Some Amazon third-party sellers are only asked to submit safety documents weeks after they start selling, leaving Amazon's marketplace open to a flood of potentially unsafe products, CNBC has learned.
The massive growth of the third-party marketplace has helped Amazon own the U.S. e-commerce market, but it's also proven hard for Amazon to police effectively, leading to problems such as counterfeits and fake reviews. The WSJ article exposed how Amazon's marketplace is not doing enough to protect consumers from potential health or safety risks, as thousands of products failed to meet safety compliance or lacked warning labels.
Amazon's spokesperson told CNBC that the company requests safety documentation "very shortly" after a product is listed by a third-party seller. The recent requests for documentation are part of Amazon's "long-standing Product Safety activities" and are "not a new program or in reaction to the Wall Street Journal article," the spokesperson said.
"All products offered in our stores must comply with applicable laws and regulations, and we regularly contact selling partners to request safety documentation to help ensure the products in our store meet the Consumer Product Safety Commission's safety standards," Amazon said in an email statement. Sellers who fail to submit the required safety documentation will be removed immediately, the spokesperson said. Without specifying, the spokesperson also said Amazon asks for compliance documents for some product categories before listing a product. In a blog post published after the WSJ article, Amazon said that it blocked more than 3 billion suspect listings for "various forms of abuse, including non-compliance, before they were published to our store.
It includes an Amazon help page that says Amazon "may request toy safety documentation at any time to confirm compliance," with links to the safety standards at the nonprofit testing agency
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