A new order from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) has found Amazon responsible for dangerous products sold through its website by third-party sellers. The unanimous vote means it must recall 400,000 dangerous items, and it could lead to major changes in the way we shop online.
When you shop on Amazon.com, you might reasonably assume that the company is actually selling you the products. However, in January of this year, Amazon revealed that more than 60% of sales through its site actually come from independent sellers who use Amazon as a virtual marketplace.
The CSPC has argued — since it began suing Amazon in 2021 — that because Amazon facilitates these sales as a “distributor” (as the term is legally defined in the Consumer Product Safety Act), it has a legal responsibility to recall and destroy the products if they are found to be defective — with the CSPC citing examples of dangerous items including “defective carbon monoxide (CO) detectors, hair dryers without electrocution protection, and children’s sleepwear that violate federal flammability standards,” which the CSPC says are drawn from a list of more than 400,000 defective products sold on its website.
Amazon disputes this, saying it does not meet the definition of a distributor under the Consumer Product Safety Act. It did acknowledge the products were harmful, but added in a statement that when it was alerted to the safety issues, it “quickly notified customers, instructed them to stop using the products, and provided refunds.”
What happens now?
Well, we’re in a bit of a dark phase, which almost always follows these kinds of major rulings. The CPSC has told Amazon that it must now cooperate with them by submitting plans for how it will notify customers about the products included in the order and how it will work to recall and/or destroy them; in the meantime, Amazon has said it will appeal the decision.
If the appeal goes through, we likely won’t see any real changes in the way Amazon operates for a while (if at all). At least not until all appeals have been exhausted.
Whatever the outcome, the decision is likely to affect more than just Amazon. Similar marketplaces like Temu – which have also been found to sell potentially dangerous products that fail to meet safety standards, as highlighted in separate tests of electric heaters and toys by Toy Industries of Europe (via Which) – if they are successful in their case against Amazon, they could potentially take on US lawmakers.
While the U.S. government’s decisions likely only affect American consumers, lawmakers in other regions may feel emboldened to impose tougher restrictions on Amazon and other online marketplaces.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how things develop, but be prepared for some major changes to the way we shop online as the Amazon-CPSC dispute continues.
