Comment by big85
6 hours ago
> Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission's investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity, as they contain chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or pose suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.
> Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.
Interesting that this is under the DSA, since if they're the "importer" by mailing parcels to the EU it would also be covered by long standing rules on CE marking.
It's good to know that someone's actually checking this stuff. Self-reported compliance like CE always makes me wonder if I'm a mug for trying to comply honestly with the rules when it would be easy not to.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown between the "toxic chemicals" and "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk. The other day I was watching the TV above the Walmart customer service desk that displays product recalls, and multiple recalled products were a motorized bassinet, but the wireless remote control has a battery compartment that could be opened and then the battery swallowed. To a layman or (I assume) Chinese inventor, that seems overly burdensome as I am certain that same household would have other wireless remotes.
Not a breakdown, but this comment reminded me of a recent play sand test by Stiftung Warentest:
They tested play sand for asbestos, and four of these positive tested play sands were ordered on Temu. The play sand is for kids!
https://www.test.de/Deko-Spiel-und-Bastelsand-Asbest-Alarm-i...
That is unfortunate, thank you for sharing.
> "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk.
Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.
Yes, I know this is an EU article, but I suppose we have similar Temu garbage here in the USA to deal with. I wish for more reasonable restrictions but more severe enforcement, as these "bad" product examples I mentioned seem to make people lose interest as they seem silly.
Batteries are more than a choking hazard; they can cause severe internal chemical burns, gut perforation and so on initiated by electrolysis.
I think the idea is that the baby would be in the bassinet, the parent would have the remote, not the other way around.
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People forget many of US's regulations were written in blood because the US already had it's industrialization period. They left behind signposts that people could use to sue.
The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.
Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.
Is temu much worse than amazon here?
Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?
"compared to Temu that does not give a damn by design" would be more accurate.
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Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend?
Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.
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Certainly in the UK, we don't have the same issues with terrible Chinese fakes that I hear about from US Amazon users.
We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.
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I don’t know about fakes, but browsing Amazon DE feels like browsing AliExpress when looking for any technology products. Especially cables, adapters and such.
Amazon UK these days is definitely full of Chinese reproductions and drop shipped knock offs.
Whether they're dangerous I don't know, I've not tried them.
There's a lot of work to be done.
Yes.