4 ms·

I recall a holocaust among hand crafted toys, a few years ago: They were enforcing "materiel origin" labeling or something and you couldn't sell home made toys

I recall a holocaust among hand crafted toys, a few years ago: They were enforcing "materiel origin" labeling or something and you couldn't sell home made toys without a lot of paperwork to certify they were lead free. Amazon is too big for laws to apply, and its umbrella apparently covers foreign sellers on its platform. Another fun toy they sell is the "heated shower heads", a tankless water heater element integrated with a shower head, and usually provided with a standard electrical cord. The safety of these items is obviously good enough that we don't have multiple stories of electrocutions from them, but it doesn't seem right that Amazon can sell these to people where Lowes and other hardware stores cannot.

mmastrac 4y ago
At some point they just became too big for government to manage compliance with existing laws - that should have a sign that it was time to start looking at breaking them up. I cannot believe the volume of crap I'm getting from Amazon. The quality of products has nose-dived and I no longer trust them for purchasing easily-counterfeited items (like SD cards).
- fullstop 4y ago
  That, and the brands are clearly from a Chinese Name Generator, so you end up with Rabbitgoo branded products. Once those start to fail or enough people leave bad reviews the company disappears and pops up again as Luckyfang. It's whack-a-mole, and untrustworthy. If I wanted those products I'd shop aliexpress.
  - mmastrac 4y ago
    Ah yes, the Ali* name generator machine. If all I can find are Rabbitgoo/Luckyfang products on Amazon, I just skip the middleman and order from AliExpress. I don't even trust the middlemen to stand behind the products these days. Most of the time they just relabel it with a more western name and don't add any sort of QA -- just drop-shipping.
  - geocrasher 4y ago
    This is my sentiment, too. I tried to shop for $20-30 dress shirts in 6XLT, and it was a hot mess of availability and off brands. No thanks. Spent $70 at a local store instead.
abracadaniel 4y ago
Funny how quickly the sales tax loophole was fixed, since it directly affected legislatures, but bypassing consumer protection laws at massive scales gets ignored.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Once Amazon went national and retail is already on life support, the sales tax loophole didn’t have much protection. It just made it easier for smaller competitors to take some of their business. Especially nowadays when eBay even collects sales taxes on sales into states (even sales from me as a Canadian).
zibby8 4y ago
Are you sure that Lowes can't sell heated shower heads? Maybe they choose not to sell them for liability reasons.
- ABeeSea 4y ago
  Or demand reasons. If Amazon only sells a couple dozen a year, they just need to keep a few in a single warehouse at all times whereas lowes would need to keep it in stock in a minimum number of stores that is greater than 1.
  - ridgered4 4y ago
    My experience with Lowes has been they "carry" many items that can actually only be shipped to you or the store after being purchased online.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  Don't pretend that "liability reasons" is due to ethical concerns about the safety of the product. Someone would buy it off a shelf at Lowes, would take Lowes to court, and Lowes would lose. It wouldn't be profitable. Conversely, if someone bought a dodgy product from a drop-shipper listing on Amazon and got hurt by it, do you think that Amazon would be successfully sued? Empirically, that happens but they're still profitable and and still not refusing to list products for safety except in the most egregious circumstances. Would you sue the drop-shipper? They'd probably disappear or have zero assets. Would you sue the overseas manufacturer? Good luck with that! The fact that it's profitable for Amazon and not for Lowes is exactly what the parent meant when they said "...it doesn't seem right that Amazon can sell these to people where Lowes and other hardware stores cannot."
  - culturestate 4y ago
    > Don't pretend that "liability reasons" is due to ethical concerns about the safety of the product. Someone would buy it off a shelf at Lowes, would take Lowes to court, and Lowes would lose. Is this not exactly what “liability reasons” implies? Surely if it was an ethical argument they would’ve written “ethical reasons” instead.
tyingq 4y ago
There's a terrifying teardown of one of those heated shower heads here: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/25/electric-shower-head-tear-down-makes-us-wince/ https://hackaday.com/2018/08/25/electric-shower-head-tear-do... When he opens it, the ground wire is just floating in the enclosure, not hooked up to anything. Contacts that would mechanically fail to shorted, etc. He also mentions it flows ~24 amps of 220V on the high setting.
- mmastrac 4y ago
  > The green wire which is a neutral has no place to fasten inside the plastic body. It just goes inside, connects to nothing, while being exposed in the path of the water, presumably to keep water that was too conductive from shocking you I have nothing to say to this. Wow.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Maybe I’m dumb but what else would the ground on a completely plastic enclosure be connected to?
    - tyingq 4y ago
      The ground wire is floating in an area that would have water in it, sometimes being electrically connected to the water, sometimes not, depending on the flow, how the wire is bent, etc. He measures leaking voltage to the pipe and the water and gets readings. There are actual safe inline electric water heaters with inbuilt GFCI, proper grounding, probably other protective circuits, etc.
- Shorel 4y ago
  I used them for over 20 years in South America. I even burned them many times, to the dismay of my dad. I burned them because I wanted hotter water, and closed the water line as much as I can, the resistance heated up to red and then melted. The fact that ground contacts the water is by design. As far as I know, no one has ever been electrocuted by using one of these showers, not even me, so used to burn them. The only reason I use gas heaters now is: I can shower with hot enough water for a long time. So that teardown can be terrifying to you, but millions of South Americans pay no attention to such fear mongering at all. They are safe for people.
