Medium Investigates The Secret Supply Chain Behind AmazonBasics (medium.com) 100
"I heard the 'pop!' from my living room as a brand-new pack of Amazon batteries spontaneously exploded on the kitchen counter, oozing a gritty black substance in fits and spurts," reports the staff writer for Medium's new tech site, OneZero. But that was just the beginning of a larger mystery, according to their article (shared by Slashdot reader peterthegreat321):
The small, unassuming item is one of Amazon's most popular "in-house" products sold under the AmazonBasics label. With nearly 20,000 customer reviews, its popularity dwarfs that of most other AmazonBasics items, which include electronics, homewares, and random odds and ends. The batteries are also highly rated -- had I received a defective set? I scoured the comments page for the alkaline battery for reviews containing the word "explode," revealing dozens of experiences like mine. One person said the batteries had burst in their wife's breast pump. Others had toys and appliances ruined by leaky fluid. Some customers blamed this on alleged Chinese manufacturing, but Amazon vaguely claims in the product's description that they are "made in Indonesia using Japanese technology."
Over the past month, I have tried to uncover the hidden life cycle of this simple AmazonBasics battery. Amazon is fiercely secretive about its corporate footprint and masks its operations through a discreet network of outsourcing, making its supply chain hard to unravel. Its AA battery is no different. The product is indeed made in Indonesia, but not by Amazon, I learned. The company buys the batteries from a supplier and reskins them as its own, much like Trader Joe's and its eponymous food brand. Amazon has never voluntarily divulged the sources of AmazonBasics items, but it confirmed OneZero's reporting on where its AA batteries come from.
Though I discovered where the batteries were made, I was unable to locate the source of their materials, for example. The difficulty in understanding the supply chain of even a simple component shows how Amazon's operations are deliberately designed to be a black box. This secrecy allows the commercial titan to be ruthlessly competitive, delivering cheaper items faster than rival stores. But it also makes it harder for consumers who wonder whether their purchases are ethically or sustainably sourced to even begin finding answers. Beyond obscuring why merchandise might be defective -- or explosive, in my case -- it hinders those of us who just want to know: Where does it all begin?
The article eventually determines that Tokyo-based Fujitsu is a "covert supplier" for AmazonBasics, operating out of "a plain white building in West Java, Indonesia." Medium's reporter also notes that Fujitsu's sustainability report "shows that its Indonesian operations are among the dirtiest, ranking the highest on waste production..."
But unfortunately, "I never discovered why my AmazonBasics batteries exploded."
Over the past month, I have tried to uncover the hidden life cycle of this simple AmazonBasics battery. Amazon is fiercely secretive about its corporate footprint and masks its operations through a discreet network of outsourcing, making its supply chain hard to unravel. Its AA battery is no different. The product is indeed made in Indonesia, but not by Amazon, I learned. The company buys the batteries from a supplier and reskins them as its own, much like Trader Joe's and its eponymous food brand. Amazon has never voluntarily divulged the sources of AmazonBasics items, but it confirmed OneZero's reporting on where its AA batteries come from.
Though I discovered where the batteries were made, I was unable to locate the source of their materials, for example. The difficulty in understanding the supply chain of even a simple component shows how Amazon's operations are deliberately designed to be a black box. This secrecy allows the commercial titan to be ruthlessly competitive, delivering cheaper items faster than rival stores. But it also makes it harder for consumers who wonder whether their purchases are ethically or sustainably sourced to even begin finding answers. Beyond obscuring why merchandise might be defective -- or explosive, in my case -- it hinders those of us who just want to know: Where does it all begin?
The article eventually determines that Tokyo-based Fujitsu is a "covert supplier" for AmazonBasics, operating out of "a plain white building in West Java, Indonesia." Medium's reporter also notes that Fujitsu's sustainability report "shows that its Indonesian operations are among the dirtiest, ranking the highest on waste production..."
