FAA Slaps Amazon with $350k Penalty for Shipping Violation | Hacker News Reader

FAA Slaps Amazon with $350k Penalty for Shipping Violation

wsj.com

"The liquid leaked from a one-gallon container of “Amazing Liquid Fire,” a drain cleaner, during a flight from Louisville, Ky. to Boulder, Colo. ... The FAA alleged that the shipment was not properly packaged, was not accompanied by a proper declaration stating the hazardous nature of its contents." 9 employees injured.

"Amazing Liquid Fire" is concentrated sulfuric acid. Amazon review: "It eats through everything except plastic and porcelain. When you use this you have to be careful when you pour it down the drain it ate through the metal ring around the drain hole..... Unfortunately it did not unclog my drains, guess I have to call a plumber."

MSDS info: Very hazardous in case of skin contact (corrosive, irritant, permeator), of eye contact (irritant, corrosive), of ingestion, of inhalation. Liquid or spray mist may produce tissue damage particularly on mucous membranes of eyes, mouth and respiratory tract. Skin contact may produce burns. Inhalation of the spray mist may produce severe irritation of respiratory tract, characterized by coughing, choking, or shortness of breath. Severe over-exposure can result in death. Inflammation of the eye is characterized by redness, watering, and itching....

Also, sulfuric acid in contact with a long list of other chemicals is explosive.

"Amazing Liquid Fire" ships in a 1 gallon plastic jug. You can't even ship that via UPS Ground. Above 500ml, you have to use hazardous material freight.

Come on, Amazon, you have databases. You should know which products are hazardous. If the vendor can't give you an MSDS for it, maybe you shouldn't be shipping it.

Oh, and Amazon's recommendation engine shows "Frequently bought together - Amazing Liquid Fire and Red Hot Devil Lye." If you mix those two, you are going to have a really bad day.

And everyone who purchased those two items together also get their very own personalized FBI terrorist watch list.

Nah, regional drug enforcement. The internet reveals that they are both ingredients used for cooking meth.

And now I wonder how much attention Googling "meth recipe" is worth. This page discusses it from a law enforcement perspective (or so):

http://www.aristatek.com/newsletter/0511November/TechSpeak.a...

The government pipes a key ingredient for making meth directly into my home: water.

The real casualty of the meth war was Sudafed. It is the only thing that helps my nasal congestion, and I feel like a hardened criminal every time I beg the pharmacist for my 10 day supply. Randall Munroe was right in wishing he had a way to turn meth into cold medicine.

In my experience the act of purchasing sudafed has simplified over the last few years and all I have to do anymore is show ID (as opposed to the pharmacist filling out a big log book and counter signing).

That aside, Flonase is my drug of choice for that stuff now and in a world without one or the other I know which I'll choose.

It's more than just showing an ID. [See here](http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/u...) item 17.

I haven't had to fill out a log book in years and years. Multiple pharmacies, multiple states.

That's one thing I hated about Australia/NZ. Real Pseudoephedrine requires a prescription. I was surprised in Singapore when I could buy it with just showing my ID like in the US.

Perhaps those products are marketed primarily to meth labs. As drain cleaners, neither pure sulfuric acid nor pure sodium hydroxide is a good choice. There are more effective products that are less hazardous to both humans and plumbing.[1]

[1] http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/news_articles...

Sodium hydroxide is a lot cheaper than the various premixed stuff. And you can also make soap with it.

> Perhaps those products are marketed primarily to meth labs. As drain cleaners, neither pure sulfuric acid nor pure sodium hydroxide is a good choice.

Pure sodium hydroxide is also used in soap-making, which is both fun and legal. I really hope it doesn't become any more difficult than it is to get ahold of it.

I don't think people should do meth, but I do wonder if the total social costs of making it illegal (crime, meth labs near and in residences, incarceration &c.) outweigh the costs of allowing it to be legal.

Is the stuff sold as drain cleaner not suitable for making soap?

My local big box hardware store sells 100% lye drain cleaner for $4 a pound (it's 100% sodium hydroxide as crystals or powder). I haven't tried buying any, but I doubt a couple pounds would be an issue.

> Is the stuff sold as drain cleaner not suitable for making soap?

The 100% lye stuff is, but as the former poster indicated it isn't really the most effective drain cleaner — and there have been moves to make it illegal, because of its use in drug production.

> I haven't tried buying any, but I doubt a couple pounds would be an issue.

I have to give my phone number whenever I buy it. Galling: I'm a free citizen of a free republic, and should be able to purchase chemicals without being tracked.

Wouldn't you just get a salt and water?

