Amazon Responds to Report, Says Products Safe, Compliant
Amazon invested more than $400 million to ensure products offered on its website are “safe, compliant and authentic,” blogged the company Friday. It responded to a report of “thousands of banned, unsafe or mislabeled products” on Amazon.com.
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The Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon that “have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators -- items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves.” At least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children, it said.
Of the 4,152 products the Journal identified, 46 percent were listed as shipping from Amazon warehouses; after the WSJ notified Amazon of its findings, 57 percent had their wording altered or were taken down. Amazon told the WSJ it reviewed and addressed the listings and that company policies require all products to comply with laws and regulations. Eighty-three percent of the 10,870 total listings the WSJ presented to Amazon were taken down or altered, it said.
Some 1,412 electronics listings falsely claimed to be UL-certified -- indicating they met voluntary industry safety standards -- or didn’t provide enough information to verify the claim, said the WSJ. Amazon didn’t alter those listings, it told the newspaper, because electronics are often rebranded by multiple sellers.
UL didn’t respond to our questions; Amazon didn’t address our questions, referring us instead to the blog post.
In a Google search, Consumer Electronics Daily found Amazon has procedures in place for products it doesn’t believe meet UL requirements, though those procedures may be overwhelmed. A call for help on an Amazon seller forum from November showed Amazon pulled a listing for a laptop charger from the e-commerce site because, the seller said, “it apparently lacked UL certification.” The seller was instructed to contact electronics-safety@amazon.com and follow a link to resolve the issue.
The seller, from Canfield, Ohio, included all the specified details in the email, including a copy of the product’s UL certification, but was frustrated over being caught in a Seller Central support loop over several months during which Amazon repeated instructions but never provided an answer: “I’ve got inventory stranded sitting around that I’m paying for while my listing is yanked,” he said, seeking advice from other sellers.
Reacting Friday, FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra tweeted: “This article raises real concerns about whether Amazon is profiting from widespread deception on its platform. Deceptive acts or practices can threaten our health and safety, and are unlawful under the FTC Act.”
Amazon, meanwhile, cited in the blog post the hundreds of millions of items it sells, saying it continuously works to refine and improve tools that “prevent suspicious, unsafe, or non-compliant products from being listed in our store.”
It described new seller account vetting that includes several verifications and machine learning technology to stop bad actors “before they can register or list a single product in our store.” All products offered on Amazon “must comply with applicable laws and regulations, and our own policies,” it said, citing safety testing requirements set by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Last year, Amazon teams and technologies proactively blocked more than 3 billion suspect listings “for various forms of abuse, including non-compliance,” before their listings appeared on the e-commerce site, it said.
Once a product is available, Amazon continuously scans product listings and updates to find products that might “present a concern.” Every few minutes, tools review the hundreds of millions of products Amazon sells, scanning the more than 5 billion daily changes to product pages and analyze customer reviews, it said. Tools use natural language processing and machine learning to “constantly get better at proactively blocking suspicious products.”
When Amazon receives reports of safety issues, it removes unsafe products from the website and investigates, it said. If a customer reports a concern with a product, “a customer service associate can instantly trigger an investigation.” Amazon can trace and directly alert customers to a potential safety issue, it said, and its “robust programs” ensure products offered for sale on Amazon.com are “safe and compliant.”
Consumers with product safety concerns can contact Amazon’s customer service team, it said.