USB chargers that cause electric shocks, ineffective smoke detectors or even children’s clothing that can lead to suffocation … The European Consumer Bureau (BEUC) alerted this Monday to the danger of products bought online, on sites like Amazon, eBay, AliExpress or Wish.
BEUC brings together 45 national independent consumer organizations, present in 32 countries. Among them, six associations tested 250 products from January 2019 to January 2020. USB chargers, children’s toys, smoke detectors, cosmetics … 18 types of products were checked. Results: two thirds do not respect European legislation in terms of security.
Unsafe online shopping
Several problems have been identified. Of the seven smoke or carbon monoxide detectors tested, not all of them were able to detect a deadly level of gas, for example. Other anomalies identified: toys containing chemicals twice as high as the regulations, USB chargers causing electric shocks, jewelry with a nickel content that was too high, or children’s clothing with excessively long cords that could cause suffocation. .
The controlled products were first subjected to a visual examination, sometimes sufficient. Other products such as plastic dolls, fire alarms, jewelry or Christmas garlands have been studied in a laboratory. These tests show “that online shopping is not as secure as in the offline world, commented Monique Goyens, the director general of Beuc, in the press release. The reason is simple: the markets fail to prevent the appearance of dangerous products on their sites“.
“Consumer groups have repeatedly signaled dangerous products, after which the markets have deleted the list. But this cannot become a modus operandi for ensuring consumer safety, because similar products are reappearing“, She added. The British association Which?, One of the six groups to have carried out this investigation, thus specified in its own press release having alerted several times on the dangerousness of car seats for children sold on eBay, among others. Which? claims to have warned eBay in 2017 that these seats did not meet European standards, after which they were withdrawn from sale. But, in 2019, they reappeared on eBay again.
Le Beuc calls on the EU to regulate online markets
In August 2019, journalists from the Wall Street Journal also revealed that more than 4,000 products on the Amazon platform could be considered dangerous or non-compliant. In reality, it is third party sellers who are implicated because Amazon is not responsible for the products sold. The e-commerce site is however in charge of selecting the sellers who must meet quality criteria. The Wall street journal had taken as an example the death of a Missouri customer in a road accident, while he was wearing a helmet bought on Amazon. Helmet that was not in compliance with the regulations of the United States Department of Transport. The Philadelphia court then ruled that the company had “full capacity, in its sole discretion, to remove all hazardous products from its site “.
Almost a year earlier, in December 2018, it was the Directorate General for Competition (DGCCRF) that had published a survey on Christmas products sold online. Out of 46 objects tested by the DGCCRF and sold on online platforms such as Amazon, Cdiscount, eBay, Fnac.com or Aliexpress, 75% were “non-compliant“And 39% represented a”danger to consumers“. The e-commerce companies were then contacted by the organization to remove these dangerous products.
“It is time for the European Union to make online markets responsible for the dangerous products sold on their sites, and for the authorities to place them under close scrutiny.“, Underlined Monique Goyens, the general manager of Beuc. According to her, it would be “most effective way” for “prevent consumers from being exposed to dangerous products“.
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