A new order from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) has found Amazon responsible for hazardous products sold by third-party sellers through its website. The unanimous vote means it must recall 400,00 hazardous items, and it might lead to big changes about how we shop online.
When you’re shopping at Amazon.com, you might reasonably assume it’s the company actually selling you the products. However, Amazon revealed in January this year that over 60% of sales through its site actually come from independent sellers who merely use Amazon as a virtual marketplace.
The CSPC has argued – since it started suing Amazon in 2021 – that because Amazon is facilitating these sales as a "distributor" (as the term is legally defined in the Consumer Product Safety Act), it bears a legal responsibility for recalling and destroying the products should they be found to be faulty – with the CSPC pointing to examples of dangerous items including “faulty carbon monoxide (CO) detectors, hair dryers without electrocution protection, and children’s sleepwear that violated federal flammability standards,” which it says come from a list of more than 400,000 defective products sold on its website.
Amazon disputes this, saying it does not meet the Consumer Product Safety Act’s definition of a distributor. It did acknowledge that the products were harmful, though, it added in a statement that when it was alerted to the safety issues it “swiftly notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and refunded them.”
What happens next?
Well, we’re in a kinda murky stage, which almost always occurs after these big verdicts. The CPSC has told Amazon that it must now work with it by submitting plans on how it will notify customers about the products included in the order and how it will work to recall and/or destroy them; meanwhile, Amazon has said it will appeal the decision.
If said appeal goes ahead, then we might not see any actual changes to how Amazon operates for a while (or ever), at least not until all appeal avenues have been exhausted.
Regardless of how things end, the decision will likely not just affect Amazon. Similar marketplace sites like Temu – which has also been found to sell potentially hazardous products that do not meet safety standards, as highlighted in separate electric heater and Toy Industries of Europe toy tests (via Which) – may find they’re up against US lawmakers next if they’re successful against Amazon.
While US government decisions will likely only impact US consumers, lawmakers in other regions may feel emboldened to try to impose tighter restrictions on Amazon and other online marketplaces.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out, but be prepared to see some big changes to how we shop online as the Amazon and CPSC dispute continues.