But unfortunately, "I never discovered why my AmazonBasics batteries exploded."
Amazon Basics: Cheap stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
s/Amazon Basics/Amazon/ (Score:2)
I don't know why anyone would ever buy Amazon *anything*.
Their search and filtering is downright insulting. Worse than merely useful, but an active enemy.
The site solely and exclusively exists as a business Wild West rip-off platform.
Funny though, we had a local (well, at the fringes of the city) Chinese shop that did buy the most popular Amazon/E-Bay/AliExpress products, tested them, and only sold those that were acceptable. He went bankrupt.
Re:s/Amazon Basics/Amazon/ (Score:4, Funny)
It's hard to run a store if you don't have a product. :-D
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Friends of Amazon are already preemptively down-modding you [BAReFO0t] ? Why am I not surprised?
Anyway, just expressing concurrence with your comment and the one you're replying to. One choice or manipulated choice is NOT freedom, I like freedom, and therefore I stopped shopping with Amazon almost 20 years ago. The only way I can imagine shopping there again is after all other options have been eliminated, which is exactly what Bezos wants (and the stock market approves of that objective).
Amazon's true mott
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I don't know why anyone would ever buy Amazon *anything*.
At first I though you were talking about Amazon "branded" products, e.g., Amazon Basics. But given your regex subject and the fact that the rest of your post is such an irrational rant about Amazon in general, I concluded that by "...buy Amazon *anything*", you really meant "...buy *anything* from Amazon". If that's so, then you are sorely lacking in imagination. But I do believe that people who make their buying decisions based only on price are setting themselves up for disappointment. Is that what happen
Re:s/Amazon Basics/Amazon/ (Score:4, Informative)
GP is right, the Amazon search system is dire. The default "relevance" sort order is really just what Amazon wants to sell you, and because they do nothing about keyword spamming it's often hard to find the specific thing you want.
The biggest scam is that they let anyone sell any SKU without checking their products. Say you have a popular and well made powerbank. Some scammer will come along, slap the same SKU on it and undercut the real one by a few cents. Then a bunch of people buy their time-bombs based on good reviews of the real thing, and it takes a few months for the negative reviews to float towards the top because 9000 people already clicked "helpful" on the 5 star review of the old one.
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GP is right, the Amazon search system is dire. The default "relevance" sort order is really just what Amazon wants to sell you, and because they do nothing about keyword spamming it's often hard to find the specific thing you want.
The default sort isn't "relevance"; it's "featured"; even the most clueless shppers should be able to figure out who's featuring the products and why. Maybe I'm an exceptional case in that when I go looking for something on Amazon, I'm looking for something specific, usually by brand name. When I went after a new lens for my DSLR, I didn't search for "lens for Nikon"; I searched for "Sigma lens for Nikon", and that's what the search returned. Guess what -- if you search for junk, that's what you're going to
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Their search and filtering is downright insulting
I find it easier to find for what I'm looking for on Amazon than to locate the same items in today's large stores where every "employee" you can still find in the aisles is a "Sorry, I don't work for the store."
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Their search and filtering is downright insulting
I find it easier to find for what I'm looking for on Amazon than to locate the same items in today's large stores where every "employee" you can still find in the aisles is a "Sorry, I don't work for the store."
This is where I point at the words "search and filtering" and chuckle.
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It gets pretty bloated when you do a search that those in the masses would. The kind that benefits Amzn most to meddle, as opposed to putting their fingers into a search for some obscure component. eg a 2017 search for "fidget spinner" vs a search for some old printer part.
I bring this up because I did one and wondered how hard it would be to greasemonkey/etc a script that guts out of all the (plainly) sponsored skews leaving you somewhat closer to their algorithm's normal outputs and maybe some buggy-looki
Re: s/Amazon Basics/Amazon/ (Score:1)
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Don't be mean, I shop on Amazon all the time. Find what I want, narrow down the range of products and then find which ones I can buy locally and then buy them locally. I shop on Amazon to find products and get an idea of pricing and then buy elsewhere ie you have the manufacturer, find where else they sell the product and then buy it locally done and finished.
