range, you can be sure an ElCheapo $1 sensor was used. (Prices from Ebay, so YMMV.) Also, gas-flow is non-trivial, you cannot just put the sensor into a case, put some holes in that case and hope for the best. And actual testing the device is not so cheap or easy too. I expect these fails were "blind designs" were the "engineer" just read the datasheet and build the device without ever doing any real and costly testing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ebay normally doesn't give a rats fuck about fake crap.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Who the fuck is buying no-name Chinese junk to safeguard their lives, and then surprised when it doesn't work? Fake specifications, lies, deception, and shoddy construction are the hallmarks of Chinese manufacturing. Who DOESN'T know this?
You think that's bad... you can get water heaters on eBay that plug into the wall and pass electric current directly through the water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EViyccc2t9w
Or will their most popular product which they themselves promoted in the results, collected money for and shipped to consumers defective result in absolutely no negative effect on them and thus incentivise them to continue the practice?
I did not even consider buying a non-name brand CO detector. Who are these people that care enough about their lives to buy CO detectors, but so little that they buy one from someone with no accountability?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some states like California require CO detectors when a house is sold (if it has natural gas or an attached garage). I can see sellers using the cheapest product that meets the legal requirement and passes the home inspection.
https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-are-californias-requirements-for-carbon-monoxide-detectors/
Especially love CO alarms with numeric readouts showing CO levels. They always show 0 even when the alarm itself detects significant quantities of CO.
Most amazing aspect to me is people have gone to the hospital for persistent CO poisoning while their meters were working AS INTENDED.
Root cause of this behavior is an intense desire to squelch "false" alarms at the cost of leaving the consumer in the dark as to actual CO problems that may exist.
Even outright hazardous levels will typically take several minutes to a half hour to sound the alarm when physically detected all that time.
This was not intended as an excuse for outright defective hardware yet personally I consider all CO "alarms" defective as designed and generally government mandated. If you have CO issues or concerns get yourself a "meter". Anything that is an "alarm" or a "detector" is defective by law in my view.
Better still avoid being a total dipshit and 90% efficient furnaces with _secondary_ heat exchangers. The failure modes of these things are insane.
It's amazing to see eBay taking action against crap it knows doesn't work even though they seem to have no such compunction about proliferation of 100% guaranteed scam items like 1TB USB sticks for $20-$100.
The newer generation is growing up in a world where Amazon and Ebay rules and as such brand names don't mean shit to them. Most don't yet understand the risks of buying cheap unproven unnamed products when safety is involved.
People are too trusting or ignorant these days, just look at the solar eclipse sunglasses fiasco. Buyer beware used to be taught by parents, it seems now-a-days it has to be learned even by the parents.
/lawn
Landlords...
In the UK landlords have to provide smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
Some states like California require CO detectors when a house is sold (if it has natural gas or an attached garage). I can see sellers using the cheapest product that meets the legal requirement and passes the home inspection.
I for one would be terrified that some cheap piece of garbage like that would fail, and then at best I would have to endure being dragged into court to testify about it. Safety devices are no place to skimp. Everywhere else, maybe. (The average home in America has been skimped on at every level...)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know any namebrand CO detectors because I buy them once every decade. That is my beef with Amazon, in the areas where people need guidance because they don't recognize any of the brands due to an infrequent purchase, Amazon seems to steer you to these garbage products.
So UK must have some low safety standards to which the chinese are simply availing themselves.
The Germans did too but then the Hun have a thing for that sort of act.
I don't know any namebrand CO detectors because I buy them once every decade.
I don't know any CO detectors, they are boring to talk to. But I am familiar with the names of some companies which make CO detectors, because they also make smoke alarms and fire extinguishers and have been doing so for decades.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I had to throw away a name-brand CO/smoke detector. It went off when there was not CO or smoke. Reviews on Amazon show that this behaviour is common for this model. It was a newer model, with a built-in battery: the only way to stop it sounding its alarm is destructive.
