gizmodo | It’s no secret that Amazon’s marketplace is overrun with garbage—literal
or otherwise—and that the company struggles and often fails to manage
its own massive marketplace that lumps legitimately trustworthy brands
and products in with third-party sellers. Amazon’s latest challenge
appears to be regulating a burgeoning market for products feeding off of
flu and coronavirus fears—including products that claim to “kill” them.
In an email obtained by CNBC, Amazon has been contacting third-party
merchants about products that make extraordinary and unapproved claims
relating to coronavirus, as a strain that originated in Wuhan, China continues to spread
globally. In that email, Amazon informs a seller that the company
removed from its store an item “identified as a face mask or related
product that makes unapproved medical marketing claims regarding
coronavirus or the flu.”
The email cites federal regulations on products making unapproved
medical claims in their marketing and further states that its own rules
bar “the listing or sale of products that are marketed as unapproved or
unregistered medical devices.” According to CNBC, users have also posted
about receiving these warnings in seller groups on Facebook.
Disturbingly, CNBC also found multiple live listings
for disinfectants that were still up on Amazon’s marketplace as of this
writing, several of which claimed the item “kills coronavirus.”
Moreover, Gizmodo found that simply searching “kills coronavirus” or
“kill coronavirus” turns up numerous products with these claims in their titles, so they’re not exactly needles in a haystack.
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the seller
notice, its ongoing response to the products, and items that remained
on its site at the time of publication.
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