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# What is a CPSC product safety warning?
- URL: https://www.freshfromcache.com/what-is-a-cpsc-product-safety-warning/
- Published: 2026-08-20T11:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T10:59:59.000Z
- Description: A second kind of safety notice has grown to a fifth of the total, and it comes with no refund. Here is what to check before you buy a charger, a power strip, or a power bank.
- Author: Joel Folgner
- Tags: Learn, Explainers, Consumer Tech, Safety

On the last day of March, the Consumer Product Safety Commission told Americans to stop using eight different extension cords. Eight warnings in one day. All eight were a cord with a standard wall plug on both ends, sold for feeding generator power into a house through an outlet. The prongs on the loose end go live the moment the other end is plugged in. The agency's acting chairman called them "suicide cords" and said they have "no legitimate household use."

Not one of those eight notices came with a refund, a repair, or a replacement.

A product safety warning is different from a recall, and it has grown from a rounding error to about a fifth of everything CPSC publishes. If you buy cheap electronics online, as we probably all have, this is the notice you are most likely to get. So it pays to know what it is, why it comes empty-handed, and what you can check before the purchase instead of after.

## A recall is a deal

The safety notice most of us picture is a recall. A recall has a company on the other end. Under the law, CPSC almost never orders one outright. It negotiates. The manufacturer, importer, or retailer agrees to a corrective plan, and that agreement is what puts the "contact us for a full refund" line in the notice. The remedy exists because a company signed up to provide it.

![CPSC recall notice for A2batt EEMB lithium coin battery chargers, showing a Remedy section offering a full refund and an orange Consumer Contact box with an email address and website.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7f/c4/7fc42d60-e465-4098-9ae3-9930d415307c/content/images/2026/08/inline-recall-a2batt.png)

A recall for a different charger. Same agency, same kind of notice, but there is a Remedy section and a Consumer Contact box, because a company agreed to provide one.

A product safety warning is what happens when there is nobody to negotiate with. The agency has the authority to publish what it knows about a dangerous product without the company's cooperation. A warning can tell you the gadget in your kitchen drawer might burn your house down, but it cannot force anyone to pay you back.

Here is what that looks like on a real product. In October 2024 the agency warned about Garberiel lithium-ion battery chargers, made by Jisell Inc. of China and sold on Amazon and Newegg since 2019\. Six fires. One of them killed a 74-year-old in Shreveport, Louisiana. The chargers went for ten to eighteen dollars. The fatal fire was in December 2019, and the warning came out in October 2024.

The entire remedy in that notice is one sentence. "CPSC urges consumers to immediately unplug the charger and dispose of it." No refund, no replacement, and no phone number to call, because there is nobody on the other end to answer it.

![CPSC product safety warning for Garberiel lithium-ion battery chargers, dated October 10, 2024, listing the hazard and a consumer action of unplug and dispose. No remedy or consumer contact section appears.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7f/c4/7fc42d60-e465-4098-9ae3-9930d415307c/content/images/2026/08/inline-warning-garberiel.png)

A warning. Hazard, consumer action, date. There is no Remedy line and no Consumer Contact box, because there is nobody on the other end to provide one.

It is not an unusual notice. NEWDERY power banks drew nine reports of fires, including one that did $2 million in damage, and the importer "has refused to conduct a recall." Yiisonger power banks, about 93,000 of them, drew 79 reports including a $15 million fire, and that company "has been unresponsive to CPSC requests." Stop using it, throw it away, eat the cost. That is the whole notice.

When the seller does pick up the phone, the same product can change lanes. CPSC warned about CCCEI power strips in March because the retailer "has not agreed to an acceptable recall." Three weeks later it had agreed, and the warning became a recall with a refund. Same power strip with the same hazard. The difference between the two notices came down to whether the company answered when the government called.

## One notice in five

In 2021, CPSC published 219 recalls and five warnings. In 2025, there were 420 recalls and 120 warnings, and so far this year, it's about the same rate. Warnings went from around 2 percent of the agency's safety notices to around 22 percent in four years. Those counts come from CPSC's own recall and warning files.

Looking at the recall column, it went up too. 2025 was the biggest year for recalls since 2007\. Warnings are not replacing recalls. They are a second lane, built for products that the recall system cannot reach.

Which products those are is not subtle. Of the 215 warnings issued since the start of 2025, 178 list China as where the product was made. About three in four name Amazon among the places it sold. That looks like a China story, but it is jurisdictional. The recall law reaches manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Meaning someone with a US presence and something to lose. A storefront name on a marketplace, shipping direct from a warehouse overseas, is none of those things. There is no one to order, no one to fine, and nothing to seize.

