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Amazon allegedly sold thousands of mislabelled, banned or declared dangerous products by federal agencies, according to a survey by the the Wall Street newspaper. He found that no less than 4,152 items meeting these criteria were available for sale in Amazon stores.
The list of mislabelled, prohibited and dangerous products found by the Newspaper is shocking, including "FDA approved" products that the agency has never reviewed, medications without warnings for child safety, sleeping quarters, illegally imported prescription drugs, electronic products falsely claiming UL-certified safety ratings, toys containing dangerous quantities of lead or potential choking hazards, and more. Most of the products found were labeled with the company's Amazon Choice label, which is not something to automatically trust. Perhaps the worst of all is that the survey revealed at least 157 items that, according to Amazon, had been explicitly banned.
This is Amazon's vast network of third-party sellers who sell freely on Amazon and ship even from the company's warehouses if they participate in the "Fulfilled by Amazon" program. It may be difficult to distinguish product pages for third-party sellers from "Sold by Amazon.com" articles. A small line of text is the only thing that indicates who the seller is.
But there is a big difference between buying from Amazon and buying elsewhere through Amazon. Amazon does not take legal responsibility for unsecured products because it is technically not the one who sells them. Any dispute must be dealt with the third party seller.
This was not the case before, but as market vendors broke into Amazon, the company failed to moderate these lists (with the help of a combination of human workers). and auto-learning flags), which simply has not been able to keep pace with the volume of products. Unless there is a major change in Amazon's policy, it seems that customers will continue to go it alone on smart shopping with the online retail giant, especially with respect to third parties. sellers. the NewspaperJoanna Stern has some suggestions on how to avoid questionable or questionable purchases.
Amazon has since responded to the WSJInvestigating a blog post, where the company has shared more information on how it approves third-party vendors and the tools it uses to try to eliminate problematic ads. "We are investing considerable resources to protect our customers and have implemented robust programs designed to ensure the safety and compliance of the products offered for sale in our store."
Update of August 23 at 3:25 pm: Addition of a statement from Amazon regarding preventative measures for problematic products.
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