And an energetic exothermic reaction.

What he said, a very energetic exothermic reaction, which if something was trying to contain it, would probably result in rapid unplanned disassembly (RUD).

>rapid unplanned disassembly (RUD)

lol. Awesome acronym for an unpleasant event.

ah, right.

Looking at the Amazon listings it looks like it is sold by an Amazon vendor. That suggests an interesting weakness where Amazon doesn't enforce shipping rules on its third party sellers. Also per the comments the "product" is $10 at the hardware store and this person is selling it for $40 at Amazon so that is an interesting business.

And like you I was amazed that it was sold with lye. Kind of makes me wonder if this stuff was riding in the cargo hold of some jet I was flying across country. It could easily cause serious problems.

> this person is selling it for $40 at Amazon so that is an interesting business.

Shipping usually heavy liquids across US with special hazardous markings and proper handle requires extra payments. If that's interesting business to you then okay...

> It could easily cause serious problems.

It couldn't because FAA strictly forbids mixing of cargo with the one attached to a flying PAX.

> Shipping usually heavy liquids across US with special hazardous markings and proper handle requires extra payments.

Isn't the whole point of this that they didn't do that?

I think joering2 is answering the business question, not the specifics of this case.

I thought the entire issue here is that this cargo was shipped without those precise markings so the nine injured didn't know it required special handling, so that $30 difference did not go to such preparations.

Amazon is loaded with questionable shit, with little enforcement from what a buyer's standpoint. Besides the counterfeit stuff, there are reviews of items which are clearly dangerous with accompanied photos. The roll over to paid listings is only going to make it worse as the sellers find more loopholes so they can earn even more to cover their cost-of-sale.

Generally a big fan of Amazon but in the past two years I've increasingly spent more times on other ecommerce sites who police their inventory. Hell, try finding something as basic as Egyptian cotton sheets on Amazon now.

Amazon certianly has the power to better enforce what people are selling on their platform and they choose not to. I don't know if it's their business model or they are just dysfunctional. There's been a whole bunch of articles over the past few years about Amazon listing for illegal products. Even if you buy sold and shipped by Amazon you aren't guaranteed to not get a counterfeit because third party sellers are allowed to comingle their products with all other sellers (including Amazon's)

>Also per the comments the "product" is $10 at the hardware store and this person is selling it for $40 at Amazon so that is an interesting business.

This is pretty common. Amazon buyers who have prime almost never comparison shop. That allows rare/niche items to go for significantly more than anywhere else.

> Unfortunately it did not unclog my drains, guess I have to call a plumber

wth is in this guy's drains?!

I guess plastic and/or porcelain! Perhaps he's been abusing his garbage disposal? I suppose that won't be a problem anymore...

9 Employees injured, who covers their health costs? Low fine for 9 injuries.

Often the fine just makes it very easy to establish guilt, and victims are left to fend for themselves in the court system. It might not even be possible for the FAA to pass money from fines along to the victims.

So next time you want to whine about FAA safety regs, remember they ended up written because of things like this.

But opression! /s

But safety for all! /s

It could be handled as a civil suit. The nine employees would likely get a lot more than $350k.

I would hope they do sue and win a civil suit. Violating FAA regulations by transporting hazardous chemicals improperly, resulting in bodily harm. Sounds like a pretty good case.

The fines should really be higher. Amazon should get hit hard enough to actually care about it.

Can Amazon turn around and claim that this was third party seller's responsibility as that seller shipped the product?

Not if they're knowingly holding and shipping inventory of hazardous materials, which is the point of "Fulfilled by Amazon." I mean, how do they sell something without knowing what it is? If they're selling chemicals without a single person checking to make sure that they're properly handled then that's even worse.

Obviously, the person who sent them the sulfuric acid is at fault to, but there were several failures here.

And taxpayers would end up spending as much (or more) due to the costs of the litigation.

I don't want to live in a country where unsafely shipping materials in a shared plane is legal and handled by civil suits. Putting others in extreme danger should always be illegal when it's as black-and-white as this.

>I don't want to live in a country where unsafely shipping materials in a shared plane is legal and handled by civil suits. Putting others in extreme danger should always be illegal when it's as black-and-white as this.

We could live in a country where it's illegal to possess materials which may be unsafely transported. We can never be too safe, you know.

> We could live in a country where it's illegal to possess materials which may be unsafely transported

You seem to be suggesting that regulating the transport of dangerous materials is a slippery slope.

That's like arguing that speed limits are a slippery slope toward a ban on driving. Maybe that makes sense in some absolutist libertarian nightmare, but in the real world we have to weigh the real danger of regulation against the real danger of deregulation.