ridgered4 4y ago
IIRC that lead law was spawned in response to Mattel selling lead painted toys and Mattel was made exempt!
stefan_ 4y ago
Amazon is the magic law blanket. They take the payment, they store the goods, they ship the wares.. but it's WAGANFU brand that they have no serviceable address for that is responsible?
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Gotta love limited liability! I believe American Express was one of the last public companies to convert from unlimited liability to limited.
  - morpheuskafka 4y ago
    That's not what limited liability means. It's about the owners/investors/shareholders of the company not being personally liable for debts (court judgements or loan payments) in excess of the company's assets. Without it, simply holding stock in a company could theoretically expose someone to unlimited losses if the company had more liabilities than assets for whatever reason. A history of the application of limited liability to corporations: https://www.bus.umich.edu/KresgeLibrary/resources/abla/abld_4.1.11-33.pdf https://www.bus.umich.edu/KresgeLibrary/resources/abla/abld_.... The term "limited liability company" was created much more recently to as a sort of corporation-lite entity that had this essential attribute without all the other corporate formalities. The tax laws decided to treat LLCs as non-corporations unless the elected otherwise, removing one of the major costs of having the liability protection. Partnerships, the default/unorganized form of joint business ventures, do not have liability protection. Later, limited partnerships were created that did, but limited partners could not participate in everyday business. Thus, the corporation and later LLC were the only forms that allowed managing investors to protect themselves from excess business liability. This has nothing to do with whether or not Amazon is liable for products third parties sell on their site.
cyral 4y ago
And of course the "brands" selling these products are under random names like SFHBEE that will disappear overnight. No accountability if anything goes wrong. This is a good thread on it: https://twitter.com/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440 https://twitter.com/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440
GnarfGnarf 4y ago
In 1968 Bolivia, the only way you could shower is with these heated heads, because there were no hot water tanks. 220v, with exposed connectors. So anyway I'm standing in the shower under one of these heads, feet in a puddle. I raise my arm to wash an armpit, and the back of my hand touches the bare connector. It tingled a bit.
- rdl 4y ago
  Multiple people in the military in Iraq died in shower trailers on bases (2003-2008) due to improper wiring. I went into one where you could detect current in metal walls (not in the shower area, but an ungrounded piece of backsplash and shelving above sink...); I had someone stand in front of the door to keep people out and went over to the base electricians to yell at them.
  - lfowles 4y ago
    I remember one summer camp I went to as a kid where the showers were "spicy". Much in the same way a 9 volt battery feels on your tongue. In hindsight... what the hell???
    - rdl 4y ago
      Yeah -- especially given that skin itself isn't a great conductor, for it to feel like 9v on (even wet) skin vs. on your tongue, it's substantially more than a 9v battery...
- darrylb42 4y ago
  I visited Costa Rica this year and this is what the rental house had. Bit freaky.
mmastrac 4y ago
I was curious and found this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/IHeat-2-5-kW-1-5-GPM-Electric-Shower-Head-Tankless-Water-Heater-AHSH2500/205602695 https://www.homedepot.com/p/IHeat-2-5-kW-1-5-GPM-Electric-Sh... Interesting comments on the reviews: > It worked for a few minutes before blowing the circuit breaker of gfci switch everytime. Good idea but pulls way too much power on an outlet to really be useful. Also you need to keep the water pressure very low, for it to actually warm up, if the pressure is too strong it won't warm it up quickly enough. > I'm confused on how to use this. The description mentions use for "Outdoor showers, Pool Side showers" and other outdoor examples, but the sticker on the unit specifically says INDOOR USE ONLY. The instructions say that you must locate the shower head a MINIMUM of 6 feet from the plug, but the cord is only 5 feet 10 inches. Plus, if the head is installed at the minimum height of 6 feet, that means the plug has to be 6 feet high too, since any angle would make it less than 6 feet away. There is no way to replace the cord, no way to hardwire it (as the instructions recommend, which is even more confusing), and you can't use an extension cord. More confusion arises on electrical requirements. It says to use 10 AWG minimum, but the cord is 12 AWG (which only supports 20A). It requires a 30A breaker, and it says it draws 23 amps - but the largest standard receptacle made only supports 20A (L5-20), and you'll only find a 20A breaker on an L5-20 circuit. Any 20A outlet you find will also only have 12 AWG wiring. Beyond all that, I tested it by connecting it outdoors to a 20A circuit. I set the flow rate to 0.75 GPM, and purged the air as per instructions. I started by taking power readings. There are 5 temperature settings; readings were, from Low to High: 9.5A, 13.5A, 16A, 18.5A and 20.3A. So at all settings except High, it was actually within the 20A breaker limit. Unfortunately, it always starts on High when you plug it in. I checked the water temperature with my hand when it was on High, and it was really hot - too hot for a shower, at least 110 F. Then I grabbed the thermometer to take readings, but something happened - I'm not sure what, but it basically broke. On High, it dropped to 90 degrees. My inlet temp was 75. It was still heating a little, but not like before. I adjusted flow to make sure the activation point was reached, but no success. Testing aside, I don't think this puts out enough heat to be effective even if it works as advertised. You would really want to use it when the water is very cold, which means you would need maximum heat, which means running it at 0.5 GPM. You're not going to get much shower at that rate.
- bluGill 4y ago

