Erica McKoy: More of us than ever are shopping online, but the regulation isn't keeping us safe, putting us at risk from buying dangerous and illegal products.
Hello, I'm Erica McKoy and welcome to Which? Shorts, the podcast that gives you a free weekly insight into our magazines. Today, I'm bringing you a piece that Hannah Walsh wrote for the March issue of Which? magazine all about unsafe goods being sold online. As more of us shop from the comfort of our own homes, we should be able to trust the retailers we're buying from, just like we would when we buy in person. But with the rise of online marketplaces, do you really know who you're buying from? And is it as safe as buying products in store? Here's Hannah's piece adapted for the podcast this week, read by myself, Erica McKoy.
Erica McKoy: Joffrey Bogermans is an electrician. He and his apprentice were working on a fire alarm when, despite his safety precautions, the 5 metre telescopic ladder he was using suddenly snapped and collapsed whilst he was 4.5 metres up. The dangerous ladder had been purchased from Amazon. Joffrey felt confident in its safety, particularly because the seller claimed falsely – by the way – that it met the product standards.
The collapse resulted in extensive injuries, including broken ribs, damage to his pelvis, wrist and ankle, a cut foot, and subsequent lung discomfort. He was unable to work for 12 weeks, which led to significant loss of income. Joffrey hadn't bought the ladder from Amazon; he'd bought it from a third-party seller who listed the product on Amazon marketplace.
Neither the seller nor Amazon would accept liability and he had to start a lengthy legal process which is still ongoing. The seller didn't have liability insurance and, despite the listing being removed, the seller is still active on Amazon and has listings for similar ladders. Joffrey is still unable to work properly and recently decided to shut down.
He has now set up an independent data-driven platform monitoring product listings across online marketplaces. "I just don't want this to happen to anyone else," he told us.
It's not just Amazon that has a marketplace of its own. Other retailers like Tesco, B&Q, and Superdrug have all joined the party and it's become the dominant form of online shopping. Our research last year found that 90% of UK consumers have bought from online marketplaces in the last two years and 24 million people are regular users. Surprisingly, 78% of UK adults were confident that these sites ensure products are safe. That's up from 70% in 2023.
We think this trust is undeserved. Based on our research, we estimate that at least 8.8 million consumers have experienced harm from faulty, unsafe or fraudulent products bought from online marketplaces. And we've proved time and time again that unsafe products are easily slipping through safety nets.
The Product Regulation and Metrology Act adopted in July 2025 enables the government to impose product safety requirements on online marketplaces through secondary legislation, but these have been delayed. It urgently needs to use these powers to ensure that dangerous products are prevented from reaching people in the UK. Whether you listen to our podcast, watch our videos or read our investigations in the magazine or online, you'll know that we bang this drum a lot. But we make no apologies for repeating ourselves on matters of public safety, especially when those profiting repeatedly fail to deal with the problem.
Frustrated by marketplace inaction, we developed our own tool to match products for sale with those flagged as dangerous by the Office for Product Safety and Standards, the OPSS. Last year we used it to find nearly 800 being sold to UK consumers that were similar or identical to products in alerts published by the OPSS. We did set a high bar for what constitutes a similar product, but our testing and investigations have repeatedly shown that products that appear similar may pose the same safety risk, even if they have different branding. When independent labs analysed 15 of these products, all 15 were illegal to sell in the UK.
We re-checked the listings that we shared with marketplaces as part of the OPSS matching project and found that some platforms had taken more decisive action than others. Alibaba, Shein, Temu and The Range had removed all the listings, while 93% of the eBay listings were no longer available. Amazon had removed 85%, but those that remained included a lamp that's identical to an OPSS-flagged product and also failed our electrical safety testing, and a baby water mat that users reported had such a strong chemical smell it had made them cough.
On Etsy, 58% of listings were still live when we checked in January. All of these are non-compliant baby sleeping bags. Marketplaces are failing to take even the basic step of acting on official reports to protect consumers from unsafe items. We're tired of doing their work for them.
It's not just us finding repeated safety issues with products sold on these platforms. Which? is part of a coalition of safety groups and businesses calling for tough new laws to hold platforms to account and work from our partner organisations is adding to the growing evidence. When the Ladder Association carried out safety tests on 14 ladders bought from online marketplaces, it found that every single one failed and posed a significant safety risk. Of those that failed, 86% were fraudulently marked or marketed as conforming with the relevant safety standard EN131.
In our own searches, we found that similar-looking ladders were rife across marketplaces, including AliExpress, Amazon and eBay, many claiming to meet the safety standard. The London Fire Brigade and Electrical Safety First have both highlighted major concerns of electric bikes, e-scooters and lithium-ion chargers bought online. On average, there's a fire from a lithium battery in an e-bike or e-scooter every two days in London, according to the London Fire Brigade.
In 2022, Electrical Safety First found 60 chargers for sale on online marketplaces that didn't meet safety requirements that could start fires. In addition, when European consumer organisations tested 108 USB chargers and baby toys from Shein and Temu in 2025, 96.3% didn't meet EU safety standards. The findings included a teething glove from Temu that's designed to be put in a baby's mouth and contained five times the legal limit of formaldehyde.
Every time a product fails our test or we find a recalled product for sale online, we tell the platform in question. The most common response is that safety is its top priority and it takes safety seriously. As early as December 2019, we called the responses from Amazon and eBay a broken record – that urgently needs changing. Fast-forward more than six years and we're still hearing the same thing.
Across marketplaces, we've heard that safety is the top priority or is taken seriously more than 60 times since 2019. A marketplace will remove the product we flag, only for another to appear in its place. Despite the mounting evidence from us and our partners, the only way marketplaces will truly improve their approach to safety is through proper enforced legislation.