In this case, it's not much trouble to package sulfuric acid in a safe container. It is, however, a lot of trouble to be injured or killed by sulfuric acid.

I honestly can't believe that there's anyone arguing how the pros/cons shake out in that specific scenario.

You're appealing to a need for safety, but where you draw the line is arbitrary. I am only demonstrating that, following the same logic you are using, I draw the line somewhere else which results in a completely different, though absurd, outcome. What is the principle which makes where you drew the line correct and where I drew the line incorrect?

You also suggest that because transporting these materials in an unsafe manner is illegal and punishable by a fine, that that is somehow a bigger deterrent to businesses than the threat of a lawsuit. How so, and why is the illegality of it supposed to be a bigger deterrent than a lawsuit?

> You're appealing to a need for safety, but where you draw the line is arbitrary. I am only demonstrating that, following the same logic you are using, I draw the line somewhere else which results in a completely different, though absurd, outcome. What is the principle which makes where you drew the line correct and where I drew the line incorrect?

Maybe there is no first-principles answer here (certainly either of the obvious principles-based approaches gives absurd results). Maybe we do just have to weigh up the costs and benefits of individual cases as best as we can.

> You also suggest that because transporting these materials in an unsafe manner is illegal and punishable by a fine, that that is somehow a bigger deterrent to businesses than the threat of a lawsuit. How so, and why is the illegality of it supposed to be a bigger deterrent than a lawsuit?

Leaving it up to lawsuits to enforce public safety doesn't square very well with the limited-liability corporation. Imagine ten companies engaging in dangerous shipping practices, and one of them actually having an incident. If we only fine the one that had the incident, we bankrupt it and don't recover the full public-health cost.

>Leaving it up to lawsuits to enforce public safety doesn't square very well with the limited-liability corporation. Imagine ten companies engaging in dangerous shipping practices, and one of them actually having an incident. If we only fine the one that had the incident, we bankrupt it and don't recover the full public-health cost.

It's not just lawsuits which would enforce these type of public safety issues sans-FAA (or other federal organization). The private companies which are doing the shipping, in this case UPS, would have their own terms of services and contracts which would prohibit unsafe transportation of hazardous chemicals.

Every warning you receive is the accumulation of human stupidity, malice, or both. Someone, sometime, somewhere did something that made them think to warn you too. I guess its a form of fame.

Ooh $350k, about what it costs them to hire one software engineer for a year

4 engineers at Amazon's pay rate.

4? In Seattle? No way, unless they're at a satellite office. Senior devs go for $130 ~ $180 in Washington (plus all the taxes and benefits; lower if you contract).

For $350k they'd get 2, maybe 3 tops. If you're taking low level interns, yea, they could probably get 6 ~ 8.

Uh, at Amazon, junior devs go for around $120 if they don't negotiate well. Interns, last I checked, were close to $80.

If you fold in the TCO (benefits, computer / chair / licenses, etc.) for a senior engineer, the $350 isn't too far off.

I know full time devs there who were getting under $100k, granted this was 2-3 years ago.

I was at 94 base when I left. Started at 90 2 years before that.

Of course if you include stock it was 120ish.

Of course you include stock? That's part of the cost. I know four people that just started fresh out of no-name schools for $120 including stock.

Which one is going to stay long enough collect his stock at vesting?

I know four people just hired making $120k, not from name-brand schools?

I read "4" as a joke about Amazon paying poorly (when compared to Facebook and Google)

Plus equity, health insurance, benefits, office space for them, equipment, food, taxes, blah blah blah $350k.

What a senior dev gets paid !== what a senior dev costs

Typical small minded HN user, the cost of an employee does not begin and end with salary.

or about a minute of revenue

I imagine we'll see less of this going forward, as Amazon moves towards local warehouses and Amazon Prime Now one-hour delivery, in lieu of shipping everything by air using UPS/FedEx.

Well, I would suppose a car accident with this stuff improperly packed would be 'eventful'.

So they shipped something ORM-D by air? Throw the book at them.

Incidentally, I've seen Amazon err the other way on lithium batteries. I have ordered things like LiFePO4 cells or devices with lithium ion batteries inside and they come with a sticker that says "PRIMARY LITHIUM BATTERY, NOT FOR TRANSPORT ON PASSENGER AIRCRAFT" which apparently doesn't apply to lithium ion batteries. Better safe than sorry, though, I suppose. (I have also ordered primary lithium batteries... and those also get the sticker correctly.)

UPS has an incredibly detailed document here about the regulations: https://www.ups.com/media/news/en/us_lithium_battery_regulat...