mmastrac 4y ago

At some point they just became too big for government to manage compliance with existing laws - that should have a sign that it was time to start looking at breaking them up. I cannot believe the volume of crap I'm getting from Amazon. The quality of products has nose-dived and I no longer trust them for purchasing easily-counterfeited items (like SD cards).

fullstop 4y ago
That, and the brands are clearly from a Chinese Name Generator, so you end up with Rabbitgoo branded products. Once those start to fail or enough people leave bad reviews the company disappears and pops up again as Luckyfang. It's whack-a-mole, and untrustworthy. If I wanted those products I'd shop aliexpress.
- mmastrac 4y ago
  Ah yes, the Ali* name generator machine. If all I can find are Rabbitgoo/Luckyfang products on Amazon, I just skip the middleman and order from AliExpress. I don't even trust the middlemen to stand behind the products these days. Most of the time they just relabel it with a more western name and don't add any sort of QA -- just drop-shipping.
- geocrasher 4y ago
  This is my sentiment, too. I tried to shop for $20-30 dress shirts in 6XLT, and it was a hot mess of availability and off brands. No thanks. Spent $70 at a local store instead.

abracadaniel 4y ago

Funny how quickly the sales tax loophole was fixed, since it directly affected legislatures, but bypassing consumer protection laws at massive scales gets ignored.

Scoundreller 4y ago
Once Amazon went national and retail is already on life support, the sales tax loophole didn’t have much protection. It just made it easier for smaller competitors to take some of their business. Especially nowadays when eBay even collects sales taxes on sales into states (even sales from me as a Canadian).

zibby8 4y ago

Are you sure that Lowes can't sell heated shower heads? Maybe they choose not to sell them for liability reasons.