Amazon chases the lowest price, so it's suppliers, well, bad production runs are a fact of life, some tiny part breaks in the production and thousands
Consumers' associations (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon Basics is clearly super cheap stuff coming from the lowest bidder. I cannot imagine anybody would think otherwise.
Because in other countries, specially those where the "Consumers' Association" not only exist but even have some influence (e.g.: Switzerland, Germany), even "Store-branded" product have to have some standard and regularly come under close scrutiny.
If the same Explode-happy battery did show up in - e.g. Switzerland - the people responsible for that would be metaphorically hanged with their own guts.
(As a counter example, the "Store-branded" product from the Swiss big store chain, actually score quite well on quality in such consumer tests).
Meanwhile, the US waits for the invisible hand of the free market to auto-magically solve this kind of capitalistic abuses. (Reality check: no, it won't work without any remote form of regulation, because "Money!" - even if it's short-term only money).
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America is all about cheap, fast, and dumb. That's the culture, and that's the economy. It's kinda' gross.
You misspelled "Walmart".
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Walmart... gross...
To-may-to... to-mah-to...
I'm kidding, I'm kidding... Clearly you meant to say that the American word for culture is "Walmart".
Which is a different kind of gross.
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American word for culture is "Walmart".
And all Irishmen are drunks. Stop with the stupid shit.
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Be glad shit is stupid. Consider the alternative.
Re:Consumers' associations (Score:5, Interesting)
If the same Explode-happy battery did show up in - e.g. Switzerland - the people responsible for that would be metaphorically hanged with their own guts.
Clearly false, since Amazon-branded batteries are indeed available in Switzerland (and Germany), and nobody has been metaphorically hanged with their own guts.
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Re: Consumers' associations (Score:2)
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Bargain associations (Score:2)
Quality. Safety. Selfish? Interesting priorities.
Amazon is a US company (Score:2)
Clearly false, since Amazon-branded batteries are indeed available in Switzerland (and Germany), and nobody has been metaphorically hanged with their own guts.
Amazon is a US based company. European presence is in France and Germany. There is no Amazon Switzerland.
(And despite how US tries to do it's politics, it happens that a country's legal framework only applies within that country's border).
That means that even it they score horribly in safety test, there's nothing that the Swiss Consumers' associations can do beside complain loudly in their press and TV shows. (And this is actually the situation with lots of other imported products from e-Shops. Medical drug
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Given it's Amazon, it's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the batteries that get shipped to a German or Switz address are not the same as the ones that get sent to a USA address.
Re:Amazon Basics: Cheap stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
But it also makes it harder for consumers who wonder whether their purchases are ethically or sustainably sourced to even begin finding answers.
If you have to wonder, then the answer is No.
If it were sustainable, free trade, ethical, etc... marketing would be shouting it in your face.
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And even then you can't be sure. Is "Fair Trade" Coffee really better? I've seen some articles suggesting otherwise, but who know who is telling the truth?
Re: Amazon Basics: Cheap stuff (Score:2)
Just because something is made by the lowest bidder doesnâ(TM)t mean itâ(TM)s the lowest quality. Maybe they are less greedy, can live on less, and use innovative manufacturing technology.
Re: Amazon Basics: Cheap stuff (Score:2)
Except in this case it's a Japanese company that has chosen a country with poor environmental regulations so it can save money by not managing its pollution
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At the local grocery store here, many of the store branded products are actually superior (subjectively and objectively) to the premium brands they are positioned against as well as being cheaper. Perhaps people were expecting similar at Amazon.
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Amazon Basics is clearly super cheap stuff coming from the lowest bidder. I cannot imagine anybody would think otherwise. If you care about ethical sourcing of products, you would obviously not buy any Amazon Basics products. If you care about ethically run businesses, you would obviously not purchase from Amazon.
