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Temu was hit with a 200 million euro (NZ$394m) fine on Thursday (local time) after a European Union investigation found the Chinese online retailer failed to protect consumers from illegal products like toxic or hazardous toys and unsafe electronics.
The 27-nation EU’s fine follows preliminary findings last year that Temu was exposing consumers to a high risk of products sold on its platform like baby toys and small electronics, that didn’t comply with EU consumer safety rules.”
In other words putting babies’ lives in danger.
“Temu said it disagreed with the decision and considered the fine “disproportionate.”
[…] The commission said failing to do proper risk assessments is a particularly serious breach of the bloc’s digital rules.
The company is popular because it offers cheap goods – from clothing to home products – shipped from sellers in China. The platform has 92 million users in the EU and is owned by PDD Holdings Inc, which also owns the popular Chinese e-commerce site Pinduoduo.”
Cheap and nasty.
The European Commission said Temu failed to identify, analyze and assess the systemic risks of illegal goods for sale on the platform and the resulting harm to European consumers.
Investigators had carried out a “mystery shopping exercise” that turned up a number of “non-compliant” products, including many electronic device chargers that failed basic safety tests.”
In other words they start fires.
They also found a very high percentage of baby toys that posed safety risks, either because they contained chemicals at levels that exceeded safety limits or because they had parts that came off and could be a suffocation risk.
The commission said failing to do proper risk assessments is a particularly serious breach of the bloc’s digital rules.”
[…] “Temu’s risk assessment underestimates concrete risks, lacks specificity, is not grounded in solid evidence, and is not comprehensive,” she said in a prepared statement. “It leaves regulators, users, and the public in the dark about the true scale of potential harm posed by illegal products sold on Temu. Now it is time for Temu to comply with the law.”
Temu has until the end of August to submit an “action plan” to remedy the problem. It could be hit with additional daily, weekly or monthly fines if it fails to comply.”
And, being a Chinese company, there’s fat chance of them doing anything.
Let’s not forget how they use the same kind of psychological techniques that gambling sites do and how they use virtual slave labour in unsafe working conditions.
I don’t believe Temu should be banned though. It’s up to the consumer to decide if they want to buy something cheap, nasty and potentially dangerous, or something more expensive but doesn’t break the second time you use it.
However, I do believe that they should be required to put a warning on their website and app. Something like: “Our products are total crap and usually don’t last more than day. Some of them are even dangerous, like the electrical stuff. Oh, and a lot of our baby gear is actually poisonous.”
That should do the trick.
Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360985478/chinese-online-retailer-temu-hit-232-million-fine-over
