eBay allows potentially dangerous items to be sold

[loustanis]

I purchased a 42V battery charger.  Checked my eBay email a few days later I found that, even before the item arrived, eBay emailed me to advise that the charger  was under a safety recall.  Given that eBay was aware that the item was under recall, why did eBay not prevent the sale from proceeding or at least warn me of the recall at the time of the purchase transaction.  eBay's email starts as follows "We take product safety very seriously. We’re reaching out to you because an item you purchased may have been recalled or pose a safety hazard. We recommend that you stop using this product."  So lets look at this logically. eBay, who claims to take product safety very seriously, allows an unsafe product to be sold.  eBay clearly has visibility of and monitors each transaction.  So why the notification AFTER the purchase?  Why not as part of the final steps BEFORE finalisation of the sale and payment for the item?   eBay's expectation is that I will now contact the seller, arrange return the item and seek a refund.  As far as I'm concerned, eBay should refund me the cost of the item and deal with the seller directly to avoid such issue to arise in future. 

[loustanis]

Your response is simply irrelevant.

[loustanis]

Gee,  thanks for joining the crowd and stating the obvious - which is totally irrelevant and of no help.

[twyngwyn]

From your link, the item has been recalled in USA……have you looked to see whether they are recalled here?

[loustanis]

My denigrating comments are a reaction to the helpfull - not - contributions from people who went on the attack as soon as my post went up.  eg a single line post  "LOL you bought from chna"

As far as ebay changing processes - all I'm looking for (or was looking for) was for sufficient customer support for ebay to consider an improvement to their processes.  Instead of "after the horse has bolted" perhaps  "prevent the horse from bolting".  At present, ebay has created a conflict situation between buyers and sellers.  The buyer is supposed to request a refund from the seller is fine, but ebay allowing its platform to be used to sell products that are subject to recall because of a fire risk, where they are aware of the rsks prior to the sale  -  is simply irresponsible.  Even if its a bot driven process, if ebay set it up one way, they should look at making an improvement to the bot driven process.   I was hoping to gather sufficient voices to make ebay take notice.  Ahh well, so be it. The failure is not mine, its ebay's.

[*casey*]

@loustanis

Let's get back on track.

To summarise eBay in general:

"eBay allows potentially dangerous items to be sold"

Yes they do

from the Countess

"Re eBay vetting purchases … I think you may be assuming a level of care and personal involvement that doesn’t exist. eBay use bot-driven processes for almost every aspect of eBay transactions and customer service - and increasingly use AI as well. They’re not vetting the items themselves in any way, other than to have templated emails automatically sent to buyers when the bot-driven processes match up purchase with list of recalled products.

They won’t remove a seller’s items based on that list; that’s been demonstrated by repeated attempts to report items listed by sellers registered on eBay.cn. It just won’t happen - for various reasons"

Very True

From Springy

" don't know how seriously ebay takes product safety. Not very, as far as I can see. They do what they have to do, legally, and that is about it.

 Ebay isn't stopping any of it, every sale is a bit of extra commission to them and it is perfectly legal for them at the moment to allow those ads.

You'll notice they don't take the extra step of checking if your particular product is the specific one under recall"

Very True

Do you know how many fraudulent listings aren't removed after being reported ?

We'd ALL like this to be different but it's getting worse

[loustanis]

I agree, US recall.  Trying to find whether recalled in Australia is a nightmare - so many items and trying to isolate is a bit daunting.  My logic says if dangerous in the USA, why would it not be dangerous here.  Having read the details and reasons for the recall in the US, I'm not able to logic out a reason why not in Australia. 

Just as a point, I've already experience a revious recall situation relating to household solar batteries  manufactured by LG..  The batteries were recalled in the USA in mid 2017 after causing fires.  It took till 2021 for the recall to happen in Australia (same make and model as in the USA).  LG continued to sell the batteries (that caused fires in the US) in australia until early 2021 and you can still see them listed on the Australain list even now.  So country of recall is not really relevant as far as I'm concerned.

[twyngwyn]

Did you see my post at 3:46pm?

[twyngwyn]

Yes, but if they’re not recalled here, then eBay should not have sent you that??

[countessalmirena]

Based upon identical title wording, the seller is registered in Hong Kong, and the battery is unbranded.

[kh-jean]

Hi everyone,

This discussion has gotten a bit heated. Please remember that, while it is fine to disagree with others, discussion should always remain friendly and respectful as required by the Community Guidelines .

Thank you for your cooperation.