The French government remove from all search engines and app stores in the country, an unprecedented measure in the EU. Wish, one of the world’s largest and most popular marketplaces, which mostly offers products from China-based merchants, has been under investigation by French consumer protection agencies since last year, as the platform was suspected of misleading consumers. consumers by offering counterfeit products, such as sneakers and perfumes with images that featured the logos of famous brands, in addition to the fact that many of the products could be dangerous according to European regulations.
At the time of investigation the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF) ordered 140 different products in , most of them imported products, and the results were overwhelming.
Let us remember that despite not being Amazon or , Wish is also one of the great online shopping sites also in Spain. According to the guide, this eCommerce It occupies the 18th position in the ranking of the websites with the highest online turnover in our country, with €226 million in 2020.
According to the French government, most Wish products may be dangerous
According to the French government statement, “it is ordered to Major search engine and mobile app store makers remove reference to the Wish e-commerce site and its mobile app. These measures are exceptional and exemplary and have been possible thanks to the new powers of the DGCCRF in the digital sector. These decisions are unique in Europe and aim to protect consumers and put an end to Wish infringements.” (…) »
And then, it makes a direct reference to the security of the marketplace products: “After an initial investigation into the commercial practices of the Wish platform, the National Investigation Service (SNE) of the General Directorate of Competition, Consumer Control and Fraud (DGCCRF) opened a second investigation in September 2020 about the safety of the products sold on this platform.
As part of a sampling campaign of more than 140 products sold on Wish, most of them imported, the investigation revealed the sale of a large number of non-compliant and dangerous products, with particularly high levels of danger for certain families of products such as toys (95% non-compliant, of which 45% dangerous), electrical appliances (95% non-compliant, of which 90% dangerous) and jewelery (62% dangerous)».
Even the jewelry sold on the platform represented a risk according to the Gallic body: 62% of the sampled items in this category were found to be dangerous.
An “unsatisfactory” product recall
In accordance with Wish’s policies, by reporting that a product is dangerous, the platform must remove them within the next 24 hours. But according to “Wish was found not to be conducting product recalls and recalls in a manner that was satisfactory, as it is required to under its status as a distributor. In most cases, these products are still available under a different name and sometimes even from the same vendor. The company does not keep does not keep records related to transactions of dangerous products or those in which non-conformities have been presented.
Research indicates that while Wish notifies customers that they have purchased a dangerous product, does not mention the reason for the withdrawal of said product, “nor the reasons for its dangerousness even when the platform is aware of all the analysis reports of the DGCCRF”.
France ordered to withdraw Wish after warning the US marketplace
In fact, this is not the first time that Wish has been removed from : in July the French administration in charge of consumer rights and against fraud asked it to comply with European regulations in relation to eCommerce and the security of the products they offered. The administration gave them notice to make the changes within two months, before taking the step of radically withdrawing Wish.
“We are requesting the removal of the site in all search engines”Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday.
Wish ensures that it meets all the demands of the French body
For its part, that “He has always complied with the demands of the DGCCRF when recalling products, and that he had tried to engage in a constructive dialogue with the agency.” Following the announcement of Wish’s withdrawal from France, shares in its parent company, San Francisco-based ContextLogic, on the Nasdaq before the market open on Wednesday.
Wish assured that, although it does not have a legal obligation to carry out quality controls on the 150 million products sold through its immense marketplace, has invested in a series of measures to promote higher quality products, although he did not say what those measures are or how they have worked.
But… what is Wish?
Wish is an American eCommerce company founded by Y former programmers of Google and Yahoo (respectively), which occupies a privileged place in the online sales sector thanks to its original proposal. It is an intermediary platform that puts sellers and buyers in contact and that is characterized, above all, by selling insultingly cheap products.
It works like a huge marketplace where you can find anything. Fashion, accessories, technology, gym equipment, clothes for dogs or even cigarette paper, to name just a few examples. The idea was developed after Szulczewski and Zhang in 2013 created an app that worked like a wish list. Over time they discovered that users always went to the cheapest items in the app. From there, they decided be themselves the ones who negotiate directly with the merchants (especially Chinese sellers).
This is undoubtedly a great precedent, especially at a time when the draft of the European Union Digital Services Law, created to protect consumers and their fundamental online rights within a framework of transparency and accountability, is being finalized. by the different platforms.
For now, the process of withdrawing Wish will take time, since the app will continue to work if it has already been downloaded, but gradually and when the order is applied, Wish will no longer appear in search results or in app stores like the App Store or Play Store. If Wish properly implements the requested changes to its marketplace, French officials could consider lifting the ban.
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