Costco - Unsafe Products

Costco • General complaints • Pharmacy • Goon squad • Unsafe products • Tires ---- • Good Guy Nominations

James of Castaic CA (9/12/03):
Purchased Lakeland Mills, Inc. product -- a "cedar log patio swing" -- from Costco. The swing's main supporting hardware "hook" broke, dropping the swing vertically about 2 feet, causing further injury to my previously injured back, neck, and shoulders. Since it took about 8 months for the main support "hook" to break, Costco wouldn't replace it, but Lakeland Mills, Inc. sent me several "replacement hooks" -- all which subsequently broke one after another after about 8-13 months of use.

To prevent possible further injury from breaking, defective, insufficient, or poorly-engineered Lakeland Mills, Inc. product hardware, I put stacks of old telephone books underneath the swing so that it wouldn't "drop" so far WHEN the "replacement hooks" broke (and all of them DID eventually and violently snap in two).

After communicating the aforementioned to Lakeland Mills, Inc. and to Costco Wholesale's CEO, Mr. James D. Sinegal, Costco said that they will continue selling Lakeland Mills, Inc. products until they have a more substantial injury/death rate from Lakeland Mills, Inc. products. Meanwhile, Lakeland Mills, Inc.'s owners, Mr. Calvin Hunt and Mr. Robert Jensen, told me that I was an "isolated case" and that no other breakages of their products -- or injuries resulting from same -- have ever occurred, and quickly tried to defer me to their insurance carrier.

Meanwhile, I contacted several manufacturers of similar hardware to the continuously breaking Lakeland Mills, Inc.'s hardware and was told that these types of "hooks" are not designed or engineered for use as a swing main support and were considered "wire hooks". I was also told that a hook having at least TWICE THE DIAMETER of the Lakeland Mills, Inc.'s main support hooks would be a "minimum requirement for daily human support" on a swing-type product. I then reported these findings in the form of a complaint to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who quickly told me that they will just "collect statistics" and actually require a "recall" of the several defective Lakeland Mills, Inc. products involving this repetitively failing hardware only if the "numbers" [injury/death] get "high enough".

So, I decided to demand that Lakeland Mills, Inc. compensate me for my pain caused by their known-defective product and to demand that they cease manufacturing these known defective products and offer a replacement/repair of all those known-defective products they have already sold to unsuspecting families. They quickly ignored my demands

James of Eureka CA (6/28/03):
We bought a garden cart from Costco which stated the weight limit was 900-1000 lbs. Twice the front wheels broke completely off the axles with about 200 lbs total on it. Two kids were riding on it! Both times! A little girl got hurt -- bruised on her side, and frightened both the kids terribly because the whole cart tipped over forward.

We had to pay to get the wheels re-welded. A very poor design in these carts! Now we'll have to have the back two wheels welded just to be safe! The little girl was quite bothered by this and we felt it should have been safe enough for 200 lbs when it stated 900-1000 lbs.

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