HP Pays $425,000 for Burning Battery Bungle

While HP isn’t coping to the claim put forth by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the company has agreed to pay $425,000 to the commission for failing to report faulty notebook batteries.

The civil penalty won’t be arriving in mailboxes of HP notebook users, but will instead go to the CPSC. HP was criticized and penalized for not reporting faulty lithium ion batteries soon enough.

The CPSC says that HP knew about the exploding batteries as early as 2007, but let the issue continue until July 2008. During this time there were reportedly 22 incidents involving faulty batteries, two with injuries to consumers and at least one that sent a customer to the hospital.

HP logo burning

In all the CPSC alleges that there were 31 incidents, which led to the October 2008 battery recall of over 32,000 batteries for HP notebooks. The affected batteries were found in notebooks ranging from $700 to $3,000 and included spare parts and replacement batteries sold at retail outlets.

HP was fined because federal law dictates that manufacturers report issues such as the battery explosions to the CPSC within 24 hours of ,”obtaining information reasonably supporting the conclusion that a product contains a defect which could create a substantial product hazard, creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death, or fails to comply with any consumer product safety rule or any other rule, regulation, standard, or ban enforced by CPSC.”

While HP has agreed to pay the penalty, the company does not agree that the batteries posed an unreasonable risk, or that the company violated the reporting requirements.

Flames via wwarby on Flickr

 

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