Federal regulator says Amazon can be held responsible for faulty goods | Hacker News Reader

Federal regulator says Amazon can be held responsible for faulty goods

cnbc.com

138 pointsmfiguiere60 comments

I think it was Louis Rossmann who tested out some automotive fuses purchased from Amazon to see if the fuses were actually rated for what was printed on the label.

I believe the fuses _failed to fail_ when running amperages higher than what was written on the fuses themselves. Hopefully someone can clarify, my memory is a bit dodgy.

Amazon should be liable for the products they sell on their market place. They should not be able to absolve themselves of all liability just because they're a "facilitator" of these marketplaces.

They have the ability to manipulate reviews, manipulate what products you see in your search queries, etc. etc. They're culpable in some way as well - since theoretically, if they're manipulating search and reviews, then they must be vetting the products in some way, right?

I do not have recourse via the law for the thousands of VONEO, ARKANEL, POESLLE, BUSSUE companies that crop up every day to sell the same products that may or may not be following well-adopted standards.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm hoping we see less potentially dangerous and less counterfeit products on Amazon and other online retailers as a result of this.

> I'm not sure what the answer is

Stop buying from Amazon, at least for me it is - i pretty much go out of my way to actively avoid buying there and encourage others to do so.

For basic electronic components and fasteners, I use McMaster-Carr https://www.mcmaster.com/. Their website is also amazingly free of cruft.

For a broader selection of electronics components, one may also consider

https://www.digikey.com/ and https://www.mouser.com/

For a hobbiest, ebay or aliexpress is cheaper. Straight from china.

Yes. Aliexpress is cheaper, but they have the sample problem with counterfeit and mislabeled products. Furthermore, they also manipulate ratings and comments. I got an electronic filter from there that was seriously mislabeled and sent in a comment and rating based on that. It never appeared on the product page.

Amazon's electronic parts are a complete shambles of junk. Take, for instance, this page which is selling "Germanium Schottky diodes", a thing that does not exist. They have a part number for a Germanium diode, but are apparently selling a silicon based Schottky diode instead. This is simply fraud, but only different from vats of other frauds on the site because it is so blatant. Yes, the Amazon parts are typically more expensive than the Ali parts, but there is very little reason to use either one.

If you actually want to receive the part you ordered, go to Digikey or Mouser. The prices will often be better as well.

They're okay most of the time for non-critical hobby tinkering, but counterfeit/clone/approximate parts are very commonplace on those platforms.

The advantage that specialty electronics distributors have is that they have supply-chain relationships directly with first-party manufacturers. A part with a manufacturer's name on it will come from that manufacturer. By contrast, marketplace-type sites don't care about an item's provenance.

Only if your time debugging has no value.

If you are doing everything in China, you should at least go with LCSC (https://www.lcsc.com/) as they are bargain but generally not completely counterfeit.

Note: That "generally" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I'll use LCSC for hobbyist stuff or prototypes. I'll generally use Digikey/Mouser/Arrow/Future/etc. if I need intermediate production (up to about 10K units). Once you get above 100K units, you can utilize Chinese suppliers again as you have an on-site representative managing everything at that point.

This is some really nice UI - easy to understand, no cruft, searchable!

Does anyone know if they ship internationally these days?

It used to be (several years ago) that they wouldn't ship to Australia, and (I think from rough memory) they wouldn't ship to the EU either.

I'm not seeing info about that on their website when look around now though, so it may have changed. (?)

Was just browsing McMaster-Carr and got dark-patterned into an inescapable login or sign-up screen after looking at a few things. 0/10 will not do business with data rapists.

Yep. My wife stopped buying on Amazon before I did although I had already stopped buying most electronic things due to the large amount of counterfeit or unsafe products.

She took a while to convince me to stop using it at all. It just seems so convenient. Truth is I honestly don't notice any difference now. Maybe it's slightly more hassle to put my credit card number occasionally, but things get delivered about as fast as Amazon ever did, and I'm much more confident in what I'm actually getting.

Yeah, Amazon did its job by dragging all the other retailers kicking and screaming to a consumer-centric pricing and logistics model. That's why you don't see a difference because every other business has adapted to the same model or pricing scheme.

Same for Walmart. For example, the Pet Supplies Plus retailer in my neighborhood smashes WalMart's selection and prices. There is no service at Walmart, PSP has passionate, knowledgeable people always on staff.

Microcenter is another example. Service, price and ultimately convenience, make the online shopping experience feel like a waste of time.

> Microcenter is another example. Service, price and ultimately convenience, make the online shopping experience feel like a waste of time.

While I am a fan of Microcenter...it's a sort of pandora's box of product discovery to me every time I go, but...the closest Microcenter to me is about 30 minute drive away, without traffic, in a strip mall with a hellscape parking lot that's full 95% of the time. This is the very definition of waste of time.