In my experience Amazon Basic cables are descent quality and have had less problems from other random suppliers.
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I've only ever bought AmazonBasics for computer cables. They've all worked fine for me. They're way higher quality than cables from Monoprice, and don't really seem any different than cables from other common brands.
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how would paying more for a product in any way guarantee a higher standard?
My experience with their Basics stuff has been ... (Score:3)
Mixed:
3 HDMI cables in 2 different orders - 2 came bad, took a long time to figure out because cables like these rarely just go bad. I thought it was the TV for awhile.
Pack of AAA batteries - I don't know, they were included with a gift to someone else.
Pack of C batteries - I don't know, they were included with a gift to someone else.
Cheap power strip, seems okay but very cheaply made.
These are fairly recent, the last time I bought batteries I got Energerizer rather than get Basics after reading reviews and some other people running tests on them. This just seems to be more of their service going downhill. I think they think they're big enough that their reputation no longer matters.
Batteries (Score:3)
Pack of AAA batteries - I don't know, they were included with a gift to someone else.
Pack of C batteries - I don't know, they were included with a gift to someone else.
If you need batteries, skip this kind of crap.
Buy instead rechargeable NiMH one, with low discharge rates (the "ready to use" kind) from some reputable brand (e.g.: Sanyo/Panasonic's Eneloop).
Re: Batteries (Score:2)
Yep stick to the reputable versions of Rechargeable batteries. I have a good charger that can ârefreshâ(TM) and test the batteries by doing full charge/discharge cycles and the Eneloop ones slowly drop their max capacity while the ones from cheaper brands are far from being nearly as good, even if they claim higher factory capacity. Some of the cheap brands are a little fat and donâ(TM)t always fit well.
I donâ(TM)t buy disposable AA or AAA batteries anymore, neither should anybody. Sure
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I donâ(TM)t buy disposable AA or AAA batteries anymore, neither should anybody. Sure they might not last as long as some of the disposable high end ones but I just pop an other set of pre-charged batteries and they have paid for themselves many times over.
I'm not sure about your market, but where I live Eneloop is around 14x more expensive than commodity alkaline cells (and still cheaper than either popular seller on Amazon). They may not pay for themselves before loss, damage, or old age, but the performance should be better than alkaline in any case that needs medium or high current draw. It's nice knowing I won't need more for ten years, and them being rechargeable is a perk. But price? At best it's a wash.
* If I didn't buy low self-discharge NiMH, then I
Different LSD variants. (Score:3)
Sure they might not last as long as some of the disposable high end ones but I just pop an other set of pre-charged batteries and they have paid for themselves many times over.
Also, speaking of Eneloop, they nowadays have different variants with different compromise on the low-self-discharge vs capacity scale.
(Same probably applies with other big quality LSD batteries).
Next to the white Eneloop (with such a low discharge rate that they have shelf life in the range of 10 years, practically similar to alkaline batteries), there are the black Eneloop Pro with larger capacities (2500mAh vs 1800mAh) and worse discharge rates (they only hold charge for a year or so) which are very usef
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I got a bad HDMI cable from them too. It worked partially, just not at the max resolution it was rated for. Seemed like someone may have simply relabeled cheaper HDMI cables and hoped nobody would notice.
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Then Target and Wal Mart turned
'I never discovered why' (Score:2)
Also on Amazon even if you do buy name brand there seem to be a lot of complaints about coin batteries like the cr2032s usually being very old stock or worse having a good expiration date but are dead anyway. I bought mine at Best Buy with their $5 mystery reward coupon, price was close enough with the coupon and I got to pick o
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I’ve never had any real problem with AmazonBasics batteries, although I didn’t think they were particularly good compared to other alkalines. Nowadays, though, I just buy the giant packs of Duracells at Costco.
Re: 'I never discovered why' (Score:1)
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You still trust Duracell?
https://www.complaintsboard.co... [complaintsboard.com]
In recent years the reputation for quality seems to be eaten away by leaking batteries.
