If governments cared about safety they would do the sampling and fine companies a meaningful percent of profit. That would fix these problems once and for all.
Unfortunately we’ve elected governments that cut regulations which encourages the opposite behavior from companies.
It's really not that simple. The regulations here benefit Amazon. This is why Facebook is asking to be regulated. It's called regulatory capture. It's a product of corporatism or cronyism. Established corporations lobby for regulations that shut out small business and protect their profits.
Yes, because this adds cost to manufacturing. Imagine if you yourself wanted to make and sell children's jewelry. How difficult would it be for you to get a lab to test all of the stuff you make? Could you make any money after you subtract the cost of these kinds of lab tests?
A large company has economies of scale. Finding a lab is a much smaller portion of the cost for them compared to you.
But I'm sure I must have missed why this general principle couldn't be used for other things that we don't want to be toxic.
Saying that the onus should be on stores is crazy, unless you accept that a company should have exclusive rights to your product at which point it become a licensed product and would probably be branded as such.
The catch is when they buy materials (like paint) that are cheaper because they don't comply. Either because they are made for a market with different regulations, or they have been contaminated some how.
Manufacturers may need to get certifications from suppliers about the materials meeting the regulations, but these won't be the cheapest option.
Regulatory capture is a useful concept, but please don’t just parrot it for any case related to regulation. As seen here, it is now used most often as a cudgel against any sort of regulation, and that’s exactly what they wanted all along.
- this settlement applies to Amazon only, not any competitor. That doesn’t fit the usual mechanism of using regulation to shackle competition
- regulatory capture also refers to a social mechanism, where regulators become friends with the industry because they spend so much time together etc. That doesn’t fit too well here, because a state attorney’s office is far more diversified than, say, the FAA.
- the points in my initial comment, which you just ignored
>This supposed “insight” is on its way to become just another tired meme.
On the other hand, people were explicitly talking about regulation, which I took to mean as a wider-reaching thing than just this agreement Amazon made. In this specific case, Amazon is basically acting like the government for the sellers.
There is a role for a non-profit here to test products, publicise the results and potentially even bring cases to court against Amazon as a funding strategy. Barring that, propose a bill for your state watchdog to your state legislator. Waiting around for governments to care about random issues isn’t how any system works.
Does Consumers' Union still do stuff like this?
School supplies are in the mandatory group, for obvious reasons.
A good part of the incoming is from these tests and accreditation.
So, a good amount of conflict of interest.
This will act as a deterrent to catch those knowingly selling toxic products. But if lab testing isn't in the reach of suppliers, then how can they know if it's toxic free?
That said, I think a safety net is valuable, whether Amazon or government. It would be nice to see innovation to bring the cost of testing down so it's accessible to everyone.
the AG barely held Amazon accountable at all. the fines are miniscule. my guess is that these same lead and cadmium tainted products will be sold through Amazon again in the future. lead paint in toys has been a problem for decades. this isn't enough to stop it. this problem calls for a far stronger remedy.
also: where are all the California Prop 65 lawsuits? where is Calfornia's AG on this issue? we have way more Amazon customers in California and fewer conflicts of interest since Amazon is headquartered in WA. this makes no sense.
Even wholesalers and cash and carry places will normally have systems to ensure what small sellers are getting are safe and legal.
Amazon is the big fat exception as they're busy being "platform" and try to duck their responsibilities with "not our problem".
Nett result is I trust anywhere on the high street, even poundshop and other bottom end chains, more on safety and counterfeits etc than Amazon.
They have people that actually go to large retailers and buy articles and they are tested continually. I got a life from one of the buyers at one of the labs and she mentioned that you get funny looks if you have a shopping trolley filled with, for example, one example of each type of cream cake being sold in that store.
For my child, we dont buy any toys at all on Amazon. I especially dont buy branded stuff because I don't know what is commingled.
Amazon may not be losing money here yet, but eventually they will. Everyone that works there should be ashamed.
I couldn't get a new pair of glasses in time.
Had I spent money to travel to see the eclipse and was denied then opportunity, I would have been very upset.
willing to bet they gave you a full refund as well
There have been some high profile incidents with other big companies with big legal budgets (Mercedes or Lexus? Apple? Nike?) but it all seems to go nowhere. It seems like it takes an army of lawyers to tackle one small incidence of shady behavior for one specific client. It never seems to rise up to the level of being handled as a pattern of behavior.
Isn't that just the government passing the buck to Amazon then? The should have auditors from the FDA or NIST or whatever to do random tests at Amazon warehouses.
[1] https://www.spectro.com/products/xrf-spectrometer/xsort-xrf-...
But for people who feel otherwise, and think it's necessary sure, no issue with it.
The burden of not putting dangerous products out in the market should lay on the manufacturer, through certifications or some form of safety requirements. In this case no doubt Amazon has to pay if they’ve acted as an importer, but you wouldn’t expect your supermarket to randomly sample all their product.
maybe the US regulations need an update to make school supplies a more strict category?
I believe they actually do for some types of products.
If they have a legitimate and well managed supply chain, it's not actually that difficult. The onus should be on the paint (or other materials) manufacturer to certify their product, with third party verification, and the certification flows down the chain.
Of course compliant materials are more expensive and the certification isn't cost free, but otherwise shady outfits wouldn't flout the law. However there shouldn't be any need for a distributor to do lab testing themselves. They just need to be conscientious and organised.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this is also really hard in practice for a lot of small manufacturers.
