Couple fires sueball at Amazon over faulty solar eclipse-viewing goggles

Re: Site for sore eyes.

"I do not, however, think that Amazon can be liable for failures of every single product they sell, especially since much of what they sell is listed by third-party resellers through the Amazon Marketplace."

This is starting to become a bit of a theme, trying to dodge consumer law because it's only a marketplace. Is a department store responsible for what it sells? Yes. In the UK, certainly, you take defects up with the retailer, and then they can sort it out with the manufacturer. I guess the US doesn't have very much in the way of consumer law, but here the person that sold you it is legally responsible, and that person is Amazon. You bought it from Amazon, they can write 'sold by somebody else' on it, but that, I would guess, is bullshit from a legal point of view. Amazon takes my money, the contract is formed with Amazon.

Re: Site for sore eyes.

Just for the sake of argument, has an automobile dealer ever been successfully sued for selling a car with manufacturing defects it had no knowledge of?

But they do handle recalls.

VW can't say that a faulty car is nothing to do with them because they are VW Retail Ltd and are merely reselling a car built by VW Manufacturing GMBH and anyway they aren't talking to you because you are actually a customer of VW Financial Services SA.

(actually BMW did try this and got a mild wrist slap)

Re: Site for sore eyes.

Amazon shouldn't be liable for every single product sold on the site, however their liability should kick in once somebody (and just one person) makes them aware that something is not legit.

For what it is worth: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/aw/d/B0196H3BSA/

It calls itself a JYE DSO138 oscilloscope kit. It's not great, being basically the ADC of an STM32 microcontroller, but for poking around video signals and low frequency stuff, it will suffice. Besides, I wanted to have fun putting it together. Notice all the JYE photos, the serial number, etc. Well what arrived was very obviously a fake. I contacted Amazon, "we take this seriously" and "we checked our stock" and so on. The usual bollocks. I was invited to return my kit and they would send me a proper one. I'll give them credit, they sent the replacement straight away so I could open up both and check that I had all the right components (the kits had incorrect values but of different things so between them I got all the right bits). Why bother? Well you've probably guessed that the replacement kit was equally fake. At this point I forwarded my emails to JYE and told them to add Amazon to the list of companies selling fakes, and then I gave up. I wanted to build the kit, not run around in Kafkaesque circles. As it happens it worked first time for me (perhaps having all the right bits helps? ;-) ) and is what I wanted. Maybe this coming winter I'll try the DSO Shell, now I know I can get an original from Banggood.

Notice that this fake kit is still being sold, and is still paying itself off as a proper JYE kit. Notice also that my review pointing out it's a fake isn't there. I'll need to write it again and this time take a screenshot.

tl;dr: There are fakes on Amazon and when it is brought to their attention, bugger all happens...

Re: Site for sore eyes.

I am a happy customer of Amazon's.

However...there are way too many dodgy products being sold. From invalid license key Windows disks to obviously faked book reviews. I've reported the latter and saw no action. Forcing Amazon to exercise more due diligence on products it sells, even via 3rd party, does not seem unreasonable hardship. Especially when they've previously been notified of issues.

A brick and mortar would be liable if they knowingly sold dodgy crap from dodgy sources. No one would say "dumb customer didn't research". Why should Amazon be any different?

Esp when it comes to products with health impact. In the case of your eyes getting screwed up, I can't think of too many things with a worse outcome for people in our line of work, this ain't frivolous. In the specific case of eclipse glasses, I can see where Amazon might struggle to establish the bona fides of sellers of such temporary products though.

Re: Site for sore eyes.

"Amazon are useless at clearing out the obviously fake stuff from their site, even if you report it.... The comments are telling..."

@ Peter 26 Re: Sungazing should never be taken lightly!!

"I suspect their eyes are permanently damaged unfortunately. "

It depends a bit on the duration and level of exposure. Most people return to normal vision within 1 - 6 months, fortunately. In many cases the damage to the retina appears to be reversible (more-or-less like a sunburn to the retina). Only in fairly rare cases is the damage permanent. As you correctly state, in those cases the brain can help "work around" the damaged bits, but if the damage to the foveal area is severe in both eyes, permanent loss of visual acuity may well result.

Let's hope they fall into the larger, first category

Re: Sungazing should never be taken lightly!!

I cant help thinking that you get what you pay for, like those who buy bargain basement broadband services and then complain bitterly that they don't get full speed 24/7.

A colleague of mine says *buy cheap - buy twice" and to some extent he is right, I'm not saying that a high price is always a sign of quality - but many seem to be guided by price rather than doing some real research into products - including a look at any reviews or recommendations from those who already tried the products.

Optional

It's like suing The Trafford Centre/Metro Centre/Bluewater for buying something dodgy from an independent shop inside. Obviously if you bought them from a big name shop then there's money to be bled so you would be better off going for them than Amazon. Doubtful in this case.

Re: Get out the popcorn

Customers can sue Amazon, and Amazon can hunt down the manafacturers to recoup its court losses, but won't get anything from fly-by-night scammers in China.

Reputable companies will refuse to do business with dodgy companies - or distribute dodgy products - that expose them to massive liability, reputational damage, or criminal prosecution. If Amazon routinely turns a blind eye (d'oh) it deserves to be DESTROYED.

Ebay, Newegg, Steam, Apple, Google, and many others have entered the "3rd-party marketplace" business. They seem all too happy to take a hefty cut of 3rd-party sales while doing precious little to earn it. Some of them obscure the fact that the seller is a 3rd party, and most of them fail to identify and remove bad actors in a timely fashion. Time to face the consequences.

Re: Get out the popcorn

If the glasses were brought from a third party vendor are Amazon responsible for any refunds requested? I'm not sure that they are, any more that a towns market operator would be responsible for refunding a faulty product brought from one of the market stalls.

Re: Get out the popcorn

"Amazon whilst a retailer, is also a market place. If they were sold by a 3rd party on Amazon, then I don't believe they can be held liable - Its akin to buying something from a market stool, then sueing the location owner."

No it isn't, as the money is given to Amazon, who then pay someone else. It's more like a subcontractor, and you don't have to sue the guy the construction company brought in to do the painting, you sue your construction company.

Re: Get out the popcorn

"Amazon whilst a retailer, is also a market place. If they were sold by a 3rd party on Amazon, then I don't believe they can be held liable"

You can't turn a profit without accepting liability, or are you proposing a risk-free business model?