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There's the problem. Many name brands these days are also the cheap stuff from the low bidder, but the branded wrapper costs a lot more (and contributes nothing).
They all claim to be the very best with no consequences for the liar, and they frequently change vendors, so brand name is no longer a useful metric for choosing price vs. quality.
Mmm? Shipping center. (Score:1)
Amazon doesn't make things. It sells things made by other people. If you go to your supermarket, did you expect it to have grown all of the produce? Did you expect it to have detailed records of everyone who handmade your detergent lovingly from scratch, from five different countries, in large industrial factories?
Get along with you now. I know Buzzfeed is somehow a success. This is still more brain-damaged gibberish than I usually expect from Slashdot.
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On the other hand, some brands are more careful than than others with the quality of the things they stick their name on.
PROTIP: Popularity means nothing. (Score:2)
See: Ad populum (logical fallacy)
Especially when faking the entire review situation and scores online is trivially easy.
(There are entities selling CAPTCHA solving services by the 1000s. Everything is easily automated. The hardest part is making it look as stupid as the average user.)
This sounds familiar ... (Score:2)
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It's not like it's a conspiracy to thwart the media, either. Hardly anybody can trace their own products all the way back to dirt.
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> Hardly anybody can trace their own products all the way back to dirt.
I guess journalists are hardly anybody.
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Man, if you could show someone in the early 80's this thing called the internet and specifically your comment about Japanese quality on this thing called a website forum they would just be all sorts of mind fucked.
I don't understand this story (Score:1)
Re: I don't understand this story (Score:2)
I use the batteries (Score:3)
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Inferior to Eneloop...I've given up on AmazonBasic (Score:2)
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The problem is that they are inconsistent. You might get a good batch because that's what Amazon bought in that week, leave a good review and then the next sucker gets a bad batch that explodes. Amazon keeps using the same product code even though the batteries are made in a different factory.
This is very common, unfortunately. IT equipment suffers from it too. I remember Belkin made a single model of WiFi card with about 9 different revisions, each with a different chipset and driver. Reviews were complete
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Never had one explode.
But... precious snowflakes believe their anecdotes are statistics.
To be clear, not you. The author of the original report. Clearly if their battery "exploded", there's something wrong going on. Despite the product being a best-seller (meaning massive distribution) and despite there being as massive leaning towards good reviews, finding "dozens" of instances of failure reinforces that precious snowflake's experience isn't an outlier. Let's even invoke an example of one that "exploded" in a breast-pump,
As opposed to what? (Score:3)
So this is supposed to be in contrast to how "brand name" companies behave? Do you know what the supply chain is for Duracell or Energizer? Where are those batteries made? Where are their components sourced from? How is that different from AmazonBasics (or private label Walmart batteries for that matter)?
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It's not really name brand vs. generic, it's all others vs. Amazon. I've certainly heard of batteries leaking, though that happens a lot less frequently these days, I haven't heard about plain old alkaline batteries venting noticeably without obvious abuse until now. That includes name brands, store brands, off-brands, and the never even heard of it ones that are included with something once in a blue moon.
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The only reason you hear about Amazon products failing is because Amazon is stupid enough to provide buyers of their dollar store grade goods a online forum to bitch about their products.
Harbor freight and Dollar General don't have feedback on items on their websites for a reason.
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Does aduracel have an unmoderated feedback page for people to post their bad experiences with their product? No. If you wanted to find out about Duracell Battery failures how would you do it? How would you share your negative experiences with Duracell batteries?
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They'll need at tit for that tat.
Sorry. Low hanging fruit.
