It's time to finally stop unsafe products being sold online

Online marketplaces appear to be unwilling or unable to prevent the sale of unsafe products, but why?

That’s a question we’ve been asking for years, and as we take to the streets to highlight the continued failures of platforms to keep their customers safe, a new snapshot investigation reveals dozens more potentially dangerous products still for sale.

And that’s despite repeated claims from online marketplaces that ‘safety is a top priority’, or words to that effect. We’re tired of waiting for them to prove it – now is the time to take action.

Andy Burnham: don’t let tech giants off the hook

We’re sick of tech giants like Amazon profiting when dangerous products turn up at our front doors. And we’re building on that momentum in a big way. We’ve just driven this message to the heart of Westminster (after a quick detour past Amazon HQ). 

Following a consultation, the government is due to publish new rules that could finally make online shopping safer. But these platforms claim they have protections in place to prevent the sale of unsafe products.

We’ve shown time and again that huge online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay and others, fail to stop dangerous products from arriving at your door. We think they’ve made it clear that they will never clean up their act unless they're forced to.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has a once-in-a-generation chance to make this right. 

See a video of the event and join the discussion on Instagram.

A continued failure to prevent the sale of unsafe products

Time and again we’ve reported unsafe products to online marketplaces, only for them to be removed and reappear for sale. Many of these products have been subject to multiple investigations and recalls, making it impossible to believe that the platforms are taking the issue as seriously as they claim.

We conducted a quick sweep using simple techniques to see if the marketplaces are still selling products with well-known safety issues. In just a few hours, we found 40 products for sale from third-party sellers that we had serious concerns about, including:

• Scam ‘energy-saving’ plugs that are subject to official safety alerts. 
• Baby pillows and baby sleeping bags that risk asphyxiation. 
• Plug-in heaters appearing to match models that risk electric shock, explosion and fire. 
• Reciprocating saws that appear identical to those in safety alerts. 
• A smoke alarm that repeatedly failed our safety tests. 

We found these for sale on Alibaba, AliExpress, Amazon, B&Q, eBay, OnBuy, The Range and TikTok Shop. 

Marketplaces should be well aware of all of these products, both from Which? research and official safety notices from the OPSS (Office for Product Safety and Standards). Some, such as baby sleeping bags without arm holes or with hoods, are easily identifiable as not meeting safety standards. The products we looked for really are the low-hanging fruit, and demonstrate the failure of marketplaces to implement even basic safety checks consistently. 

The repeated occurrence of ‘scam’ energy plugs

Energy-saving devices plug into the mains and claim to work by ‘smoothing’ household voltage, which they say ‘optimises’ the performance of appliances, saving on energy costs. They don’t do anything of the sort – they’re scam products we’ve been highlighting for years. 

• Our investigations have repeatedly shown how they fail basic UK electrical safety standards and pose a potential fire and electric shock risk, as detailed in several OPSS safety alerts.
• Despite having years to prevent the sale of these products, in June 2026 senior staff from Amazon were alerted in person to unsafe plugs for sale on their site at a DBT (Department for Business and Trade) Committee session. Amazon said that a ‘technical error’, which had now been corrected, had prevented them from being detected. Weeks afterwards, we were still able to find dozens for sale.
• A letter from the House of Commons called Amazon out on this again in September, citing its concern that these items remained for sale despite prior evidence. The letter also cited a series of other products that were identical or very similar to products subject to OPSS warnings that were still for sale on Amazon.

These energy plugs are emblematic of the issue we face – products that are clearly recognisable and have been reported multiple times, are removed and reappear, despite the platforms’ claims that ‘safety is a top priority’. 

In our most recent investigation, we easily found over a dozen more of these energy plugs available to UK shoppers, across Amazon, AliExpress, Alibaba, OnBuy and TikTok Shop. On Amazon, the products were for sale via the US-based Amazon.com, but quick shipping was available to the UK with no import charges and a reasonable delivery fee. They matched the images in safety alerts and our own investigations exactly. 

And this is far from the only example.

Infant safety put at risk from unsafe sleep products

We’ve been alerting marketplaces to unsafe sleep products on their sites for years, and the OPSS has run multiple campaigns to get them removed. As recently as July this year, we contacted marketplaces about unsafe and illegal baby sleeping bags on their sites. 

Using reverse image searching from a safety alert issued in 2023 to Amazon, we found five baby sleeping bags with hoods and without armholes for sale on Amazon. The image used in the listings directly matched the one in the safety alert, and was similar to those we had found in previous investigations. The product simply doesn't meet safety standards, as a baby could slip down inside or the hood could cover their face, risking suffocation. 

We also found bolster pillows for cots and side-sleeping pillows for sale on Amazon and TikTok Shop. These aren't recommended for safe sleep, and in December 2025 the OPSS issued a product safety alert about baby pillows, stating that they pose a risk of ‘suffocation, overheating and death to babies’ and that action was being taken to remove unsafe products from the market. So why are these still for sale? 

