Protecting customers is a top priority for Amazon. People shopping in Amazon’s store have the right to expect the products they buy are safe and authentic, and we invest heavily in people and technology to help root out the products and bad actors that could put that at risk. We believe that customer trust is difficult to earn and easy to lose, and we take our responsibilities seriously.
We require all products offered in our store to comply with Amazon policies, as well as all applicable laws and regulations. We design our store to empower selling partners to comply with those laws and policies, and we develop innovative tools to prevent unsafe or non-compliant products from being listed in the first place. Where needed we take strong and fast action to maintain a safe selection for our customers, including removing non-compliant products. We also protect every purchase in our store with our A-to-z Guarantee, and if a customer receives a product that is not in the condition expected, Amazon will refund or replace that item.
In 2024 we published our blueprint for private and public sector partnership to improve product safety for consumers – our foundational and global position on the topic of product safety; and we also launched the “Your Recalls and Product Safety Alerts” page for customers in Europe, making it easier for them to be aware of recalls on products they have purchased in our store and navigate to get more information about recalls.
Amazon and the GPSR
We fully support the goals of the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) to protect European consumers, and believe that all businesses should take appropriate levels of responsibility, wherever they sit in the product value chain. Since 2023 we have regularly informed selling partners with information about the GPSR to help them prepare for the new requirements, offering support in the form of tech solutions and educational content via our Seller University programme. In addition to our upstream controls which aim to ensure the safety of products sold in our store, we have educated sellers about the GPSR obligations to have a Responsible Person in Europe and how they can meet the relevant safety requirements. We will provide this support beyond the GPSR’s implementation period, and we look forward to continuing our work with European institutions and policymakers to keep customers safe, wherever they shop – both on and offline.
Robust controls
At the product listing stage, our product compliance systems include controls with automated rules which identify and remove non-compliant products. In 2023, we scanned billions of attempted changes to product detail pages for signs of abuse. When necessary, we also augment our technology by flagging listings for deeper review by our team of safety and compliance experts.
These controls aim to prevent non-compliant products from being listed in our store in the first place, or flag them for our expert investigators so that listings can be stopped if compliance issues are found, or if we need additional information from sellers. We also have continuous monitoring that goes beyond looking in our store and our inventory. We are always listening to feedback from customers, to figure out if our proactive controls missed something along the way. Every week, we monitor roughly 70 million pieces of feedback globally, most of it in near real-time.
When listing on our European stores, sellers are prompted to provide relevant product safety and compliance information, including compliance warnings and markings on product pages, as well as images of their products and packaging. Where available, we also leverage APIs and public resources to help make compliance easy and reliable for sellers. For example, they can display energy efficiency labelling by simply giving us their European Product Registry for Energy Labelling ID information.
And we continue to innovate when it comes to product safety. Our fulfilment centres now scan packaged products using cutting-edge imaging technology, which, when combined with generative AI, allows us to capture, analyse, and present crucial product information. This enables us to detect languages, ensure image readability, and identify important safety warnings on packaging, meaning that customers browsing our store can easily access comprehensive product details, including safety information, in a language they understand.
Product safety pledges
We’ve partnered with governments around the world to build product safety pledges that outline some of our aspirations for modernization in the field, and set standards and practices that we think all retailers should adopt. In Australia, Canada, the EU, and Japan, the pledges we’ve signed with other industry partners raise the bar for the retail industry and provide opportunity for new collaborations.
As a founding signatory of the first-of-its kind EU Product Safety Pledge in 2018, Amazon was pleased to continue our cooperation with the European Commission by signing an updated agreement in March 2023 - Product Safety Pledge+. This features commitments beyond what is established in the EU safety legislation, strengthening cooperation and dialogue between signatories and authorities to protect consumers.
Of course, we recognise that our job of protecting our customers is never done; we will always work hard for them every day, continuing to innovate with the latest tools and joining forces with institutions and policymakers to deliver a trustworthy shopping experience.