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Still beats Duracell (Score:2)
I don’t get too worried about Basics stuff, but it is a shame what Duracell has become. But, for the most part I am pretty happy with my Basics purchases- the cables have tended to hold up, and some generic little doodads have lasted pretty well.
seriously (Score:2)
did you seriously even for a moment think that amazon was making their own batteries, along with the other half trillion other items they sell with their name on it? my god how daft are you in the way the world works
Dollar store batteries (Score:2)
I like dollar store batteries. They are a lot cheaper than Amazon batteries at 6 or 8 or 10 for $1. They work well enough that any other choice seems like a poor price/performance trade off.
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The dollar store is where I buy birthday and holiday cards. I guess they are a year “out of date”, so to speak, but that’s meaningless unless you’re buying a “Happy 2020” card... bad poetry and sickly sweet sentiment is timeless.
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I bought H-E-B branded AA batteries for my camera (remember those?) and I'd shot hundred of thousands of photos and could tell right away that they were crap for my task. I don't use house branded batteries any more.
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If you want the best batteries at the lowest price buy Panasonic, they're the #1 R&D company for batteries but they never had success at building up their brand name to charge higher prices.
The result is the quality is the same as Energizer, but the price is lower.
Garbage. (Score:3)
We got an Amazon Basics camp toaster, which is just some bits of metal to spread heat and hold toast. But I never could use it because even after washing it repeatedly and heating it repeatedly it continued to smell like machine oil, and I threw it away. I presume the metal was pickled in oil or some other such repugnant shit, and I'll never buy another Amazon Basics item again. They lost all my future possible purchases of their crap over a sub-$3 shitwafer. I'm just glad it wasn't anything of consequence.
Medium? (Score:1)
"Medium Investigates The Secret Supply Chain Behind AmazonBasics"
I assume the Medium used a séance and asked a few dead people about this 'problem'.
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"Medium Investigates The Secret Supply Chain Behind AmazonBasics"
I assume the Medium used a séance and asked a few dead people about this 'problem'.
As for me, I find this remark off-topic.
However, I was amused, so thank you for that.
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I thought they were going to ask the Ghost of Mom and Pop Retail.
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The fact that you have so many unanswered questions kinda answers your question.
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If some fancy-pants Amazon lawyer claims I staged the whole event by baking the battery in the oven to make it burst, how can I prove the product was indeed defective and I am for some kind of compensation?
This is why people should try harder to understand what the word "proof" means in different real-world contexts.
You only have to prove it to the Preponderance of Evidence standard. If they simply say that they think you staged it in the oven, and you say that it blew up in your hand, and you have an injured hand, the only evidence anybody has either way is your injured hand. That means 100% of the evidence supports your story, and their battery did blow up in your hand.
So they won't say that. They'll only b
Root cause goof (Score:2)
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Amazon would like better quality so should have a system.
Pure assertion that doesn't match the evidence.
The evidence available is that Amazon wants lower costs, not higher quality. Higher quality would increase costs.
Shocked! (Score:2)
I scoured the comments page for the alkaline battery for reviews containing the word "explode," revealing dozens of experiences like mine. One person said the batteries had burst in their wife's breast pump. Others had toys and appliances ruined by leaky fluid. Some customers blamed this on alleged Chinese manufacturing, but Amazon vaguely claims in the product's description that they are "made in Indonesia using Japanese technology."
I am shocked that the cheapest batteries you can find might wind up destroying your battery-operated device! Who knew.
Medium did not investigate this (Score:2)
Medium is not a news outlet. They don't investigate shit. Does the author commune with spirits?
Energizer and Duracel sometimes explode too (Score:2)
Yeah, Amazon Basics are cheap. But everybody's batteries sometimes explode.
Odd...I find them better than average (Score:2)
Mostly in regards to their rechargeable batteries, which I have purchased dozens and dozens of without a problem. Found them to work better than Energizer rechargeables. (Oh, and if you're wondering why I needed dozens. I got tired of intermittently used Xbox 360 controller battery packs dying and simply went with the AA attachments. Also had a few remove control boats, and the controllers used like a whole pack of AA each.)
And I have used a fair number of their charging cables, now granted many of those d