I happen to know a bunch about the childrens toy one for various reasons, so i'll go with that one. About 30-50% of wood finish manufacturers certify the relevant things for their finishes, but the wood coatings market is not a huge one (They make their living off auto and oem coatings, etc), and so unless you are using thousands of gallons a year, you are using a local distributor.
What you can get there will be hit and miss. In fact, it may not be possible to get a certified finish at all in your area.
(These are not paints, which are widely available).
Personally, i've had to order finishes from across the country in some cases, and i live in northern california (not exactly a small area :P).
(This wasn't for childrens toys, but it was to meet a similar regulation)
In very large markets, you don't have this problem because the components themselves tend to be plentiful.
Additionally, you are often required to test the combined product, not just the components.
I’ve already experienced this a few times with certain classes of products they wouldn’t ship to California due to stricter regulation on how much ozone they produce. That’s why I had to go to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a HEPA air filter for my bedroom during the fires last year: https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/research/indoor/ozone.htm
When it’s one product it’s easy to point fingers at the regulation for the inconvenience, but shouldn’t I be glad my filter fits those tighter regulations? The diesel car maker scandal is proof regulations can be cheated, but it seems to me like more regulation would get us to a point where that would be quickly exposed.
Let Amazon pass the buck to sellers. Regulate more things, and eventually it will be in their economic interest to run their own tests. They got where they were by having everything, and they can fall if that reputation does.
This doesn’t seem like the most sensible approach.
If my yogurt product is sold in grocery stores, isn’t it my responsibility to make sure my yogurt is produced properly and my responsibility to label it with the correct ingredients and nutrition facts? I wouldn’t expect it to be the grocery store owner’s responsibility to randomly sample my yogurt and check for its quality or ingredients.
Edit: Toned down inappropriately strong wording. Sorry for that. Didn’t mean to be a blowhard.
What doesn’t seem to make sense is requiring Amazon to do the actual safety testing. That would be akin to requiring baby stores to run safety tests on strollers, or requiring car dealerships to perform crash tests.
Let's assume that you have a physical store and you import and sell a toy and trust the manufacturer-provided documentation that claims that the toy is safe. The customer trusts you and relies on you to ensure that the toy is safe, the customer doesn't need to trust the manufacturer. If it turns out that the offshore manufacturer lied and faked the documentation, that's not the customer's fault or problem - you're fully liable and need to compensate the customer for selling a shoddy product that's apparently not fit for sale. Generally you have the right to recover that compensation from the manufacturer but if you can't do that (e.g. the manufacturer has since disappeared, or is insolvent) then that's not the customers problem, they bought the thing from you and it's your responsibility to uphold the warranties (at least in EU law) - so if you sell products from shoddy manufacturers then you assume full responsibility of them, which generally means that importers/distributors (or large retailers - a small store would delegate that task&risk to the wholesale importer/distributor, a major chain would do it themselves) audit their suppliers to ensure that they're not lying, faking safety documentation, etc.
The baby store doesn't need to run safety tests on strollers, but it does need to verify that the safety tests have been done and ensure that the strollers are actually safe. The store can (and usually will) rely on others to ensure the safety and testing, but if they choose to rely on unreliable partners, that's the fault of that store.
That's kind of the problem, isn't it? They've "agreed" to do it, as if not doing that was also an option but Amazon decided generously (and not to set precedent) to comply with the law.
Corporations are not sex offenders, they are very rational. If you fine them, their delinquency stops. If you don't, it won't.
If the retailer saving money because the factory they sourced their product from is not testing adequately then obviously the retailer is shouldering that risk and becomes the responsible party. They don't necessarily need to do the testing in house, they could outsource it, but ultimately the cost of testing should be borne somewhere in the supply chain, before it reaches the consumer.
And honestly, this should be better for the retailer than sending them into the outside world untested and then having to do some big recall operation when, in this example, either a parent spots the flaw or the baby stroller collapses on their child.
[1]: http://lawgovpol.com/case-study-donoghue-v-stevenson-1932/
By selling us a product the manufacturer and the grocery store warrant merchantability [1] and fitness for a particular purpose [2] ("implied warranty"). If you got a hot cup of lead instead of yogurt and the grocery story knew it was likely to happen and looked the other way, you’d be well within your rights to sue... everyone.
https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/newport-10-18/index.html
I don't know every lawsuit, but the blame in these cases seems to largely not land on the grocery stores, but the manufacturer.
For example, you could say "companies that make x million" are required to randomly test and certify they did (and will be fined 200% of profit for false certification).
and then you have a small entity program where the government is doing the sampling or something.
It is surely impossible to have a one size fits all that scales from "person selling at farmers market" to "amazon"
Maybe there is an opportunity here for innovation or a startup to facilitate this testing?
IE Amazon can pass the buck completely to the sellers.
This will simultaneously make it expensive for those sellers actually trying to comply (lab testing is not cheap), and do nothing for those that were likely the problem in the first place (who will just fake lab results and do so at a lesser price)[1]
They should require amazon to randomly sample.
[1] In case you think this is not a real problem note that similar kinds of lab testing requirements destroyed, for example, children's toys except from large scale sellers who could afford the cost of compliance (see https://www.cpsc.gov/Business--Manufacturing/Business-Educat...). You will find basically no small manufacturers of childrens toys anymore. Different cause, but likely same effect.
I'm sure it made things safer in some sense, but yeah.