Best Buy will pay a $3.8 million civil penalty for selling about 600 recalled products, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which announced the news on Monday (Oct. 3).
According to the announcement, Best Buy knowingly sold the items to consumers between 2010 and 2015, which included 400 recalled Canon cameras.
“The agreement settles charges that the firm knowingly sold and distributed 16 different recalled products during a five-year period from 2010 through 2015,” according to the statement on the penalty. “CPSC staff charged that Best Buy failed to implement adequate procedures to accurately identify, quarantine and prevent the sales of the recalled products across all of its supply channels. Staff also charged that Best Buy, in some cases, failed to permanently block product codes due to inaccurate information that signaled that the recalled product was not in inventory. At other times, the blocked codes were reactivated prematurely and, in a few cases, overridden.”
The civil penalty, which Best Buy agreed to, is not an admission of guilt.
“[W]e regret that any products within the scope of a recall were not removed entirely from our shelves and online channels,” a Best Buy spokesman told The Wall Street Journal in an email. “While the number of items accidentally sold was small, even one was too many. We have taken steps, in cooperation with the CPSC, to help prevent these issues from recurring.”
The announcement comes at a time when Best Buy is facing increasing challenges from Amazon in the consumer electronics marketplace.
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