I only go, if I need something right now. Otherwise I shop online.

I'm optimistic that if Amazon is liable then it'll probably sort itself out.

How is this even a debate? There is no section 230 for products.

These debates are heald by lawyers and when dealing with companies as large as Amazon you're talking about a massive amount if expense getting anywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

>Amazon should be liable for the products they sell on their market place. They should not be able to absolve themselves of all liability just because they're a "facilitator" of these marketplaces. They have the ability to manipulate reviews, manipulate what products you see in your search queries, etc. etc. They're culpable in some way as well - since theoretically, if they're manipulating search and reviews, then they must be vetting the products in some way, right?

Amazon also sells its own products on its marketplace, which kinda negates the whole "we're only a facilitator" message they are desperately trying to push.

Ebay is just a facilitator. If Amazon wants to just be a facilitator, it can stop spending money trying to copy top selling products via its Amazon Essentials line of goods. Amazon doesn't get to straddle the line and pick and choose what to call itself depending on which way the legal wind is blowing on a given day.

Amazon is the poster child of having their cake and wanting to eat it too, and using lobbyists and lawyers to get their way.

>I think it was Louis Rossmann who tested out some automotive fuses purchased from Amazon to see if the fuses were actually rated for what was printed on the label. I believe the fuses _failed to fail_ when running amperages higher than what was written on the fuses themselves.

Do you remember if he took his fuses' time-current curves into account? Fuses will generally pass more than their rating for some period of time, blowing faster if the current's significantly over the rating, slower (maybe much slower) if it's only a little bit over. By preventing nuisance blows it's considered a feature rather than a bug.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

At your link I saw that my point had been brought up in the comments. The 2 amp fuse passing 8 amps for minutes is for sure a problem. I'm not sure about those other fuses, they didn't seem to be far off. And there was a 2 amp fuse that blew at 4 amps after a few seconds which is what I'd expect. I didn't have enough patience to watch all 31 minutes of the video though, I was jumping around. In all fairness I think he proved his point.

Here’s a trip curve chart of some Bussmann blade type automotive fuses for comparison: https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/electrical-...

Generally speaking automotive fuses are oversized for their circuit and should be of 'fast-blow' type

> I'm not sure what the answer is

Don’t buy from Amazon!! This is not a difficult problem to solve. There are zero items that Amazon stocks that cannot be purchased elsewhere.

Specifically for fuses, Grainger or McMaster Carr can sell you damn near any fuse you need and it will be a genuine product.

Give your dollars to a business that still controls their supply chain.

In the UK under the Consumer Rights Act the seller is responsible for goods being of "satisfactory quality" (Section 9?).

Very surprised if all jurisdictions don't have similar legislation as it seems like a very basic, rudimentary, customer protection.

There are similar provisions in the US, but they are rudimentary in nature.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/implied_warranty_of_merchant...

A product recall, in the US, goes beyond what would be required by this -- requiring a seller to attempt to contact purchasers, provide proactive remedy, etc.

This is about the marketplace though. Amazon position themselves as an intermediary only, and from their point-of-view, the actual seller should be liable.

I'm not sure what the UK law says about this specific case.

They take products from multiple sources and literally dump them all into one bin, from which they sell. If they were an actually an intermediary only, they would not co-mingle items.

I think this is a good point. At what point do business practices (co-mingling) remove any sort of liability protections (if they exist) here? Is Amazon just an intermediary if they don’t keep good from different vendors separate?

I think there is a good argument to be made here.

I think the big thing is that Amazon does not own the items listed by these 3rd party vendors.

The CPSC is claiming Amazon is a distributor.

> A distributor is an independent contractor who buys goods on their own account from an exporter or supplier and resells the goods to customers in their own territory.

> They do not act as a communication channel between the supplier and the customer and normally do not have authority to create a contract between the customer and the supplier or exporter.

I would say Amazon is legitimately in a gray zone between providing 3PL services and being a distributor. Amazon is facilitating payments, but it's not really reselling things it has already purchased. Amazon can make a strong argument it does facilitate communication between the supplier and customer, given that the person making the listing can put lots of information on the sale page and there is a mechanism for the seller to directly answer consumer questions, though conversely Amazon has a lot of influence over that communication and the government has a strong argument that the consumer is only entering into a contract with Amazon.

Really the issue is that Amazon is just too horizontally integrated. If it were split up into a pure 3PL service, a pure financial transaction handler, a pure online sales listing platform, and a pure competing retailer, none of those four entities would have an obligation to recall a third party vendor's product. It's only when you combine these into a monstrous chimera that the lines blur.

