Bad business for Aliexpress, Wish, eBay and Amazon marketplaces. Six consumer groups of BEUC (The European Consumer Organisation) ordered 250 products, including cosmetics, on these platforms. As a result, two thirds of the purchases did not comply with European safety legislation.
Marketplaces are still too little monitored… and that is exactly what BEUC wanted to demonstrate through this awareness campaign.
These online spaces bring together sellers and consumers, both individuals and professionals. The conformity of what is marketed is not always checked.
In the case of cosmetics, the testers were interested in tooth whitening products.
Seven out of ten care products contain levels of hydrogen peroxide that are too high for domestic use (>0.1%).
These levels were 14 to 70 times higher than the legal limit.
Too high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide can cause gum irritation or tooth hypersensitivity.
“Although online marketplaces remove products when informed, they reappear too often. One of the major problems is that these players do not see themselves as responsible for the safety of the products offered on their platforms and therefore do not seem to have sufficient control over the reliability of the upstream sellers,” explains Monique Goyens, BEUC’s managing director. “Consumer groups have repeatedly reported dangerous products which have subsequently been removed. But this cannot become a modus operandi to ensure the safety of buyers. It is time for the EU to make marketplaces responsible for what is distributed on their sites, and for …
