AmazonBasics products are dangerous!

[Jet_ski]

Summary

Dozens of Amazon's own products have been reported as dangerous -- melting, exploding or even bursting into flames. Many are still on the market.

In one instance on January 12, 2017, Austin Parra's mother explained to firefighters that her son's chair caught on fire while he was sleeping, and he was burned as he carried the flaming chair outside. Parra, then 20, had been transported to the hospital.

The fire marshall ultimately concluded that the fire originated with the cord Parra was using to charge his cellphone. His report stated the cord experienced a short circuit, and while it was unclear why this happened, "the heat produced by the cord ignited the upholstery for the office chair." 

 

The cord had been branded with the name of the world's largest online retailer: Amazon. (Pictures in the CNN Link)

 

Amazon shoppers have recounted frightening malfunctions and close calls in vivid detail:

• A surge protector turned into a "blowtorch," one father recalled -- saying that flames shot out of the device, which was near his baby's nursery.
• Phone chargers were said to have burned peoples' hands and legs, and exploding batteries allegedly sprayed chemicals in someone's face.
• A USB cord burst into flames in a parked car while a toddler was inside, according to one parent.
• A charger in another car was reported as starting an electrical fire on the freeway, allegedly burning the driver and a jacket.
• Paper shredders turned on by themselves, according to multiple consumers, and one reportedly blew up in a "fireball," burning someone's arm and singeing the hair off.
• And a microwave suddenly caught on fire when an 8-year-old went to heat up her macaroni and cheese cup as she had done "a zillion times," a mother claimed, saying she had to take the appliance outside and spray it with a hose.

Each of these purchases were "verified," meaning Amazon confirmed that the customer who wrote the review actually purchased the product on the site and didn't receive a "deep discount," according to its website. Several were accompanied by photos of the burned items.

Quotes

Quote

Since 2016, at least 1,500 reviews, covering 70+ items, have described AmazonBasics products exploding, catching on fire, smoking, melting, causing electrical malfunctions or otherwise posing risks, a CNN investigation reveals.

 

My thoughts

I personally do a lot of shopping on Amazon but I've never purchased an AmazonBasics product. Affordable is not the same as cheap, I always warn people. You never want something cheap. As the saying goes "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap." I usually suck it up and probably overpay to buy things from a brand I trust.

 

For instance, you might look at a $50 Belkin surge protector on Amazon and ask why would anyone buy it when there are these other ones for $10-20. But if you ever put these side by side you'll immediately notice the quality difference. Cheap electronics/electric things heat up a lot and often make a buzzing noise. That's bad! A safe power cord costs a certain amount to make, at some point there is no way to lower cost without sacrificing quality and safety.

 

Just to re-iterate, you don't have to choose between AmazonBasics and shady brands on Amazon.com. Reputable OEMs make these things and not all of them are on Amazon.

 

Sources

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/business/amazonbasics-electronics-fire-safety-invs/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2020-09-10T12%3A51%3A01

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, Jet_ski said:

My thoughts

I personally do a lot of shopping on Amazon but I've never purchased an AmazonBasics product. Affordable is not the same as cheap.

I'd probably be more inclined to trust AmazonBasics than one of those no-name brands which I've never heard of..

[BobVonBob]

I always wonder if AmazonBasics products are actually more dangerous/lower quality than other bargain bin items or if they just get more exposure. You can't leave a review on a toaster you bought at Walmart after all.

[Jet_ski]

4 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I'd probably be more inclined to trust AmazonBasics than one of those no-name brands which I've never heard of..

That's a false choice. You have other options! There other alternatives to AmazonBasics and shady brands on Amazon.com! Most reputable electronics OEMs make these things. 

[Br3tt96]

I haven't bought any electronics that are AmazonBasics, but I have bought foam rollers and stuff, so it all depends on what ya buy

[MageTank]

9 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

In one instance on January 12, 2017, Austin Parra's mother explained to firefighters that her son's chair caught on fire while he was sleeping, and he was burned as he carried the flaming chair outside. Parra, then 20, had been transported to the hospital. Parra, then 20, had been transported to the hospital. His mother explained to firefighters that her son's chair caught on fire while he was sleeping, and he was burned as he carried the flaming chair outside.

Man, I really thought I was stroking out trying to read this first paragraph, lol.

 

That little tidbit aside, this doesn't really surprise me. Products like these are often purchased in bulk and companies slap their names on them just to sell them as the cheap "in-house" brand. These items are often cheap because they don't pay for safety testing or certification from the likes of UL, TUV, Intertek, etc. There are some things in life that you don't cheap out on, so hopefully people understand this concept.

