News not perfect but better

The consignment sale I worked at today actually checked ALL products including strollers and car seats for recalls and ALL car seat for expiration date. Since they did not know the dates we used the car-seat.org app on my andriod

sent from my SPH-M580 using Car-Seat.Org

MUCH better than nothing!

I don't advocate used seats from strangers of course, but my son's life was saved in a yard sale infant seat. For some families, whether it's the reality or not, they think it's the best they can do. In my area our SK coalition doesn't pass out free seats and even Sceneras are $35 for the "low cost" seats available. There are a few opportunities for free infant seats, but they're hard to dig up the information for (believe me, I tried several times before I became a tech and got "connected" to find out where this stuff is).

I would rather see a kid in an unexpired, not recalled car seat from a consignment sale than some of the other options (laps, expired or broken seats, etc.).

Brigala said:

MUCH better than nothing!

I don't advocate used seats from strangers of course, but my son's life was saved in a yard sale infant seat. For some families, whether it's the reality or not, they think it's the best they can do. In my area our SK coalition doesn't pass out free seats and even Sceneras are $35 for the "low cost" seats available. There are a few opportunities for free infant seats, but they're hard to dig up the information for (believe me, I tried several times before I became a tech and got "connected" to find out where this stuff is).

I would rather see a kid in an unexpired, not recalled car seat from a consignment sale than some of the other options (laps, expired or broken seats, etc.).

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I tried to push the idea of not selling car seats because then you avoid the issue entirely but no one really liked it. At least they had the sellers sign a paper allowing us to destroy any safety devices that are recalled, expired or other wise found to be defective or unsafe for use. I got to cut the straps on like 10 expired infant buckets

I just took a new job at a large therapy clinic. I share a small room, usually with 2 other therapists. One of the 2 I work the most with is big with our local consignment sale. I mentioned the other day that I'm a tech, actually to mention CSO and lorismurph's car seat busy book that I have, which would be great to use in our therapy sessions. Anyway, the conversation went the way of car seat use and misuse, and the other therapist in the room asked if I would look at her grandson's seat. She got it at this consignment sale and she said "something just doesn't seem right." We walked out to her car and what we had was a Cosco Combo that had been converted to a 3-pt harness, and also had "ACH Not for Sale" written in marker on the side.

So we went back in talking about it, with the consignment sale girl. She asked me to volunteer at the sales so I could check these seats because I would have noticed that right off, but their usual volunteers would not. They don't take seats over 5 years old, and the seller has to sign a waiver saying the seat's never been crashed, but there is so much more! I told her I'm not sure I would feel right as a CPST, because I have to teach that you aren't supposed to buy used seats with unknown histories at all, but that maybe I could at least give them a more extensive check list that each seat has to have pinned to it.