An investigation by The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Amazon is selling thousands of items that are mislabeled, banned, or declared as unsafe by federal agencies.
Probe Finds Thousands Of Problematic Listings On Amazon
The probe found more than 4,000 of these items were for sale on the e-commerce site.
The Journal discovered that Amazon has numerous listings for products that do not include warnings about health risks and items that were previously banned by the FDA.
The listings also included "FDA-approved" products that health regulators never vetted, illegally imported prescription drugs, electronics with false UL-certified safety ratings claims, and many more.
Many of these problematic products were even found in the site's Amazon Choice label. The investigation also found at least 157 items that the e-commerce company said it explicitly banned.
Following the report, Amazon removed or changed the description on more than half of these problematic listings.
Amazon's Response
In a blog post, Amazon responded to the report about the safety of the products it offers, saying that it requires items listed on its site to comply with relevant laws and regulations.
It also said it uses automated tools that scan for non-compliant products.
The company likewise said that has a global team of compliance specialists that review safety documentation. It also said that the company added additional qualification requirements for sellers before they can offer products.
Amazon said that in 2018, it invested more than $400 million to protect the store and its customers, as well as build programs to guarantee the safety, compliance, and authenticity of the products it offers.
"Amazon offers customers hundreds of millions of items, and we have developed, and continuously refine and improve our tools that prevent suspicious, unsafe, or non-compliant products from being listed in our store," Amazon said in a statement released on Friday.
Amazon said it wants its customers to shop with confidence and that it will conduct investigation on concerns raised to its customer service team.
