Products Being Sold On Amazon Found To Have 400x Legal Lead Limit

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Amazon is increasingly facing pressure for the thousands of unsafe or banned products that it continues to host and sell on its platform.

The WSJ conducted a search of Amazon's site to try and find how many items might be listed on the site that have already been deemed unsafe by various government agencies, that are deceptively labeled, or items that are banned from being sold in big box stores etc.

They found more than 4,000 products in their investigation.

From selling toys with dangerous levels of lead, to other dangerous knockoffs, it's clear that Amazon is having difficulty with overseeing the safety of their products offered.

Third party sellers are effectively tarnishing the reputation of Amazon and the company has continued to try and avoid liability for any defective and harmful products. However, one US federal appeals court this summer ruled that Amazon could be held liable for defective products that those third-party sellers are offering and this change could have major implications.

“Amazon fails to account for the fact that under the Agreement, third-party vendors can communicate with the customers only through Amazon,... This enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse to the third-party vendor.

Hundreds of items are being sold on Amazon every second. With more than 50 percent of those sales estimated to be coming from third-party sellers.

If the courts are going to demand that Amazon be held liable for the products that are being sold through their platform then this could be bad news for them. They might eventually be forced to drastically reform their screening process to attempt to detect potentially harmful and defective products etc. Some say this could be a good thing for the relationship between those third party sellers and Amazon, and it also gives a new avenue for victims to seek remedy over the products.

This year alone, third-party sellers paid Amazon roughly $23.1 billion in commissions, as well as shipping and other fees.

And that was only through the first half of 2019, this is about a 20 percent increase compared to the year before. Third-party options and sales continue to grow, despite the many lawsuits that have been launched. But some suspect that the recent ruling by the federal appeals court might be the first sign of things to change.

After the WSJ sent information to Amazon about the thousands of products that they had discovered in their investigation, Amazon allegedly removed or updated more than 9,000 of those items.

Pics:
pixabay



11 comments
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(Edited)

When I said: “Amazon should burn!”, I didn’t mean Amazon in Brazil!

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Wow, sounds like the ultimate perfect shitstorm is brewing for Amazon, but their pockets are pretty deep, I wonder if anything will actually stick.

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Lead poisoning is not instant. So, may take longer than anticipated.

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Time to get off Amazon.
Order healthier from an alternative.
The power of the conscious consumer!

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Damn, Amazon is in a rough spot, they should really check their products more closely and be more in tune with their third party providers, I've been scammed on amazon once, but it was kinda my fault, I ordered a product from a third party scammy account instead of from the original producer. Never happened again...

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Man this is really fucked up, good to know, thanks for sharing!!

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Interesting replaying story.

A dozen years ago it was Matel or some such that was getting lead paint painted toys from China.

China doesn't seem to care, just as long as they can keep selling.
Now they sell on Amazonium

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Jeezus! I guess this is why humans need regulation! Our moral compass seems so wavered from side to side.

Although, there does seem to be some kind of "global awakening," a sort of shifting of awareness for things like off setting our eco-foot print and looking at what's in food/products that are potentially killing us..

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really? lol
people can't be trusted, they're greedy and they will take shortcuts.. so let's give those same people a tool like gov, with a monopoly on violence, and the important task of making sure things are safe and then sit back and watch what happens 🙈😂
it is specifically because they are fallible that they cannot be trusted with such a tool

i'm no fan of low quality poisonous products etc, who the heck would be? But using violence isn't the only nor even the best way to go about solving it. If anything regulation today protects many bad actors which is why a great deal of established corporations freq lobby for more of it🤷

i wish there were a global awakening for freedom🙏✌️

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