Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Careful, Amazon is selling dangerous goods”.
Uh, amazon selling dangerous goods, so i want to talk about it. Yeah, let’s talk about it uh. The latest issue of many is an issue with a three-prong male-to-male extension cord meant for generators. This product is very unsafe when plugged into a generator or outlet the opposite. End has live electricity, posing risk of electrocution when plugged into additionally the flow of power in revert in a the reverse direction can circumvent safety features of the home’s electrical system and start a fire. The cable is also very short, which means the generator would be close to the home. Increasing risk of carbon monoxide poisoning people call them suicide cords. What a great name uh, also that note about increasing risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, is very interesting because in july of 2021, amazon was sued by u.s product safety agency by a u.s product safety agency over dangerous items, including a carbon monoxide detector that fails to alarm. So you can get the wombo combo, you can get the increase in carbon monoxide poisoning and the chance that your carbon monoxide detector won’t work awesome. Also. They used to sell flammable children’s pajamas, hair dryers that could electrocute you if dropped in water, and they stated that amazon is responsible uh for third-party sellers. Oh wow, amazon, basics products have been known to fail spectacularly as well. There are examples included in the article, including pictures um is that is that a lightning cable? Oh, it’s a lightning, cable, wow whoops! That’S a that’s a heck of a thing in 2017, a usb cable caught on fire in 2019, a charger caught on fire as soon as it was plugged into a car.
That’S well yikes. In 2019, a microwave caught on fire and almost burnt a house down microwaves are powerful, they’re, a heck of a thing. The microwave was analyzed by the university of maryland’s center for advanced life cycle engineering and was found that the heat – that’s a what a name uh.
It was found that the heating device on the inside was the cause of the fire, acting as if someone put tin foil inside of it in 2019, an amazon basic surge protector caught fire with a single phone charger plugged into the device unused. At the time of the incident, yes, now to be clear, you sell enough hundreds of thousands of products, eventually you’re gon na have a couple defects uh, but the the main reason that i wanted to bring this up was because i felt like it uh it opened Up a really uh a really, i think, a deeper conversation about how consumer consumer protection has changed. In the move from retail to online. There is essentially zero barrier to entry for some random to produce some random product and start selling it to any random person, regardless of which jurisdiction they live in. What their level of technical expertise is like whether they’re qualified to use the product – and you know i’m trying to think like – would – i have even had access to buy something as dangerous as that mail-to-mail power cord.
When i was 15. there’s, there’s two there’s two yeah really there’s uh, there’s two things in flow plane chat that i think are are pretty good. Jerry rigged says, there’s a huge difference between defective product and inherently dangerous one by design absolutely defective products happen. That’S a thing um, but apparently dangerous is really bad and that’s that’s really.
The main that was really. The main thing that i had wanted to discuss here was that there is comparatively nothing standing between, because at least with, like a retailer there is. They have to be the first line right when something goes wrong when a customer gets mad and comes and complains about a problem, they have to deal with it, whereas amazon has this level of abstraction, with these third-party sellers and they’re, not the only one. Anyone anyone that takes a marketplace approach to third-party products that are available on their site.
Has this like this, the shield in front of them? That’S like oh well, i mean we, we didn’t sell that we just had the listing yeah we’ll take it down, but i i they’re not they’re, not doing and they’re not being forced to do the due diligence that i feel like a brick and mortar retailer would Just inherently have to do: oh yeah, definitely 100 yep, and not even just have to do that would just inherently do and you you put something on the shelf without like looking at it first, because shelf space is valuable. You see this on a lot of products too, where uh they’re, just riddled with lies, um. I used to rant about this all the time and then i’m not gon na name who made the video, but i watched a video from us fairly recently. That was really bad about this, in my opinion, but saying that things are are, for instance, i don’t remember if this is how it was said in the video, but waterproof is like not a thing yeah.
Waterproof is stupid. Yeah, i don’t remember which one, but it was something like that it was like waterproof or fireproof or something that was mentioned in our video. Did we say something was waterproof yeah uh, yeah? Oh, it was a. It was uh.
It was definitely waterproof. I’M remembering the video now okay, yeah! No did i host it. No okay, i’ll i’ll talk to i’ll talk to the team because i’m like even in uh, okay, so vessy long time sponsor of ours, love, vessi, uh, their talking points say waterproof, and i always when i do the reed. I always change it to water resistant because and i’ve told them like i’m not gon na say that that’s stupid, nothing is waterproof.
Water will literally cut a path through stone. Nothing is waterproof and that’s fine. You give it enough time: yeah, water water. Will you up? Son it’ll find a way yeah, but there’s there’s a bunch of products.
I don’t remember who the video is from. I wish it did because it was actually really good uh, but the one of them that i saw recently was was flashlights. There’S a bunch of product categories on amazon, where it’s just filled with lies and i’ll give i’ll give a i’ll give it 45 000 lumens. No, it isn’t for some crazy duration and i’ll give a plus one to anchor here because they pointed out anchor flashlights and i’m sure there are other ones too, but it it looks bad on amazon, anker’s flashlight looks bad because it doesn’t last as long and it’s Not as bright, but then the claims about lasting a certain amount of time and being a certain amount of brightness are just categorically false and then anchors were actually accurate and it’s super frustrating, because you’re hurting these brands that are actually trying to be real with their Information, it’s like if we said our 64-ounce water bottle, will keep your drink ice cold for 23 days, yeah! No, and then it creates this arms race of lying yeah, which is just not good and like they.
They should, in my opinion, have to crack down on stuff like that they should be responsible for the information on the site, yeah and – and you know that they don’t, because it’s not just flashlights. It’S like everything. It’S everything i mean we went through this with uh dash cams yeah dash. Cams are one of those categories where, until we made that video, i would have had absolutely no idea what to buy.
In fact, i tried, which is why we made that video yeah there’s another comment in floatplane chat from jaden power. Cables on amazon is a huge problem. In general, some of the most popular ones are so thin that they could safely carry basically zero power. Uh.
That’S a very good, that’s a very good point: yeah um! I i recently watched a review of extension cords because i was sketched out about that essentially yeah because i was like this actually seems like something that could be sketchy if you want it to go for a pretty long distance and you want to send a pretty Decent amount of power through it like i need to find, find something that can do this properly and that, i actually believe is saying the right information, because i don’t believe things on product pages anymore because of basically amazon, because it’s creeping to other sites. Now too, because people are like well, amazon doesn’t do it, amazon doesn’t do it properly and we have to compete with amazon. So we’re just going to lie too, which is just horrible marissa, says, can’t wait for the lab to start testing this kind of misleading marketing yeah. Honestly, looking at how underserved the public is absolutely in just like areas i didn’t even think about like i didn’t.
Even i’m sorry, i didn’t consider extension course. I just no, i didn’t yeah, but it can be sketch if you’re served something that’s just junk. Our lab could be three times the size tomorrow yeah and we would run out of space if we wanted to try to do everything that i’m looking at going. This needs to be tested. Someone needs to do this yeah, so we’ll there’s some. I don’t know.
I don’t really want to talk about it, but there’s actually some uh, some really cool stuff currently being tested at the lab that i know about you don’t want to talk about it. You didn’t have a meeting this week. What so, i don’t know if you do well, i don’t think i know you might, but i don’t know, are you? Are you able to tell me or nope wait? Why not right now, what the hell we’re live on the show? Well, that’s stupid. .