We also found:

• Plug-in heaters - We’ve tested this same design of plug-in heater several times, and ‘unbranded’ or ‘unknown brand’ versions have repeatedly failed to meet electrical safety standards. OPSS safety alerts for models of the same design cite risks such as electric shock and fire. We found five with the same design for sale.
• Reciprocating saws - flagged by the OPSS due to risk of fire and electric shock. Last year, we found dozens of what seemed to be the same saw (including those with the same model number) for sale across multiple marketplaces, and tested a sample that was also found to be unsafe. The listings we shared with marketplaces were removed, but a quick check revealed four models that appear to be identical on B&Q Marketplace, Amazon and eBay. 
• Telescopic ladder - earlier this year, we found 100 telescopic ladders across online marketplaces that appeared similar or identical to those in safety alerts that state a serious risk of injury, as well as being similar to a model that seriously injured electrician Joffrey Bogemans. A quick check revealed a similar model for sale on Amazon. 
• Smoke alarm - we’ve alerted eBay twice to a smoke alarm that repeatedly failed smoke detection tests. A reverse image search found a product with identical packaging and design for sale on eBay, years after the marketplace had been told just how dangerous it was.

Why we don’t believe safety is a ‘top priority’

Which? has been investigating and reporting unsafe products for years, and in that time, sadly, very little has changed. One thing that has remained consistent is the response from the platforms – a product we report is removed, online marketplaces stress the importance of customer safety, and the products just reappear for sale again.

Since 2019, we’ve reported hundreds of unsafe products to platforms across dozens of investigations and on at least 90 occasions, marketplaces have told us that ‘safety is a top priority’, ‘safety is taken very seriously’, or a variation of this claim.

These are products that could cause injury or death, start fires or give electric shocks. Products that should never be for sale, let alone creating real risk in people’s homes.

But yet again, we’ve easily found potentially dangerous products for sale on their sites, putting shoppers and their families at risk. It took a single researcher a matter of hours to conduct these checks, with nowhere near the same level of resources as the big marketplaces. If they were taking consumer safety as seriously as they repeatedly claim, these unsafe items would be wiped from their platforms for good. 

A once-in-a-lifetime chance to keep customers safe online

Online marketplaces still don’t have the same responsibilities for the items sold on their platforms that high street retailers have had for years, and we don’t think that’s fair. 

Years of investigations have made that point emphatically. Just last week, we found 171 dangerous baby swim floats for sale on six online marketplaces, with 25 appearing to match a product that was involved in the death of a two-year-old child in the US. It’s a disgrace, and it’s just the latest example of why online marketplaces will never clean up their act unless they are forced to do so. 

That’s why the government must follow up on its recent consultation on updating product safety rules and urgently impose a clear legal duty on online marketplaces to take responsibility for the safety of products sold through their platform, including proactive measures to prevent unsafe products from being listed and sold. It brought in the Product Regulation and Metrology Act that gives it powers to update product safety legislation, and it can’t delay any longer. These new rules must be backed up by heavy fines for online marketplaces that fall short.

This will not only protect online shoppers, but will also level the playing field for responsible high street retailers and UK businesses being undercut by online shopping giants. And anything less would give tech giants a free pass to continue putting shoppers’ lives at risk. 

It's absolutely essential that we halt the flood of dangerous products into UK homes and support our high streets, and for that we need strong new rules. 

Join our fight: sign our petition to protect online shoppers today.

What the marketplaces told us

Alibaba: ‘Alibaba.com is a global business-to-business online marketplace where independent sellers routinely list their products, and we require all sellers to comply with applicable laws and regulations as well as our Product Listings Policy. Upon notification of the non-compliant third-party listing, Alibaba.com has swiftly removed it from our platform, and we continue to remove any listing and/or impose penalties on sellers violating platform rules and compliance requirements, including but not limited to points deduction and termination of sellers' accounts.’

AliExpress: ‘AliExpress takes product safety seriously. Following notification from Which?, we promptly removed the reported listings from sale in the UK as a precautionary measure. We are also in the process of strengthening safety controls across the relevant product categories. We remain committed to working with UK regulators and consumer organisations to help protect consumers and promote a safer online shopping environment.’

Amazon had not responded in full at the time of publishing but was investigating. 

B&Q: ’We take the safety of products sold by sellers at B&Q Marketplace very seriously and proactively check to ensure no products subject to an OPSS recall are offered for sale.’ It also said that the products we shared are different to ones previously investigated. 

eBay: 'The listings flagged by Which? are similar to previously recalled items but are not identical. We have therefore requested product safety documentation from the sellers of these products and if we do not receive it, we will take the appropriate action against them. Our specialist teams work closely with regulators and use technology and AI-supported monitoring to help prevent millions of unsafe items being sold on eBay every year.'

OnBuy: 'Product safety is a top priority for OnBuy, and our Risk Team works closely with Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) to identify and remove unsafe and non-compliant products. We continue to strengthen our product safety controls, including the adoption of new technology designed to identify and block potentially non-compliant products as they are created.'

The Range said the product we flagged was no longer for sale. 

According to TikTok, the listings we shared have been removed for violating its product safety policies, and recall notices have been issued to customers. It said that the safety of customers is of the utmost priority, and it has strict measures in place to ensure that sellers comply with regulations and safety standards. 'TikTok Shop ensures policy compliance through both human and machine-based moderation, and continuously enhances these efforts.'