Products ordered from major foreign online platforms are often unsafe and should not be sold in Europe, according to consumer protection organisation Test-Achats.
Test-Achats, in collaboration with five other consumer organisations, ordered 250 products from the online shops AliExpress, Wish, eBay, LightInTheBox and Amazon. The products were safety-tested in laboratories, but two-thirds of the purchases turned out to be "non-compliant with European safety standards or unsafe," according to a press release.
Most USB chargers were made with inferior components or could short-circuit, none of the ordered smoke and CO detectors were in order with the machines being too quiet or not making noise at all, baby toys were full of parts that came loose, and all tested balloons contained too many carcinogenic substances.
For many products, the information on the packaging was not complete, unreadable, or for example only available in Chinese.
After the tests, the organisations informed the shops of the bad results and asked to remove the concerned products. In some cases, this actually happened, but in others, the requests went unanswered of the companies indicated that they did not see the problem.
"It is disturbing that later checks sometimes showed that the unsafe products were simply available again," said Test-Achats. "Or that similar unsafe products are taking their place," the organisation added.
"We recommend buying from European webshops that do respect the European safety standards, or just in the offline stores," said Simon November of Test-Achats, reports VRT. "If things are so cheap, there is a reason for that. It is often very poor quality. And that often means that there are no safety standards in the producing countries," he added.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
