Democrats Urge Amazon to Stop Selling Unsafe Products, Warn Consumers

Democrats urged Amazon to remove thousands of unsafe products from online sale and issue warnings to consumers about those products in response to a report that more than 4,000 items marketed by the e-retailer are unsafe, banned by the federal government or featured deceptive labeling (see report, Aug. 26). Senate Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut, and two other senators -- Ed Markey, Massachusetts, and Robert Menendez, New Jersey -- urged Amazon to “take swift action to provide accurate warnings that protect consumers against these dangerous and deadly products and to stop their wrongful sale.” Congressional Kids' Safety Caucus Co-chair Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., asked CEO Jeff Bezos to detail how the company will prevent future sales of recalled or unsafe products and better label which products are being handled by third-party companies. The senators want Bezos to do “a sweeping internal investigation of [Amazon's] enforcement and consumer safety policies.” Last year, “our teams and technologies proactively blocked more than three billion suspect listings for various forms of abuse, including non-compliance, before they were published to our store,” Amazon said in a statement: Once “a product is available in our store, we continuously scan our product listings and updates to find products that might present a concern.”