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Heed recalls as you ring up holiday buys
Published November 11, 2009
Now is the time when many parents and grandparents are doing their Christmas shopping to beat the maddening rush, avoid long lines at the checkouts and grab those most popular items before they are all sold out.
I am doing my shopping online this year, as usual, and some items are already sold out. I got in the habit of doing my Christmas shopping online years ago. I like to wait until everyone is asleep. Then I’m comfortable in my pajamas, drinking my hot cup of chai tea and no one is around to see what I am buying for them.
If someone does decide to stay up late doing their own thing, then I put a note on my closed office door that says “Talking to Santa … Do NOT enter!” I just love it! My family actually knocks on the door if they need something. We also have a rule at my house that when a package arrives, it’s hands off if it doesn’t have your name on it!
I wasn’t born yesterday. None of my kids are named LL Bean or Williams Sonoma.
If you know what you are buying your family and have the list made out, then I would suggest that you check the list twice. It’s easier to check it once you get home because then you will have all the information that you need to look up each item on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Web site at www.cpsc.gov to check for any recalled items that you may have purchased.
The stores do the best they can to pull each of these items off their shelves as soon as they are notified by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but sometimes an item can slip through the cracks.
When you go to its Web site, you can specify the type of product you would like to search, for example, children’s toys, small appliances, etc. Here are just a few of the items that I pulled from the site:
• Baby Jogger City Mini Strollers: priced between $220 and $400 and sold nationwide. Reason for recall: Restraint buckles have been known to break or unlatch allowing infant to fall out of stroller. The site lists the item numbers of all of their recalled strollers.
• Epic Threads and Greendog Hooded Sweatshirts with drawstring sewn at the base of the hood: sold at Macy’s nationwide, priced between $32 and $50. Only sizes small and medium are subject to the recall. Reason for recall: strangulation hazard. I don’t understand why our merchants are still putting children’s hooded drawstring sweatshirts in their stores when they have been on the recall lists for years!
• Big Lots Stores, Inc. recalls bunk beds, sold nationwide, priced around $300. Reason for recall: the mattress support slats and side support railings can break, posing a risk of the bunk bed collapsing and falling.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has pages and pages of recalls of children’s items alone. Now that Christmas is nearing, there are hundreds of holiday items on their list such as string lights.
Take time out to check your list twice so you won’t be bringing a hazardous item into your home. Information also can be found on items sold months and years ago, as well as older things you may have picked up at garage sales and resale shops. It’s all there. Just check it out.
Jean Paul is a former resource program director for Youth and Family Counseling Services. Contact her at Jmpaul2(at)gmail.com.
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