Online marketplaces must be made accountable for endangering lives
Sue Davies, Head of Consumer Protection Policy
| Which?
If local authorities found that your high street corner shop stocked collapsing ladders, exploding chargers and toys contaminated with asbestos, you would rightly expect it to face serious penalties. This is as it should be, but it seems not all businesses are held accountable for exposing shoppers to potentially dangerous products.
For years, our research has found online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and plenty of others have been allowed to profit from seemingly dangerous and even life-threatening products sold on their platforms. At the same time, we have spoken to people whose lives have been irreparably changed by injuries caused by unsafe products sold by third parties on these types of sites.
You might reasonably ask why there are two different standards between traditional retailers and online marketplaces. This is a complex issue, but a short answer is that the UK’s product safety laws were not designed for a world where, at any time, consumers are only a few clicks away from an anonymous third party seller. These sellers can list almost anything and, even if they get caught, often face nothing worse than having their account suspended.
When you go shopping on these platforms you may have no way of knowing who you are buying from or whether their products are remotely compliant with product regulations. Which? believes that it is this aspect of their business model that makes it so crucial that businesses like Amazon take more responsibility for the safety of products being listed. .
Over the years, our researchers have exposed a seemingly endless number of unsafe products from online marketplaces, and the pattern remains depressingly consistent. Using our simple digital tools, we have found hundreds of products listed that have been subject to official safety alerts, yet remain for sale. A recent snapshot investigation, conducted in just a few hours using these straightforward and simple digital tools, uncovered around 40 products of serious concern still available from third-party sellers.
These included scam “energy-saving” plugs subject to official safety alerts that fail basic electrical standards and risk fire or electric shock, baby pillows and sleeping bags that can cause asphyxiation, plug-in heaters matching designs linked to shock, explosion and fire, reciprocating saws identical to those flagged for similar hazards and a smoke alarm that has repeatedly failed detection tests. These items were listed across online platforms including Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, TikTok Shop and others.
Many of these products are easily recognisable from prior Which? reports and Office for Product Safety and Standards alerts, yet they continue to reappear. Energy-saving plugs, for instance, have been reported for years. Senior Amazon staff were alerted to them in person at a Department for Business and Trade Committee session in June 2026 and attributed their continued presence to a “technical error” that had supposedly been fixed - yet dozens remained available weeks later.
Infant sleep products with hoods or missing armholes, known to risk suffocation, have likewise been reported repeatedly, including as recently as July 2026. Since 2019 we have flagged hundreds of unsafe products across dozens of investigations. On at least 90 occasions platforms have responded that “safety is a top priority,” only for the same or near-identical items to return.
Amazon and similar platforms, like TikTok Shop, have seemingly been getting away with this routine for years, but MPs are starting to sit up and take notice. Liam Byrne, Chair of the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, wrote a scathing letter to Amazon recently demanding an explanation of why dangerous eco plugs could still be found on their site, despite earlier assurances that they had been removed. It is telling that no representative from Amazon or TikTok attended the subsequent hearing.
The Product Regulation and Metrology Act (July 2025) finally gives the government the power to impose duties for product safety, but secondary legislation is urgently needed to create the actual rules that compel online marketplaces to keep dangerous products off their sites, with penalties if they fail to do so.
The Government has consulted on proposals to tighten the law, including a duty on online marketplaces, but still needs to follow through so that online marketplaces can finally be held to account and people can shop with much greater confidence. Shopping giants have been lobbying tooth and nail to block this legislation. These sites claim that safety is a priority, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, but the government must not kowtow to tech giants who cannot be trusted to self regulate. Evey day they delay bringing in the new laws, lives are at risk.
