Unsafe products can easily be sold on online shopping platforms Bol.com and Amazon due to their third-party sales options, researchers from the Dutch Consumers' Association has warned.
Researchers found that both platforms allow third-party sellers to market their products but neither Bol.com nor Amazon.nl supervise this sufficiently.
The Consumers' Association created an online shop with which they offered nine items that were on Safety Gate, a European alert system on which countries exchange information about dangerous products. "Seven of the products passed Bol.com's check, eight passed Amazon.nl's," the organisation noted.
The items in question included a fire-hazardous mobile air conditioner, a children's swing that was labelled unsafe and a construction lamp that was known to be faulty and potentially dangerous.
The researchers managed to circumvent the checks with simple tricks such as changing EAN codes (unique product codes) with self-bought codes that had nothing to do with the products.
"It is shocking that it is so simple to fool the control systems of these big sales platforms," said Consumers' Association director Sandra Molenaar. "We are particularly shocked that products registered as dangerous end up so easily on these websites. This calls for action: checks must improve greatly."
Stricter checks needed
Despite having policies in place to prevent drop-shipping – a form of retail business in which the seller accepts customer orders without keeping stock on hand – both platforms allowed the Consumers' Association to offer products from AliExpress, an online retail service based in China and owned by the Alibaba Group.
"If they had looked closely at our online shop, they would have seen that it was drop-shipping and that we did not meet Amazon's requirements, so the audit does not amount to much," said Molenaar.
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Next year, new European rules on the sale of products from outside the EU will be implemented, which will force those selling on the European market to have an establishment, or at least a representative, in Europe. Online shops will have to remove items from companies that do not comply.
"It is a good start, but we think sales platforms should check more strictly beforehand what they offer on their sites," Molenaar concluded.