It's possible that the alarm was merely over-sensitive: there is probably some CO in the air in my house, but no other sensor has ever alarmed, before or after, but still, this suggests bad design from a brand-name manufacturer.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My city (in CA) requires you to bring the CO and smoke detectors up to current code if you request any permit. That means, no removable battery types, a smoke detector in every bedroom, and a CO detector in any hallway that leads to bedrooms.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Some states like California require CO detectors when a house is sold (if it has natural gas or an attached garage). I can see sellers using the cheapest product that meets the legal requirement and passes the home inspection.
https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-are-californias-requirements-for-carbon-monoxide-detectors/
The sellers of my house did exactly that -- each level of the house has one of these knockoff detectors and noted by the inspector ("CO detectors installed, tested, and compliant with code" - where I'm sure "tested" meant "I pressed the button and it beeped")
This was nearly a year ago before I knew about this recall, but as soon as I saw the unbranded detectors, I replaced them all with name-brand detectors... (and replaced the 15 year old smoke alarms too).
Given that these CO detectors looked brand new, apparently they were living without any CO detectors at all (with gas heat, hot water and cooking), and an attached garage.
I don't know any namebrand CO detectors because I buy them once every decade. That is my beef with Amazon, in the areas where people need guidance because they don't recognize any of the brands due to an infrequent purchase, Amazon seems to steer you to these garbage products.
But you do know name-brand stores, right? Buy from Home Depot, Walmart, etc.
Or take 10 seconds and research something that you're relying on to save your life. Never trust Amazon reviews for life-safety equipment.
Here's a freebie: the top rated CO detector by Consumer Reports is the First Alert CO615.
But don't buy it from Amazon, they are well known to have counterfeit items in their inventory, purchase from a legitimate local store.
I had to throw away a name-brand CO/smoke detector. It went off when there was not CO or smoke. Reviews on Amazon show that this behaviour is common for this model. It was a newer model, with a built-in battery: the only way to stop it sounding its alarm is destructive.
It's possible that the alarm was merely over-sensitive: there is probably some CO in the air in my house, but no other sensor has ever alarmed, before or after, but still, this suggests bad design from a brand-name manufacturer.
While annoying, when it comes to fire/smoke alarms, I'd rather have a false positive than a false negative.
Yeah, it's a pretty serious problem. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm
"During 1999–2010, a total of 5,149 deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning occurred in the United States, an average of 430 deaths per year."
I mean, a whole 430 deaths in a year, why that's 10 times more likely than being killed by lightning! We better quickly make detectors mandatory in every home!
If you bought your faulty CO detected from a US company, you can take them to court. If it's bad enough a class action suit would be raised.
If you bought it from China, then you can throw it in the garbage and chalk it up to caveat emptor.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I had a Kiddi fire alarm fail (kept beeping due to the battery) that was meant to last 10 years. I phoned them up and then sent out a replacement that arrived within a few days. There only request was that I send the old one back (free postage) so that they could analyse why it failed.
I would always buy from a company that I trust.
Who are these people that care enough about their lives to buy CO detectors
The same poor people who are likely to have CO leaks. That's a vicious cycle in an of itself.
Oh and landlords. Bastards that they are.
Easy, people who are told they need to install a hundred of them, usually landlords or building owners who are renovating and need to bring it up to current code.
When you're dealing with that many of them, there's a real savings to be had buying a $5 alarm versus a $50 one. This is especially so if the building is older and thus never actually had CO detectors at all.
Likewise, the devices do expire, so you do have to replace them periodically (10 years or so) and again, if you're a building owner, you'll again shop for the cheapest.
Another group might be builders - if you're building a subdivision of 50 houses, each of which may have 2-3 detectors, you're going to order them in bulk as well. Quality builders will hire a proper contractor to wire them up who will likely use quality name brand detectors (yes, you want to network the detectors so if it goes off on one floor, it will trigger ALL the detectors). But cheap contractors might just buy a bulk load of them and self-install them.