ABeeSea 4y ago
Or demand reasons. If Amazon only sells a couple dozen a year, they just need to keep a few in a single warehouse at all times whereas lowes would need to keep it in stock in a minimum number of stores that is greater than 1.
- ridgered4 4y ago
  My experience with Lowes has been they "carry" many items that can actually only be shipped to you or the store after being purchased online.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
Don't pretend that "liability reasons" is due to ethical concerns about the safety of the product. Someone would buy it off a shelf at Lowes, would take Lowes to court, and Lowes would lose. It wouldn't be profitable. Conversely, if someone bought a dodgy product from a drop-shipper listing on Amazon and got hurt by it, do you think that Amazon would be successfully sued? Empirically, that happens but they're still profitable and and still not refusing to list products for safety except in the most egregious circumstances. Would you sue the drop-shipper? They'd probably disappear or have zero assets. Would you sue the overseas manufacturer? Good luck with that! The fact that it's profitable for Amazon and not for Lowes is exactly what the parent meant when they said "...it doesn't seem right that Amazon can sell these to people where Lowes and other hardware stores cannot."
- culturestate 4y ago
  > Don't pretend that "liability reasons" is due to ethical concerns about the safety of the product. Someone would buy it off a shelf at Lowes, would take Lowes to court, and Lowes would lose. Is this not exactly what “liability reasons” implies? Surely if it was an ethical argument they would’ve written “ethical reasons” instead.

tyingq 4y ago

There's a terrifying teardown of one of those heated shower heads here: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/25/electric-shower-head-tear-down-makes-us-wince/ https://hackaday.com/2018/08/25/electric-shower-head-tear-do... When he opens it, the ground wire is just floating in the enclosure, not hooked up to anything. Contacts that would mechanically fail to shorted, etc. He also mentions it flows ~24 amps of 220V on the high setting.

mmastrac 4y ago
> The green wire which is a neutral has no place to fasten inside the plastic body. It just goes inside, connects to nothing, while being exposed in the path of the water, presumably to keep water that was too conductive from shocking you I have nothing to say to this. Wow.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Maybe I’m dumb but what else would the ground on a completely plastic enclosure be connected to?
  - tyingq 4y ago
    The ground wire is floating in an area that would have water in it, sometimes being electrically connected to the water, sometimes not, depending on the flow, how the wire is bent, etc. He measures leaking voltage to the pipe and the water and gets readings. There are actual safe inline electric water heaters with inbuilt GFCI, proper grounding, probably other protective circuits, etc.
Shorel 4y ago
I used them for over 20 years in South America. I even burned them many times, to the dismay of my dad. I burned them because I wanted hotter water, and closed the water line as much as I can, the resistance heated up to red and then melted. The fact that ground contacts the water is by design. As far as I know, no one has ever been electrocuted by using one of these showers, not even me, so used to burn them. The only reason I use gas heaters now is: I can shower with hot enough water for a long time. So that teardown can be terrifying to you, but millions of South Americans pay no attention to such fear mongering at all. They are safe for people.

ridgered4 4y ago

IIRC that lead law was spawned in response to Mattel selling lead painted toys and Mattel was made exempt!

stefan_ 4y ago

Amazon is the magic law blanket. They take the payment, they store the goods, they ship the wares.. but it's WAGANFU brand that they have no serviceable address for that is responsible?

Scoundreller 4y ago
Gotta love limited liability! I believe American Express was one of the last public companies to convert from unlimited liability to limited.
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  That's not what limited liability means. It's about the owners/investors/shareholders of the company not being personally liable for debts (court judgements or loan payments) in excess of the company's assets. Without it, simply holding stock in a company could theoretically expose someone to unlimited losses if the company had more liabilities than assets for whatever reason. A history of the application of limited liability to corporations: https://www.bus.umich.edu/KresgeLibrary/resources/abla/abld_4.1.11-33.pdf https://www.bus.umich.edu/KresgeLibrary/resources/abla/abld_.... The term "limited liability company" was created much more recently to as a sort of corporation-lite entity that had this essential attribute without all the other corporate formalities. The tax laws decided to treat LLCs as non-corporations unless the elected otherwise, removing one of the major costs of having the liability protection. Partnerships, the default/unorganized form of joint business ventures, do not have liability protection. Later, limited partnerships were created that did, but limited partners could not participate in everyday business. Thus, the corporation and later LLC were the only forms that allowed managing investors to protect themselves from excess business liability. This has nothing to do with whether or not Amazon is liable for products third parties sell on their site.