## The Amazon fight

There is a live attempt to fix part of the problem. In July 2024, CPSC ruled that Amazon legally counts as a distributor of the third-party products it warehouses and ships through Fulfillment by Amazon. The order that followed in January 2025 requires Amazon to email everyone who bought some 400,000 hazardous items (carbon monoxide detectors that fail to detect, hair dryers with no shock protection, children's sleepwear that violates flammability rules), to put notices on each buyer's 'Your Orders' page, and to refund people who show proof they destroyed or threw out the product. Nothing gets mailed back. The point is getting the hazard out of circulation, not restocking it. Amazon is suing to undo the order. It says it is a logistics provider, not a distributor, and it says it already notified and refunded those buyers on its own. As I write this, there has been no ruling and no settlement.

That fight also does not touch the rest of it. When you buy from Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop, or AliExpress and the package comes to your door straight from overseas, no US company ever owns the product. Even if CPSC wins outright against Amazon, none of those purchases are covered.

## Notification

A recalled car gets you a letter in the mail, because registration ties your name to the vehicle. Consumer products have no equivalent. The registration cards that come in the box are required by law only for durable baby gear like cribs, high chairs, and play yards. The other marks a gadget carries, an FCC ID or a safety-lab logo, certify the design. They do not register the buyer. No charger, power bank, cord, or power strip comes with a required registration card.

So for a direct-shipped purchase, there is no list anywhere connecting you to the product. The notification plan, in full, is that you happen to see the news. You can improve your own odds by signing up for CPSC's email alerts at cpsc.gov, and that is about it.

## Four things to check before you buy

- **Learn the visible tell for the product you are buying, when it has one.** A few product types have a required safety feature you can spot in the listing photo. Hair dryers are the clearest case. The block on the plug is immersion protection, and federal rule 16 CFR 1120.3 makes a handheld hair dryer without it illegal to sell in the US. No block, no purchase. Chargers and power banks have no visible tell like that, which is what the next three checks are for.
- **Check the safety mark against the directory, not the sticker.** Most legitimate electronics carry a UL or ETL mark. Those are the logos of the two big US safety-testing labs, and they mean a sample of the product passed testing to US safety standards. Counterfeiters print the logos anyway. A real certification has a file number you can look up at UL Product iQ (productiq.ulprospector.com) or Intertek's ETL directory. A listing there proves a certification exists for that model. Finding nothing may mean it's counterfeit.
- **Read the seller's address, not just the name.** A federal law called the INFORM Consumers Act has required this since 2023\. Any marketplace seller doing $20,000 or more a year has to show a name, a physical address, and some way to reach them. On Amazon it sits at the bottom of the seller's page under 'Detailed Seller Information'. I went looking for a listing that showed nothing at all and could not find one, so the question is not whether the address is there. It is what the address says. The last line is the country. I found a $9.68 wall charger sold by a company in Hong Kong, another seller whose address is printed only in Chinese characters, and a Temu store in Shenzhen whose only contact is the app's chat window. All three follow the law. None of them is a company anyone here can make answer for anything. Anker's listing gives a California address and a toll-free number a person picks up. That is the same difference that decides whether a bad product gets a recall or a warning.
- **Search the brand and model at cpsc.gov.** Recalls and warnings are both found there, and SaferProducts.gov holds incident reports from other owners. A hit means you should probably walk away. A clean search is not a confirmation though, since most of these products are never tested. It just proves nobody has been caught yet.

![Amazon seller page for a $9.68 wall charger, showing Detailed Seller Information with a Hong Kong business address ending in the country code HK.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7f/c4/7fc42d60-e465-4098-9ae3-9930d415307c/content/images/2026/08/inline-seller-hongkong.png)

The law works. A $9.68 charger, and the seller is disclosed exactly as required. The line that matters is the last one.

![Amazon seller page for AnkerDirect, showing a US customer service phone number, a 30-day money-back guarantee and an 18-month warranty.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7f/c4/7fc42d60-e465-4098-9ae3-9930d415307c/content/images/2026/08/inline-seller-anker.png)

The same disclosure on a company with a US presence, including a phone number a person picks up.

## If you already own one

Search the product you are wondering about the same way. If it turns up in a warning, stop using it. The refund is not coming. Get the money back only if the purchase is recent enough for the marketplace's own return window, but do not count on it.

Dispose of anything with a lithium battery at household hazardous waste, not in the trash or the recycling bin, where crushed batteries start fires. And if the product ever misbehaved, file a report at SaferProducts.gov. The NEWDERY and Yiisonger warnings both started as consumer reports.

