At least 85 to 95 percent of products from Shein, AliExpress and Temu do not comply with European legislation. This is according to an inspection by European market surveillance authorities. Dutch regulators want a joint approach to protect consumers.
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Dangerous products
Along with this huge increase in parcels, there is also an increasing flow of imports of prohibited goods. Of the inspected products (from Shein, AliExpress and Temu), 85 to 95 percent do not comply with European product legislation.
According to Dutch regulators, these products are often ineffective, risky for consumers or do not work properly. These include toys with loose parts, which are choking hazards for young children. Or electronics that catch fire due to overheating, or cause malfunctions. Banned substances, such as lead, are also often found in these products.
Dutch market surveillance authorities and Dutch Customs are calling for a joint approach in checking the parcels coming from Chinese platforms. According to them, all parties in the chain (production, trade and transport) of ecommerce products from outside the European Union, government and buyers must take responsibility.
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Now do Amazon & Etsy. Surely the resellers can vouch for the safety of their china imported products😂
I guess I’m surprised that 5-15% of these products do comply.
I’m going to guess that either there are no standards to meet for those, or the standards also just happen to line up with the current cheapest material and construction options.
Or they are only covered by standards that are complete jokes. Like the fire standard I saw at my old job that a pack of printer paper would easily pass because it was just a time before burning a hole through, and the paper pack took longer just because of how thick it is (the time was like 5 minutes or something if I recall correctly).
There are multiple tiers of products:
- Certified
- QC pass
- QC reject
- Fourth shift
- Clones
- Copies
- Scams
Top ones tend to comply, bottom ones tend to be the cheapest.
But people like to generalize and act like everything was the same, instead of admitting they conned themselves into buying trash.
No buyers shouldn’t take responsibility. This is how we ended up here in the first place. Outsourcing work to people who aren’t equipped with the resources to do it. I wish everyone had a mass spectrometer at home but it’s likely impossible and that’s not the only tool we’d need in order to solve this problem. Also it would be grossly inefficient use of mass spectrometers.
As much as I am not remotely bothered by the banning of TikTok (which seems like it may well not go through anyway), maybe we should start with banning the sites that literally funnel a bunch of heavy metals into people’s mailboxes and cause actual known physical harm both to the naive people who still buy this stuff and to their neighbors, family members, and postal workers?
China for decades has been buying scrap and actual trash from Western countries. They were not going to just sit on it without trying to make a profit.
The alternative, would have been to keep that trash locally. This way at lest it gets smeared out over multiple countries… or something. 🤷
Sure, most shit from AliExpress will break within ten minutes from first opening, but where else are you gonna get a bag of 10,000 googly eyes for $10?
Maybe you shouldn’t be able to buy an America sized bag of novelty plastic waste for 10 bucks.
What are we talking about… like $50?
Tariffs can make that happen.
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you! Well, maybe not that shocked.