[wanderingfool2]

55 minutes ago, MageTank said:

That little tidbit aside, this doesn't really surprise me. Products like these are often purchased in bulk and companies slap their names on them just to sell them as the cheap "in-house" brand. These items are often cheap because they don't pay for safety testing or certification from the likes of UL, TUV, Intertek, etc. There are some things in life that you don't cheap out on, so hopefully people understand this concept.

I agree, with electronics know what you are getting yourself into (cheap is cheap for a reason).  With that said, if the cord itself caused the short (and given the guy literally got the burns from carrying the flaming chair outside), I have to wonder whether in the past if the cord had been abused (like being run over by a chair).  I know some people who constantly bend, crimp and runover their cords and still use them (even when wires get exposed)

[pythonmegapixel]

1 hour ago, Jet_ski said:

That's a false choice. You have other options! There other alternatives to AmazonBasics and shady brands on Amazon.com! Most reputable electronics OEMs make these things. 

Yes. For 3 times the price.

 

In the UK we have a few electronics wholesalers which also sell to the general public if you know where to find them and they have pretty good own brands, so I tend to buy from them (not least because I don't like giving money to Amazon)

[CarlBar]

Honestly the big question i have is:

 

is this even news. Look 1500 incidents across 4 years isn't a lot total, and if they're high volume sales products it may represent a tiny failure percentage.

 

Thats not to say i'd trust Amazon Basics or Amazon Choice to recommend a good product. But there's a big difference between a poor for purpose product and a dangerous one, and unless these are mostly on low volume item's i don't see anything to get up in arms about.

 

In fact the OP in both the OP and subsequent comments sounds more like some marketing bot designed to hurt Amazon than an actual news story of note.

[Guest willies leg]

I always look for UL Listed electrical products, if it's not, I skip it.

[StDragon]

Quote

A surge protector turned into a "blowtorch," one father recalled -- saying that flames shot out of the device...

So, a not-a-flamethrower flamethrower??

 

*Elon enters the chat*

[Bombastinator]

A very long time ago a company was founded to stop problems exactly like this, because this isn’t the first time this has become a problem.  It was called Underwriters Laboratories.  What they did was test products and certify them.  If a product that was certified with a UL tag did something like that, UL would be paying for the chair, a new cord, and some pricey hospital bills. UL didn’t like doing that of course, so they got downright creative about testing to make SURE that the stuff they tested didn’t hurt people.  It got so that consumers wouldn’t buy a product without a UL sticker on it. So very soon everything had a UL sticker and consumers forgot why the thing was there.  This is the wake up call.  The world still works the same way it worked.  At least as far as electricity and fire go.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

6 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Each of these purchases were "verified," meaning Amazon confirmed that the customer who wrote the review actually purchased the product on the site and didn't receive a "deep discount," according to its website. Several were accompanied by photos of the burned items.

However, what you need to verify is not that they bought the product, but that the incidents were caused by these products. I can plug a phone to a charger and have it catch fire: maybe it's the charger, maybe it's the cable, maybe it's how I attached them, or maybe it's a Note 7.

 

6 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Affordable is not the same as cheap, I always warn people. You never want something cheap. As the saying goes "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap." I usually suck it up and probably overpay to buy things from a brand I trust.

This type of mentality may also be behind why many people suffering these incidentes may have quickly pointed their fingers towards one of the cheapest components involved, without actually knowing whether it is the culprit. Hence, the amount of reviews blaming them may be overstating the problem through confirmation bias.

 

On the other hand, I haven't seen many cheap phones with exploding batteries...

[Zodiark1593]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I agree, with electronics know what you are getting yourself into (cheap is cheap for a reason).  With that said, if the cord itself caused the short (and given the guy literally got the burns from carrying the flaming chair outside), I have to wonder whether in the past if the cord had been abused (like being run over by a chair).  I know some people who constantly bend, crimp and runover their cords and still use them (even when wires get exposed)

Don’t circuit breakers exist as well? Will shorting the cable draw enough amps to trip the breaker?

[williamcll]

So what you're saying here is that the stuff I get from wish.com is more reliable than amazon's own?

[rcmaehl]

5 minutes ago, williamcll said:

So what you're saying here is that the stuff I get from wish.com is more reliable than amazon's own?

Everyone knows wish is the superior marketplace! 10TB usb drives for just $5. Wow!!!

[divito]

What people always seem to forget is private labels are almost always utilizing a common supplier. Amazon does tremendous sales and some of that is easy to tabulate based on AmazonBasics as a brand, but that's not really the whole story, nor fair to just Amazon.

[PlayStation 2]

I'm not sure if every comment on this thread is poorly worded or if I'm having a stroke at the ripe old age of 19.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

I'm not sure if every comment on this thread is poorly worded or if I'm having a stroke at the ripe old age of 19.

I blame autodefect myself.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

One issue here in the US is that houses aren't always up to modern legal standards, so a lot of faults with products can be due to that.   If the owner is too cheap or ignorant of that they might actually blame products rather than their own home.   Bad electrical in your house could be the root of the issue.

