How recalls work
What a recall asks you to do, what a proof rule is, the words used on this site, and how every number was counted.
Contents
How a recall works
A firm finds a safety problem, agrees a remedy with the CPSC, and tells owners what to do to get it.
The CPSC publishes each recall with its hazard, the products and models, pictures, and the remedy: a refund, a repair, a replacement, or new instructions. The firm then reaches owners, by email, by letter, through the stores that sold the product, and through notices.
During the recall the firm sends the CPSC a monthly progress report: how many units it found and how many were fixed, refunded or replaced. Most recalls are small: 1,002 of the 1,239 since January 2024 cover fewer than 50,000 units.
Why a photo
When the remedy is a refund, many firms ask for a photo that shows the product made safe, so it cannot be used or sold again. 447 recalls since 2024 refund that photo.
The remedy says what to do first: cut the cord (245 of the photo-refund recalls mention cutting), or write a word such as RECALLED on it in marker (160). Then the owner sends the photo, most often by email: 498 of the 525 give an address.
Remedy takes that photo on a phone, checks it in seconds, and pays the refund through PayPal.
What a proof rule is
The remedy, rewritten as a checklist: what to do to the product, what the photo must show, and what you get.
Recall 27056, word for word
“To receive a refund, consumers will be required to submit a photo of their recalled power bank with the word ‘recalled’ written on it in permanent marker…”
As a proof rule
- First
- Write RECALLED
- The photo shows
- The whole product RECALLED written on it
- You get
- Full refund
How the rules were made
Claude Opus 5.5 read each remedy with a fixed schema and a written guide, then a second pass checked the draft against the remedy text and a set of mechanical rules (for example: a rule that says “cut the cord” must come from a remedy that mentions a cord). Every photo-refund recall has one, run through the Message Batches API.
On 130 real remedies, every field was right in 86.9% with the self-check and 56.2% with keyword rules alone, scored against draft labels that are being checked by hand. The benchmark
How a photo is checked
Six checks: right product, made safe, your own photo, within the recall, claim limits, and not already refunded.
When every check passes, PayPal pays. When the photo needs another try, you see exactly what to change. When the checks cannot settle it, two AI reviewers look, and then a person at the firm.
What each check looks for
- Right product. The photo is compared with the recall’s official pictures, its name and its model numbers.
- Made safe. Each step the rule asks for is looked for: the cut, or the exact word written on it.
- Your own photo. It is not the recall’s own picture, a photo of a screen, or a photo sent before. This keeps the refund pool for real owners.
- Within the recall. When the recall names models or lot numbers, the one in the photo is among them.
- Claim limits. One refund for each unit bought.
- Not already refunded. A linked PayPal purchase has no earlier refund.
Glossary
- Recall
- A firm's plan, agreed with the CPSC, to fix a safety problem with a product it sold: a refund, a repair, a replacement, or new instructions.
- Remedy
- What the owner gets and what they must do for it, in the recall's own words.
- Made safe
- The product changed so it cannot be used again: the cord cut, the item cut in half, or RECALLED written on it, as the remedy asks.
9 more words, from Proof rule to Sandbox
- Proof rule
- The remedy written as a checklist a person and a program can both read: what to do, what the photo must show, and what you get.
- Photo refund
- A recall whose remedy asks for a photo of the product and offers a refund.
- CPSC
- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that oversees recalls of consumer products.
- Recall number
- The CPSC's number for a recall, for example 27056 (written 27-056 on cpsc.gov).
- Monthly progress report
- The report a firm sends the CPSC during a recall: how many units were found, fixed, refunded or replaced.
- Payout
- Money sent to someone's PayPal or Venmo account by email address or phone number.
- Refund to the original purchase
- Money sent back to how the owner paid. PayPal allows it within 180 days of the purchase.
- Firm review
- A person at the recalling firm looks at a photo the checks could not settle.
- Sandbox
- PayPal's test system. Every payment on this site runs there, and no real money moves.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is counted from the CPSC Recalls API: 1,239 recalls from Jan 4, 2024 to Nov 5, 2026, pulled Nov 5, 2026. 525 of them name a photo and a refund in their remedy; their proof rules show 447 refund a photo of the product made safe, 71 ask for a photo for another reason (proof of ownership, a label or a code), 5 pay store credit for it and 2 need no photo.
A small deterministic classifier reads each recall’s remedy text (every Remedies[].Name joined), its consumer contact, retailers and units. No AI is used to count.
