Amazon is recalling 260,000 power bank chargers

If you have a charger you purchased from Amazon, you may want to take a closer look at it. According to a Consumer Reports piece published on March 13, the retailer is now recalling 260,000 portable Power Bank battery chargers. The recall is due to the danger of fire and explosion if the unit’s lithium-ion battery overheats.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, there have been 53 reported overheating incidents with the chargers, including four reports of property damage and one injury due to chemical burns from the battery. If you have one of these chargers, you should unplug it and stop using it immediately, and contact Amazon to find out how to return it and receive a refund. You can only participate in the recall if you currently have the unit and can return it. You can report an incident with this product here.

Amazon is also reaching out to customers who have purchased the unit. You can contact Amazon toll-free at 855-215-5134 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Saturday or contact them anytime through their website.

The affected products include six versions of AmazonBasics portable lithium-ion battery chargers with the following capacities: 16,100 milliamp-hours (mAh), 10,000 mAh, 5,600 mAh, 2,000 mAh with micro USB cable, 3,000 mAh, and 3,000 mAh with micro USB cable. The power banks are black and rectangular, sold with or without a USB chargers cable and a carrying pouch, and have the AmazonBasics logo on the front. They measure about 3 inches long by 1.4 inch high by 0.9 inch wide.

They have the following product ID numbers on the back: B00LRK8EVO, B00LRK8HJ8, B00LRK8I7O, B00LRK8IV0, B00LRK8JDC, and B00ZQ4JQAA. The units were sold by Amazon.com, Amazon Bookstores and Amazon Pop-Up stores from December 2014 through July 2017.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission also lists related recalls on their site, so you can check there to see if you have any other products that may have been affected by a recall.