Amazon is basically a consignment shop. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consignment

For the 3rd party vendors yes, but at the same time Amazon also sells its own products and it can be reasonably unclear to the end customer which is which.

A distributor under the Consumer Product Safety Act is rather different:

> The term “distributor” means a person to whom a consumer product is delivered or sold for purposes of distribution in commerce, except that such term does not include a manufacturer or retailer of such product.

There’s no grey zone here.

Amazon tried to claim the exemption for third-party logistics providers, but that’s specifically for carriers and forwarders and limited to those who solely receives/holds/transports consumer products without taking title, but Amazon goes beyond that by marketing those products to consumers for sale.

Is Amazon selling the product, or are 3rd parties selling a product on Amazon? If the latter, Amazon is not a distributor. Amazon does not take title of the goods it receives, holds, and transports. While I think Amazon is sufficiently involved to count as a distributor, it definitely is not clear cut.

My money goes to Amazon, my credit statements say Amazon, my customer support is through Amazon, my returns are through Amazon, the website I go to is Amazon, the boxes I get say Amazon.

To a buyer, they are acting in a way that is indistinguishable from being a seller (if we wish to humour their claim). If the law does not classify them as the seller, then the law needs to be update to reflect the present day.

It doesn’t matter. The definition of distributor in the statue does not require Amazon to be the “seller” or take title.

Yeah I'm not sure about the law, but if the concept of consumer protection is caveat emptor, I need to know who I'm dealing with. The problem with Amazon is that even if you order from one seller, you're getting the goods from someone different. If Amazon isn't even letting you choose who you're buying from, then in my mind, you're buying from them.

Let's not complicate this. My credit card says: AMAZON.

Retailers are generally intermediaries. It’s not clear what the difference is when Amazon sells Marketplace items from their own storage and are handling delivery, payment, and returns.

I don't buy it... they do fulfillment and commingled inventory in the process. They cannot reasonably separate themselves from independent sellers.

That's literally the point - this behavior has always only been legal insofar as the government (the Executive branch) has not been criminally prosecuting Amazon for selling used-as-new or outright fakes.

Biden has been a substantially more pro-consumer president and he has given the FTC and CPSC real teeth to crack down on this stuff. This is incidentally why the recent SC ruling shooting down Chevron deference is so devastating.

To be clear, I agree. Especially since they don't make it obvious that you're buying from a 3rd party seller. The whole website is made to look like a unified front.

I am willing to separate fulfilled by Amazon from shipped by third-party. In later case I am willing to give reasonable leeway to them. But if product is in your warehouse and you are selling it. Well you should be responsible for claims such as fit to purpose and warranty.

In the EU (Germany) Amazon fully refunded me for the item from the marketplace that broke just 2 months after purchase. I was pleasantly surprised.

My sister said they received a counterfeit book — how is that possible since I thought Amazon guarded their book supply chain at least?

I received counterfeit G skill RAM from Amazon and the seller was Amazon. It was a space blanket put into an obviously fake RAM box even the dimensions were wrong. I bought 2 and one was fake, same shipment too.

A common way for this to happen is via return scams, where someone buys something from amazon and returns a fake. They are rarely checked on the way back in, and are often even liquidated.

Amazon is famously awash with counterfeit books. It's been an ongoing problem for years. :(

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37055909 (1 year ago)

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287936 (2 years ago)

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199135 (5 years ago)

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546 (7 years ago)

It almost as if they created this problem. Where else would this have occurred in the past? I have no idea where I could have gotten a counterfiet book before Amazon.

A flea market was a great place to get cheap knock offs of all sorts of things.

As if. Take a look at the very first line in the description for the book "Visual Differential Geometry and Forms: A Mathematical Drama in Five Acts".

"FROM THE AUTHOR:

All legitimate copies of VDGF produced by Princeton University Press are crisply printed on high-quality paper. If you obtain a shoddily printed copy, it's a fake: please return it and purchase a genuine PUP copy."

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Differential-Geometry-Forms-Ma...

Curious to see if this survives Ohio vs. EPA.

Amazon settled a product liability case in Pennsylvania to avoid an adverse decision that they are the "seller".[1]

[1] https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2020/09/23/product...

Begin with all the fake laser safety glasses being sold for decades.

Then Newegg and Walmart are as well, because they set up the same selling market

Target.com also.

Seems like this only applies to voluntarily recalled products?

It means that Amazon is responsible for recalling faulty products, not that they're responsible for handling products recalled by the manufacture.

In general, the seller is responsible for the products they sell, regardless of who manufactured it. This gives the buyer a clear party they can sue, likely a party that has a presence in their jurisdiction. Amazon can turn around and go after the manufacture, but that's not the buyer's problem.

Amazon tried to call themselves a "marketplace" to avoid this liability, but nobody's buying that.

Too damn right, and about time.

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