## Making a case for the agency

It would be easy to read all of this as a regulator failing, but that is not what the numbers show. Recalls went up too, and 2025 was the biggest year for them since 2007\. A negotiated recall takes months and a contested one takes years, while a warning goes out in days. And the remedy being mourned is one that is hardly used. CPSC's own workshop data puts recall participation around 6 percent of affected products overall, and near 4 percent for products under $20\. On a ten dollar charger, roughly 24 buyers out of 25 never claim the refund even when there is one. A warning the press spreads the same week may protect more people than that refund ever would.

The agency is also using tools it hasn't for decades. In July, CPSC went to federal court under its imminent-hazard authority for the first time since 1987, over Lakkzoom immersion water heaters. About 98,000 sold, 235 fire reports, both companies in China. The suit asks a judge to order a recall that nobody agreed to. No decision yet. That power was there the whole time. Nobody reached for it.

CPSC has proposed a mandatory safety standard for the lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes, scooters, and hoverboards. These products are behind 39 deaths in the agency's own 2019 to 2023 incident count. Public comments close August 24\. That rule covers e-bikes, and it often gets conflated with phone chargers. But they are different problems. There is no equivalent count for chargers and power banks. Deaths like the one in Shreveport turn up one at a time, inside individual notices, and nobody adds them together.

## A refund tells a story

When a safety notice comes with your money back, that means somebody in this country is answering for the product. When it comes with nothing, nobody is. The best time to find that out is before the purchase.

So run the seller check on the next cheap charger you buy. Scroll to the bottom of the seller's page and read the last line of the address. That one line tells you whether anybody in this country is on the hook for what shows up at your door.

Now I am curious about the other end of this. Have you ever actually sent a recalled product back, or claimed one of those refunds? I never have. If you did, I want to hear how it went.

**Sources**

The counts, pulled and totalled for this piece on August 18, 2026: [CPSC's product safety warning listing](https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/recall-data/product%5Fsafety%5Fwarning%5Flisting.csv?ref=freshfromcache.com) and [CPSC's recall data](https://www.saferproducts.gov/RestWebServices/Recall?format=json&ref=freshfromcache.com). Recall totals were counted for every year back to 2007, which is where the "biggest year since 2007" line comes from.

The chargers: warning 25-004 (Garberiel, October 10, 2024) carries the Jisell attribution, the six incidents, the death in Shreveport and the price bands. The refusal and unresponsive language comes from warnings 25-327 (NEWDERY) and 25-270 (Yiisonger). CCCEI was warning 26-313 on March 5, 2026 and became recall 26-346 three weeks later.

The extension cords: [CPSC, March 31, 2026](https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2026/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-to-Stop-Using-Male-to-Male-Extension-Cords-Secures-Delisting-Commitments-from-e-Commerce-Platforms?ref=freshfromcache.com)

Amazon: [CPSC final order, January 17, 2025](https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2025/CPSC-Issues-Final-Order-to-Amazon-com-Outlining-Remediation-Plans-for-Hazardous-Products?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [Amazon.com, Inc. v. CPSC, the complaint](https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amazon-CPSC-lawsuit.pdf?ref=freshfromcache.com)

The water heaters: [CPSC, July 22, 2026](https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2026/CPSC-Exercises-Section-12-Imminent-Hazard-Authority-for-First-Time-in-Nearly-40-Years-Warns-Consumers-to-Stop-Using-Lakkzoom-Immersion-Water-Heaters?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [the Justice Department on the complaint](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-complaint-against-manufacturer-and-retailer-allegedly-imminently?ref=freshfromcache.com)

The rules and the numbers: [16 CFR 1120.3, hair dryers and immersion protection](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-II/subchapter-B/part-1120/section-1120.3?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [FTC guidance on the INFORM Consumers Act](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/informing-businesses-about-inform-consumers-act?ref=freshfromcache.com) and [the statute itself](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45f?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [the recall participation figures, from CPSC's 2017 workshop](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/press/dem/release/chair-cantwell-calls-on-cpsc-to-improve-its-hazardous-toy-recall-system-as-holiday-shopping-heats-up-2021-11/?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [the lithium-ion battery proposal, comments close August 24, 2026](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12749/safety-standard-for-lithium-ion-batteries-in-micromobility-products?ref=freshfromcache.com)

Where to run the checks: [CPSC recalls and warnings](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [SaferProducts.gov](https://www.saferproducts.gov/?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [UL Product iQ](https://productiq.ulprospector.com/?ref=freshfromcache.com) · [Intertek ETL directory](https://www.intertek.com/directories/etl-listed-mark/?ref=freshfromcache.com)