cyral 4y ago

And of course the "brands" selling these products are under random names like SFHBEE that will disappear overnight. No accountability if anything goes wrong. This is a good thread on it: https://twitter.com/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440 https://twitter.com/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440

GnarfGnarf 4y ago

In 1968 Bolivia, the only way you could shower is with these heated heads, because there were no hot water tanks. 220v, with exposed connectors. So anyway I'm standing in the shower under one of these heads, feet in a puddle. I raise my arm to wash an armpit, and the back of my hand touches the bare connector. It tingled a bit.

rdl 4y ago
Multiple people in the military in Iraq died in shower trailers on bases (2003-2008) due to improper wiring. I went into one where you could detect current in metal walls (not in the shower area, but an ungrounded piece of backsplash and shelving above sink...); I had someone stand in front of the door to keep people out and went over to the base electricians to yell at them.
- lfowles 4y ago
  I remember one summer camp I went to as a kid where the showers were "spicy". Much in the same way a 9 volt battery feels on your tongue. In hindsight... what the hell???
  - rdl 4y ago
    Yeah -- especially given that skin itself isn't a great conductor, for it to feel like 9v on (even wet) skin vs. on your tongue, it's substantially more than a 9v battery...
darrylb42 4y ago
I visited Costa Rica this year and this is what the rental house had. Bit freaky.

mmastrac 4y ago

I was curious and found this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/IHeat-2-5-kW-1-5-GPM-Electric-Shower-Head-Tankless-Water-Heater-AHSH2500/205602695 https://www.homedepot.com/p/IHeat-2-5-kW-1-5-GPM-Electric-Sh... Interesting comments on the reviews: > It worked for a few minutes before blowing the circuit breaker of gfci switch everytime. Good idea but pulls way too much power on an outlet to really be useful. Also you need to keep the water pressure very low, for it to actually warm up, if the pressure is too strong it won't warm it up quickly enough. > I'm confused on how to use this. The description mentions use for "Outdoor showers, Pool Side showers" and other outdoor examples, but the sticker on the unit specifically says INDOOR USE ONLY. The instructions say that you must locate the shower head a MINIMUM of 6 feet from the plug, but the cord is only 5 feet 10 inches. Plus, if the head is installed at the minimum height of 6 feet, that means the plug has to be 6 feet high too, since any angle would make it less than 6 feet away. There is no way to replace the cord, no way to hardwire it (as the instructions recommend, which is even more confusing), and you can't use an extension cord. More confusion arises on electrical requirements. It says to use 10 AWG minimum, but the cord is 12 AWG (which only supports 20A). It requires a 30A breaker, and it says it draws 23 amps - but the largest standard receptacle made only supports 20A (L5-20), and you'll only find a 20A breaker on an L5-20 circuit. Any 20A outlet you find will also only have 12 AWG wiring. Beyond all that, I tested it by connecting it outdoors to a 20A circuit. I set the flow rate to 0.75 GPM, and purged the air as per instructions. I started by taking power readings. There are 5 temperature settings; readings were, from Low to High: 9.5A, 13.5A, 16A, 18.5A and 20.3A. So at all settings except High, it was actually within the 20A breaker limit. Unfortunately, it always starts on High when you plug it in. I checked the water temperature with my hand when it was on High, and it was really hot - too hot for a shower, at least 110 F. Then I grabbed the thermometer to take readings, but something happened - I'm not sure what, but it basically broke. On High, it dropped to 90 degrees. My inlet temp was 75. It was still heating a little, but not like before. I adjusted flow to make sure the activation point was reached, but no success. Testing aside, I don't think this puts out enough heat to be effective even if it works as advertised. You would really want to use it when the water is very cold, which means you would need maximum heat, which means running it at 0.5 GPM. You're not going to get much shower at that rate.

bluGill 4y ago