Unsafe products are still easy to find on Amazon and Bol

Unsafe products can still be easily sold via Bol.com and Amazon.nl. Dutch consumer rights group Consumentenbond announced this on Tuesday after investigating how well selling platforms monitor products sold by third-party sellers.

Researchers at Consumentenbond say that while these outside parties can offer goods on both webshops, both Bol and Amazon appear to have inadequate oversight over them. They themselves offered to sell nine papers already registered as dangerous in Europe as part of the study.

This concerns, for example, mobile air conditioners known to be a fire hazard, children’s swings deemed dangerous, work lights known to be defective and dangerous, etc. increase. Seven of the products in question could be sold at Bol. Eight products have passed the checks and are available for sale on Amazon’s Dutch marketplace website.

Researchers said they managed to bypass the check with a simple trick. For example, a specific product code has changed. “It’s shocking how easy it is to fool the control systems of such a large distribution platform,” said Sandra Molenaar, head of Consumentenbond. “I am particularly shocked by the fact that products that are registered as dangerous goods are so easily directed to these websites. .”

Bol.com said in its response that it has 52,000 local sales partners, that the quality of the products sold is the purpose of its webshop, and that “a team of dozens of people work on this every day.” emphasized. They said such tests by Consumentenbond, where dangerous goods are intentionally added to the website’s offerings, were the exception and not the rule. “We rely on working with local distribution partners.”

Amazon said safety was “a top priority”, adding that it regretted that certain unsafe products were still being distributed through its webshop. “We are working to improve our controls,” a spokesperson said in a statement. The company announced that it has invested $1.2 billion (€1.1 billion) in security measures. It can also be expected to have a deterrent effect on fraudulent sellers.

Other sales platforms such as Blokker and Zalando were also investigated by Consumentenbond. There the researchers could not offer a restricted commodity. The goods were not accepted there for various reasons.