About 51,000 battery packs for power-reclining chairs, sold on Amazon for roughly $105 apiece, are the subject of a federal recall that spares owners the cost of a repair. The Blue Cactus Company’s packs can overheat, smoke or catch fire, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is replacing every affected pack at no charge rather than asking owners to absorb the price of a new one. The remedy applies to the battery pack alone, not the reclining chair it powers.
Recall 26-791 and What Triggered It
The commission opened recall 26-791 on September 24, 2026, covering the rechargeable battery packs that power The Blue Cactus Company’s electric reclining chairs. The packs were sold exclusively on Amazon.com from May 2023 through July 2026 for about $105 each, a cost the replacement remedy now removes entirely for owners who still have one installed in a chair. The commission assigns each recall a sequential case number for the calendar year, and 26-791 places this action well into the agency’s 2026 caseload, a sign of how many product recalls the agency has already processed this year across furniture, electronics and children’s products alike.
The dates hidden in a recall notice: Recall 26-791 carries an announcement date and a sales window, but no stated cutoff for requesting the free pack. Other notices in the same family do carry a real deadline, and confusing the two is how a household misses one that actually closes. See the four-date rule for telling them apart in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
Checking Whether a Chair Is Covered
Because the recall covers a specific battery pack rather than the recliner itself, coverage depends on when and where the pack was purchased rather than the chair’s brand or style alone. The notice’s own eligibility window runs from May 2023 through July 2026, and its only listed retailer is Amazon.com, so a pack bought through a different marketplace or a secondhand sale outside that window would fall outside the recall as described. The commission’s notice does not list a separate model number for the battery pack beyond identifying it as the power source for Blue Cactus reclining chairs sold in that period, which means an owner’s Amazon order history is the clearest record of eligibility most households will have.
Four Reports of Overheating
The commission says it is aware of four reports of the battery packs overheating, smoking or igniting. That count moved the case from a routine product complaint to a formal fire and burn hazard recall, the category the commission reserves for products it judges pose a meaningful risk of injury if left in circulation. The notice does not describe any injuries tied to the four reports, only the overheating, smoking and ignition events themselves, and it does not say whether the reports came directly from consumers, from the company, or both. Lithium-ion battery packs drove a cluster of CPSC fire-hazard actions in September 2026, including a separate recall of NEWDERY power banks announced the same week for the same underlying hazard.
The Free Replacement, Not a Refund
Unlike a refund recall, this one keeps the recliner in the household and replaces only the failing part. The commission’s notice directs owners to contact The Blue Cactus Company for a free replacement battery pack, at no charge for the pack itself or shipping. For a household that paid about $105 for the original pack, the remedy means the fix costs nothing out of pocket, so long as the chair itself is otherwise still working. That distinguishes it from mattress and toy recalls announced the same week, where the commission required destroying the product entirely in exchange for a refund rather than issuing a replacement part, and it means the reclining chair itself stays in use throughout the swap rather than being discarded.
A Pattern of Battery Recalls This Month
The Blue Cactus recall lands alongside several other CPSC actions tied to overheating battery components in September 2026, including a burn-hazard recall of INMO Air3 smart glasses over an overheating temple piece, and a reannounced recall of Casely wireless power banks tied to one reported fatality after an earlier 2025 recall of the same product. The commission does not attribute the reclining-chair reports to a specific manufacturing defect in its public notice, only to the battery packs themselves, which is why the remedy targets the pack rather than the chair’s frame or motor. Owners who bought a Blue Cactus reclining chair outside the May 2023-July 2026 window, or through a retailer other than Amazon, are not covered by this recall, and the commission’s notice gives no indication that the chair frames or motors themselves are implicated.
What the Notice Leaves Unanswered
The commission’s notice does not say how many of the roughly 51,000 battery packs have already been returned or replaced since the September 24 announcement, nor does it estimate how long a replacement request currently takes to fulfill. Recall notices of this kind are updated by the commission if the remedy changes or if new incident reports come in, so the notice as it stands today may not be the final word on the case months from now.
The commission’s recall notice remains the current word on the case as of September 25, 2026, with no stated deadline for owners to request the free replacement pack.
A Free Fix That Still Needs a Paper Trail
Recall 26-791 replaces the failing battery pack at no cost, but a household juggling more than one open recall, warranty claim or refund notice at once can lose track of which one still needs a call, a photo or a mailed part. The unfinished job after a recall notice lands is rarely the fix itself, it is keeping the confirmation.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a claim log and payment tracker built for exactly that kind of paperwork, alongside the source vault of 12 official places money or replacements can be sitting unclaimed.
See the claim log in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor.