Photo-refund recalls by year: 2024: 71 of 305; 2025: 172 of 420; 2026: 282 of 514 (2026 to Nov 5, 2026).
The rule for each of the 12 figures, word for word from the stats file
| Figure | Count | Share | How it was counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recalls in the period | 1,239 | - | Every CPSC recall the Recalls API returns with RecallDate on or after the start date, de-duplicated by RecallNumber. |
| Ask for a photo | 618 | 49.9% | Of all recalls. Remedy text (all Remedies[].Name joined) matches /photo|picture|image/i (case-insensitive). |
| Offer a refund | 777 | 62.7% | Of all recalls. Remedy text matches /refund/i. |
| Photo refund | 525 | 42.4% | Of all recalls. Both photo and refund. |
| Ask to write on it | 203 | 16.4% | Of all recalls. Remedy text matches \bmarkers?\b|\bpermanent\s+maker\b|\b(?:write|writes|writing|written|wrote|mark|marks|marking)\b[^.]{0,60}?["“”'‘’]\s*(?:recall(?:ed)?|do not use|destroyed|void)\b (a marker, or write or mark followed by quoted words such as "RECALLED"). |
| Ask to cut it | 286 | 23.1% | Of all recalls. Remedy text matches \bcut(?:s|ting)?\b. |
| Photo sent by email | 498 | 94.9% | Of photo-refund recalls. Remedy text or ConsumerContact contains an email address ([A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,}). |
| Email is free webmail | 270 | 51.4% | Of photo-refund recalls. At least one of those addresses is on one of these domains, exact match: outlook.com, 163.com, gmail.com, hotmail.com, 126.com, qq.com, yeah.net, sina.com, yahoo.com, foxmail.com, aol.com, icloud.com. |
| Mention PayPal or Venmo | 0 | 0% | Of all recalls. Remedy text or ConsumerContact matches /paypal|venmo/i. |
| Fewer than 50,000 units | 1,002 | 80.9% | Of all recalls. First number in Products[0].NumberOfUnits, times one million when followed by "million". US units as CPSC states them; Canada and Mexico counts in parentheses are not added. Units under 50,000. |
| Sold online | 991 | 80% | Of all recalls. Retailers[].Name joined matches /online|\.com\b/i. |
| Name a recall vendor | 46 | 3.7% | Of all recalls. ConsumerContact matches /sedgwick|expertinquiry|stericycle|recallrtr/i (professional recall vendors). |
The earlier snapshot, and what changed
Our research note used a pull of Nov 1, 2026: 1,227 recalls to Oct 29, 2026, 523 of them photo refunds. The same classifier on that snapshot gives the same photo-refund count. The current pull has 12 recall(s) not in the 2026-11-01 snapshot (dated 2026-11-05), 0 removed, and 0 whose counted fields changed. Inside the validation window (to 2026-10-29) the current pull gives the same numbers as the snapshot: yes.
Recall 24078 (Alliance4Safety and 31 furniture companies, 2024-01-11) gives its units as "Millions", with no number. The 2026-11-01 scan read that as 0 units and counted it under 10,000 and under 50,000; this classifier reads it as not given and leaves it out. The shares do not change when rounded: 993 of 1,227 is 81% and 720 of 1,227 is 59%.
Files: content/recalls/stats.json (written by scripts/recalls/stats.ts) and the classifier in src/lib/recall/classify.ts. Every recall is also available as JSON from the recalls API.
Sources
6 public sources, from the CPSC’s own records to one peer-reviewed study.
All 6 sources, with what each one says
- CPSC Recalls API Every recall's record, public domain. The source of every count on this site.
- CPSC Decision and Order on Amazon, January 16, 2025 Direct notice to buyers and full refunds on proof of destruction, for more than 400,000 products. Amazon has challenged it in federal court.
- Raithel, Hock and Mafael, Product recall effectiveness and consumers' participation in corrective actions, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 52, 716 to 735 (2024) Recall effectiveness improves by 11.4% on average when firms offer a full remedy instead of a partial one.
- CPSC Recall Effectiveness Workshop (2017) and staff report How the CPSC and firms can raise the share of owners who act on a recall.
- CPSC Product Safety Planning, Reporting, and Recall Handbook How a recall is run, including monthly progress reports.
- CPSC Monthly Progress Report system Where firms file those reports.
Recall data and images: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, public domain. Remedy is independent and not affiliated with the CPSC.