Not quite so much.  The insulation is generally made of glass and the plastic is this stuff called “house wrap” that is fire resistant.  That stuff is UL rated still btw.
by weight an American house is mostly 2”x4”s and Sheetrock.  Sheetrock was codified because it’s unusually pure gypsum coated in paper.  It turns out the paper acts as a fire retardant because when the paper burns it turns to carbon which spreads the heat and keeps the gypsum from burning through. 
 

One weird aspect is the demise of balloon frame housing.  Balloon frame is using very long studs on multistory buildings.  It’s cheaper but created a draft situation where fire could move easily from floor to floor.  Balloon frame is illegal now for precisely this reason.  I bought a balloon frame house and I put fire stops between the floors where I pulled outer interior wall sheathing.  These days the requirement is that each floor has to be built individually. This automatically puts a fire stop in. 

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I'm talking about fault of products, and bad electrical in the house not what you are.   A lot of houses out in the country areas in MD aren't super up to standard with electricity via wiring, but while we are on the topic of fire, my brother in law almost started one at his house.   I dunno what he was doing in his garage exactly other than fixing what the previous owner did, but bad wiring did cause some charring.   There's now a black lineup his wall.  XD

Eek! Maryland is old old.  One of the first places colonized in the “new world”.  The way it is supposed to work is only a certified electrician is allowed to install wiring, and that electrician has to follow electrical code which has a fire prevention element. Been that way for a very very long time. If there are problems with buildings not being up to standard they are so old they were built before there was one or there was a breakdown in the system at one point.  My dad bought a house in Maryland in the 90’s.  I wasn’t involved in it too much but I remember he didn’t want to have much to do with older buildings.  He wanted one built after a particular date.  The man was a professional scientist and hair paranoid.  He built a house on the red river in North Dakota in the 70’s and the thing was actually used as a reference for flood prevention data for that “100 year flood” thing they went through some years ago.

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I mean it depends, and the codes/standard change all the time.   In a lot of places in the US homes don't get updated to the latest standards, and a lot of issues happen due to it over time.

Electrical code gets updated every time a new code book comes out which is every year.  Individual houses don’t get updated at all unless it happens for other reasons.  When it does though current code has to be followed, and if a particular system is unsafe the electrician that finds it is required to fix the thing at the expense of the homeowner whether he likes it or not.  One of the cuter newer ones is if an electrician finds low voltage cable in a wall older than a certain date they are required to remove it.  Cat5 is on that list. fire code has been more or less decent for a very long time though.  Even knob and tube is pretty fire safe.  A black line up the wall means some non code work was done. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, there are also people who can't afford the electrician.   Can't afford the work is another argument from them.   There's also people who just don't care either.   I know quite a few people like that, not just in MD.   This is why I don't always blame the company/product as you need actual proof of a fault.   A rate of complaints isn't exactly a good determing factor either.   A rate of actual proven flaws would be better evidence.   I'm curious of the full story of each of these complaints before blaming Amazon.

A dead person is a dead person.  The electrical code, like the plumbing code and the fire code is written in blood.  People have to die for it to change.  One of the more recent ones in my area was spark fault interrupters. Like hardcore GFIs for bedrooms. The deal there is if a person  is a grub and hasn’t housecleaned  in forever and an outer wall is cold dust bunnies can actually be pulled into the electrical box. A spark fault inturuptor means even if this happens there still won’t be a fire.  They’re ungodly expensive. Has to be done though.

[Mihle]

8 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Honestly the big question i have is:

 

is this even news. Look 1500 incidents across 4 years isn't a lot total, and if they're high volume sales products it may represent a tiny failure percentage.

 

Thats not to say i'd trust Amazon Basics or Amazon Choice to recommend a good product. But there's a big difference between a poor for purpose product and a dangerous one, and unless these are mostly on low volume item's i don't see anything to get up in arms about.

 

In fact the OP in both the OP and subsequent comments sounds more like some marketing bot designed to hurt Amazon than an actual news story of note.

Doesn't matter if it's low percentage, low percentage on a faults on a product that can actually hurt you very bad or even kill you is too much.

 

At least here, for actual brands, there have been recalls of products after just one or two cases of starting a fire.

[wanderingfool2]

27 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Doesn't matter if it's low percentage, low percentage on a faults on a product that can actually hurt you very bad or even kill you is too much.

 

At least here, for actual brands, there have been recalls of products after just one or two cases of starting a fire.

That all assumes though the fault was in the product (and not something like the user running over it multiple times with a caster and still using it).  I've seen so many people abuse those cords (and even electrical cords) to the point of failure.  Even iPhone cables have been linked to fires, that doesn't mean they are bad cables...some people just abuse them