Retailer giant Amazon is by far one of the largest retailers in the US. The company has managed to take a huge leap with the help of its website as the customers could order about anything from books to everything that you can imagine. Overall, it is a one stop shop where you can find physical as well as digital goods. The growth courtesy is its sprawling third party merchant marketplace.
Many of the marketplace merchants are above-board retailers, manufacturers and resellers. Thousands of merchants not just sell counterfeit items, but also unsafe, mislabeled, recalled or even banned items that can put the consumers, especially children in serious danger. A leading daily has identified more than 4,100 such products for sale on Amazon.com that was found in course of months-long investigation. It was also found that at least 2,000 are toys or medications that fail to include warnings about the risks to children.
The findings stated that 116 products were falsely listed as FDA approved and included toys which the agency does not regulate. There were 80 listings for infant sleeping wedges that the FDA says can cause suffocation and that Amazon had previously banned. 1,412 electronics listings had falsely claimed to be UL-certified while 2,324 toys had failed to include federally mandated choking hazard warnings and more. The WSJ had commissioned tests of 10 specific children’s products it bought on Amazon and many had carried the enigmatic “Amazon’s Choice” badge. Out of those, four failed the test based on federal safety standards including one that contained excessively high levels of lead.
Summing it up, Amazon has increasingly evolved as a flea market and has exercised little to no oversight over items sold by third party merchants unless a specific complaint or media report draws attention on the item. Reports say that 60 percent of the physical retail sales come from a third party market-place.
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