Graco Voluntary Car Seat Recall: What You Need To Know
Child safety product manufacturing giant Graco has issued a voluntary recall for car seats and booster seats manufactured during a 4.5-year span, the company announced.
As part of our continuous product testing and improvement process, Graco identified that food and dried liquids that can make some harness buckles progressively more difficult to open over time or become stuck in the latched position. Therefore, Graco has decided to conduct a voluntary recall on the harness buckles used on all toddler convertible car seats and harnessed booster seats manufactured from 2009 to July 2013.
In the announcement, Graco stressed that the issue would not affect the performance of these car seats or their abilities to restrain children. The recall applies to the red release buttons on 3.7 million car seats, including the following models:
Toddler Convertible Car Seats:
- Cozy Cline
- Comfort Sport
- Classic Ride 50
- My Ride 65
- My Ride 70
- My Ride 65 with Safety Surround
- Size4Me 70
- My Size 70
- Head Wise 70
- Smart Seat
Harnessed Booster Seats:
- Nautilus 3-in-1
- Nautilus Elite and Argos
“This is not a new issue for us,” Graco spokeswoman Ashley Mowrey told CNN. “We’ve been working to help consumers for some time now.”
Models sold since July, 2013 are not encountering the same problem.
The Graco car seat recall release has also been disseminated by the National Highways Traffic Safety Administration on their list of applicable announcements. Graco has provided cleaning instructions for the harness buckle part of the affected car seats. The company is also offering to provide new and improved replacement harness buckle to any consumer who is experiencing difficulty that is not resolved by cleaning. Interested parents are encouraged to contact Graco customer support at 800-345-4109 (Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.) or consumerservices@gracobaby.com.
Of the car seat recall notices listed on Graco’s Web site, this is the second-largest since 2000, when 4 million units of their Century Infant Car Seat/Carrier were recalled due to the handle breaking. While no injuries have been reported as a result of the current recall, 200 injuries were associated with the faulty infant carriers.
Having lain dormant for nearly an entire week, the Graco Twitter feed has been busy for the last few hours assisting concerned customers with the recall information.
Sorry for our silence here during the recall as we focused on the high volume of cust service requests. We’re here to answer your questions!
— Graco (@GracoBaby) February 12, 2014
