CPSC Not Yet ‘Confident’ Replacement Galaxy Note7s Are Safer Than Originals

The CBS Evening News led with CPSC’s advisory on its Friday telecast, typifying the wide coverage afforded to the Galaxy Note7 warning statement. A day after the warning, according to a New York Post account, a 6-year old Brooklyn boy suffered injury when a Galaxy Note7 exploded in his hands as he was watching videos on the phone in his grandmother’s home. The boy was treated for burns at an emergency room late Saturday and released that evening, the paper said.

“The issue for CPSC is that we have a normal course of doing business” when it comes to consumer product recalls, said Scott Wolfson, the agency's communications director and senior adviser to its chairman, Elliot Kaye. CPSC makes “voluntary and cooperative recall announcements” about 400 times a year, he said. “The way it works in the consumer product safety environment is that CPSC takes the lead and makes the announcement.”

The commission takes that “approach” because “we want to have consistency and build trust that when you hear that announcement from CPSC, the official announcement is well thought out and the interest of the consumer has been taken into account,” Wolfson said. Of Samsung’s Sept. 2 “product exchange program” offer for U.S. Galaxy Note7 owners to immediately turn in their devices for a free replacement (see 1609020010), “that clearly didn’t take place in this situation,” said Wolfson. Given the opportunity for Samsung Electronics America to comment on Wolfson's remarks, spokeswoman Danielle Meister Cohen emailed us Monday to say the company would have "nothing further to share at this time."

In normal agency practice, an “official recall announcement comes out from CPSC with a press release from my office,” Wolfson said. “That press release has clear information on hazard, clearly defines the scope of recalled products and provides clear information on what the remedy is,” he said. “One of the things we take pride in at CPSC is that when that recall announcement goes out, we have worked with the company to make sure that the remedy is available when we announce it.” In the consumer product safety area, “we want consumers to be spurred to take action,” he said. “When they hear about a hazard, when they hear about an actual recall announcement, they can take advantage of a remedy right away.”

With any CPSC recall notice, “we want consumers to know that we are continuing to work with the company,” Wolfson said. “When a company is proposing a replacement product, it’s our job to make sure that company is putting forward a safe replacement product,” he said. “What we have going on right now is that if you call Samsung, they’re telling customers that there’s a replacement phone ready for them, they just can’t release it, because CPSC hasn’t approved it. Well, there’s a reason for that. Our job is to look out for the safety of consumers.” New Galaxy Note7 replacement devices “will be issued to exchange program participants upon completion of the CPSC process,” Samsung Electronics America said in a Friday statement confirming its “engagement” with CPSC. “In the interim, consumers can return their Note7 for another device,” Samsung said.

At CPSC, “we still have work to do” to be sure replacement Galaxy Note7 phones are safer than the originals, Wolfson said. “We need to review information from the company, and we need to do some of our own work at CPSC because we have years -- a decade or more -- of experience at the agency with lithium-ion batteries,” including through the work of CPSC’s “nationally recognized" testing lab in suburban Washington, he said.

As for when a Galaxy Note7 recall notice might be forthcoming from the agency, “CPSC wants this to be done as fast as the public does,” he said. “We are going to work as quickly as we can.” But “we are not going to rush to a decision until we are confident that a safer product is going to be put in the hands of consumers,” he said. Asked if CPSC is satisfied with the level of cooperation it’s getting from Samsung, Wolfson said: “The company is cooperating with us, and that is important as we get to the stage we all want to get to of having an official recall. Having that cooperation from the firm is really critical, and the company is cooperating with us.”