I've had them ship a flashlight that came with an alkaline battery labeled as if it had a lithium battery.

I've also found that they wouldn't ship the 8 oz version of a popular homebrewing sanitizer (Star San -- it's phosphoric acid and a strong detergent) to my address, but they shipped the 32 oz version just fine.

As a customer, the annoying thing is that they don't make it easy to request a review of this bogus database info.

Yeah, that happens randomly. I think the 32 oz version of Star San is from a different vendor that is probably not shipping it properly. Or vice versa. (I too have 32 oz of Star San ;)

Amazon is known by third party FBA sellers for shipping out poorly packaged items. They then ding your seller account when your stuff arrives broke.

This doesn't surprise me in the least.

From the article:

“Amazon has a history of violating the Hazardous Materials Regulations,” the agency said in a news release. From February 2013 to September 2015, Amazon was found to have violated such regulations 24 times, the FAA said, adding that the agency would continue to investigate the company’s compliance with air safety regulations.

Third party vendors doing sketchy stuff with shipping does not profit Amazon enough for this to be part of their overall business plan. 350k is definitely only a warning shot, but in this case, the interests of the FAA, Amazon, and public safety are all in fairly close alignment.

How the fuck is Amazon on the hook for the shipping method a 3rd party vendor used?

I imagine this was a 'fulfilled by Amazon' order. That is, a 3rd party vendor shipped the product to Amazon which sold and shipped it.

As to the parent's comment, Amazon sees a huge part of it's business moving to this area, it's not just noise. Amazon wants to be a logistics company, not a store.

So is Amazon happy that one of the most important partners of their business suffered ? Cant we trust UPS and Amazon more than FAA in this case?

Based on the decline of Amazon UPS deliveries over the past couple years, UPS is becoming less and less important to them. For a while, Ontrac was doing most of my Amazon deliveries, but more recently, Amazon's own delivery service has been delivering most of my orders (not sure if they are really Amazon drivers or if they are contractors). UPS is still doing some deliveries (seems to be only products that aren't available in nearby warehouses), but not nearly as many as they used to. When Amazon first started using Ontrac, Ontrac's delivery service was so horrible that I think Amazon did it only so they could squeeze more money from UPS and Fedex, though Ontrac has improved a lot since then.

Recently Amazon has starting using the USPS to deliver more packages (or at least the last-mile delivery), and that service has been disappointing, I can usually count on a USPS package being delivered at least a day late, and more than once, it hasn't shown up at all, despite being marked as "delivered at front door".

In any case, while I would think that any unhappiness between UPS and Amazon would be resolved through their contracts, I doubt that UPS wants to rock the boat with Amazon, because even a small piece of the Amazon delivery pie is a lot of deliveries. So in this case, where workers health and safety is in question, it's good that the government stepped in to prevent UPS's desire to keep a customer happy from getting in the way of their worker's welfare.

This is interesting because I've had similar problems with Amazon orders that come thru Canada post. One incident I was already in the middle of the dispute process when they finally delivered it. A week after the Canada post website showed Delivered.

I originally blammed Canada post but perhaps this is an AWS shipping issue after all.

Oh, I'm sure my problems are related to the USPS and not Amazon -- one of the lost packages turned up a week later from a neighbor to whom it was misdelivered.

Amazon has always been quick to ship out replacements when I reported the missing packages (even when the USPS said they were "delivered"), and even for the one that was re-delivered by my neighbor, when I reported to amazon that I received it, they said I could keep the $10 item, no need to return it.

> nd more than once, it hasn't shown up at all, despite being marked as "delivered at front door". <

It very well might have been delivered, but stolen before you got to it. Super likely in the Bay Area and especially San Francisco.

I'm going to say that regulating the transport of highly-caustic toxic materials is a proper function of government.

(Edit: Not caustic, but evidently highly acidic. Even better!)

It goes a little deeper than that. I'd assume Amazon meant no harm (business, personal, or otherwise), but Americans have a vested interest in the FAA doing its job; this sort of mistake can down an airplane. If the cleaning agent had leaked in-flight instead of in-handling and found its way to something that'll react nicely with sulfuric acid (read: lots of things), you now have a scenario where an airplane is coming out of the sky in a less-than-controlled fashion, possibly over a populated area.

I'm pretty comfortable with the FAA using strict methods to avoid that scenario.

Amazon is working on their own delivery infrastructure (buying aircraft, etc) specifically to cut UPS out after UPS screwed them one christmas.

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/amazon_ups/

Should be $350,000,000, no doubt.

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