CPSC Wants Fire-Prone Galaxy Note7s Off the Street ‘Without Delay,’ Agency Says

Samsung's corporate parent announced the decision Tuesday to permanently scrap the Note7 (see 1610110042), but the safe disposition of millions of fire-prone smartphones still in consumers' hands remained somewhat of a mystery until CPSC and Samsung acted early Thursday. Samsung is “making every effort” with its wireless carrier partners “to take proactive actions to communicate with every Note7 owner” to act on the recall notice immediately, said a spokeswoman. That includes “mass communication for awareness and direct communication to educate consumers on the recall and the options available to them,” she said.

Samsung is taking extraordinary steps to reach everyone still holding a Note7, the spokeswoman said. These include “direct communication to customers” via email and social media, “leveraging” partnerships with the carriers to send notifications directly to customer devices, setting up a dedicated recall website and establishing a 24-hour toll-free hotline staffed by “dedicated customer service reps,” she said. Boosting consumer recall response rates has been a CPSC "priority" for decades, and the agency is making a “renewed push” for better results, because it finds the average response rates of 15-30 percent “are just not acceptable,” Wolfson told us recently.

Consumers still possessing a Note7 need to respond to the recall notice “without delay,” said CPSC’s Kaye in a Thursday statement. The risk of fire with the original Note7 and its replacement “is simply too great” for anyone not responding, he said. The recall “has proven to be a real challenge for Samsung,” said Kaye. He’s “very concerned” consumers who exchanged their original phones for a replacement “are now at risk again,” he said. “We at CPSC have worked diligently under difficult circumstances to protect consumers and bring this matter to an appropriate close. CPSC will continue to hold Samsung and other companies accountable when consumer safety is put at risk.” Meantime, consumers “should respond to the recall and not hold on to the phone,” said Kaye. “Samsung and CPSC are pushing for a 100 percent response rate to this recall.”

Kaye's statement didn't explain how the agency could as recently as Sept. 15 vouch for the safety of replacement Note7s it now deems an urgent fire risk. The commission has sidestepped our questions whether it bears a black eye for the fiasco, since the say-so of an agency engineer figured heavily in the decision clearing the replacement phones as safe. It can't help CPSC or Samsung that a nearly month-old video featuring Samsung Electronics America President Tim Baxter vouching adamantly for the safety of the now-maligned replacement Note7s was still prominently posted late Thursday afternoon at Samsung’s U.S. newsroom website. Samsung representatives didn’t say why the outdated video was still posted. But CSPC's Wolfson emailed us Thursday to say his agency "will continue to work with Samsung to make sure that all of the information provided to affected consumers is consistent with the expanded recall."

Samsung hired Stericycle, an Indianapolis third-party vendor, to run the Note7 recall program, said an online announcement at Package Express Centers, which bills itself as the only company approved by United Parcel Service to set up UPS “commercial counters” inside the stores of small independent retailers. Sources familiar with the Note7 recall effort described Stericycle as one of the most experienced contractors in the country for reverse logistics and assisting in the implementation of recalls. Stericycle representatives didn’t comment Thursday on how the recall effort stacks up against other projects the company has handled in terms of CPSC’s stated urgency in getting 100 percent of affected consumers to comply.

The commission wants to get all 1.9 million Note7s sold in the U.S. since launch off the street as soon as possible, the agency said Thursday in its expanded recall notice. That includes the 1 million original Note7s covered under the Sept. 15 recall, the notice said. “Consumers should immediately stop using and power down all Galaxy Note7 devices, including Note7 devices received as replacements in the previous recall.”

An elaborate six-minute Samsung instructional video demonstrates how consumers should pack the Note7s they’re ground-shipping using the special boxes-within-a-box “return kit” available from Samsung or the wireless carrier or retailer where they bought the device. The phone, powered off, should first be placed in a sealable anti-static plastic sleeve, then placed inside a small “OEM box,” says the instructor in the video. This is then placed inside an “inner box,” which in turn is placed inside a “recovery box,” the instructor says. He advises the use of blue examination gloves, provided with the kit, to avoid the risk of skin irritations from contact with the white “ceramic fiber paper” flame-retardant coating that lines the inside of the outermost recovery box.

The video depicts on the recovery box the logo of Americase, a Waxahachie, Texas, packaging goods supplier specializing in boxes for the transport of hazardous materials. Its website bears a photo and description of a “thermally” lined box closely resembling that in the video. The box uses “a proprietary fire and heat mitigating material to substantially reduce the risk of transporting new, damaged, defective, batteries outside of equipment, batteries over 30% state of charge, or recalled lithium ion or metal batteries,” the website said. The Americase packaging is "intended to be used with existing OEM product packaging -- creating a ‘box within a box’ configuration," it said. Americase representatives didn’t comment Thursday on the company’s role in the Note7 recall.

Americase was granted “DOT-SP 16011" special permit authorization Oct. 5 from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA records show. The special permit allows Americase to manufacture, sell and distribute “specially designed packagings intended for the transport of certain lithium ion cells and batteries that may be damaged or defective,” the records said. The special permit grants Americase the authority to use packaging that will allow the recalled phones and their batteries to be transported by ground without being fully regulated as dangerous goods under exemptions permitted under federal hazardous materials regulations, they said. The DOT-SP 16011 markings are easily seen in the Samsung video on the outermost recovery box, as is a copy of the folded PHMSA authorization sheets affixed to the box inside a sealed plastic sleeve.

The Oct. 5 PHMSA authorization was granted the day of the incident aboard a Baltimore-bound Southwest Airlines flight that was later cancelled in which a powered-down phone that its owner said was a replacement Note7 caught fire as the flight was boarding in Louisville (see 1610060028). That incident report was among others that set in motion closer scrutiny at CPSC, Samsung and the carriers into safety doubts about the Note7 replacements. PHMSA representatives didn't comment Thursday.