Unsafe Products Easy to Sell via Bol and Amazon

This article was last updated on July 4, 2023

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Unsafe Products Easy to Sell via Bol and Amazon

Unsafe products can still be easily sold via Bol.com and Amazon. The Consumers Association has issued a warning after conducting research on products offered by external sellers on these websites.

The Consumers Association also created a shop on these platforms and listed nine products that are classified as dangerous according to the European warning platform Safety Gate, including a flammable air conditioner and an unstable high chair. To their concern, seven of the products passed Bol.com’s checks, while eight passed Amazon’s. However, an incendiary light cord was eventually removed from both sites.

Simple Tricks

“The security requirements of the webshops can still be circumvented with simple tricks,” says Joyce Donat of the Consumers’ Association. In their study, they discovered that using self-purchased codes unrelated to the actual product allowed these unsafe products to pass through. Even CE markings, which indicate compliance with European rules, can be used for fraudulent purposes. It was possible to offer unsafe goods using photos of CE markings from other products.

Bol.com claims that they already implement numerous measures to prevent the sale of unsafe products. They argue that it is not customary for sales partners to deliberately list dangerous products online, as was done by the Consumers’ Association in this study. On the other hand, Amazon has not responded to the issue yet.

Drop Shipping

Furthermore, the controls for drop shipping turned out to be ineffective as well. Drop shipping is a practice where a webshop allows purchases from, for example, China, to be shipped directly to the customer after the order has been placed. This is often seen with cheap webshops such as AliExpress.

The products themselves may not necessarily be dangerous, but both Bol.com and Amazon have stated that they do not permit dropshipping or have stringent requirements. Nevertheless, seven products from AliExpress passed the safety checks.

From 2024, stricter rules for unsafe products from outside the EU will be implemented. Sellers will be required to offer a safe replacement product for the same price, repair the purchase to meet safety standards, or provide a refund. However, the Consumers’ Association argues that these rules are only useful after the purchase has been made and potentially dangerous incidents may have already occurred.

“If you open your shop window to external providers, you have to take responsibility for stricter checks right from the start,” says Donat of the Consumers’ Association.