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Comment by big85 | Hacker News Reader

> Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission's investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity, as they contain chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or pose suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.

> Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.

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Interesting that this is under the DSA, since if they're the "importer" by mailing parcels to the EU it would also be covered by long standing rules on CE marking.

It's good to know that someone's actually checking this stuff. Self-reported compliance like CE always makes me wonder if I'm a mug for trying to comply honestly with the rules when it would be easy not to.

I'd be curious to see a breakdown between the "toxic chemicals" and "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk. The other day I was watching the TV above the Walmart customer service desk that displays product recalls, and multiple recalled products were a motorized bassinet, but the wireless remote control has a battery compartment that could be opened and then the battery swallowed. To a layman or (I assume) Chinese inventor, that seems overly burdensome as I am certain that same household would have other wireless remotes.

Not a breakdown, but this comment reminded me of a recent play sand test by Stiftung Warentest:

They tested play sand for asbestos, and four of these positive tested play sands were ordered on Temu. The play sand is for kids!

https://www.test.de/Deko-Spiel-und-Bastelsand-Asbest-Alarm-i...

That is unfortunate, thank you for sharing.

Batteries are more than a choking hazard; they can cause severe internal chemical burns, gut perforation and so on initiated by electrolysis.

I think the idea is that the baby would be in the bassinet, the parent would have the remote, not the other way around.

It's well within the realm of possibility that a parent, holding the remote, approaches the bassinet and sets the remote down in a location where it's reachable by the child. Perhaps even in the bassinet! And especially so if the wireless remote is the only way to operate the bassinet: are you going to walk across the room to turn it on?

Not to mention, new parents are often some of the most sleep deprived. The burden should be on the manufacturer to make these safe. And it's not even that hard: just use one of the clasps on the battery compartment that requires a coin or key to open rather than just your fingernails.

> "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk.

Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.

Yes, I know this is an EU article, but I suppose we have similar Temu garbage here in the USA to deal with. I wish for more reasonable restrictions but more severe enforcement, as these "bad" product examples I mentioned seem to make people lose interest as they seem silly.

People forget many of US's regulations were written in blood because the US already had it's industrialization period. They left behind signposts that people could use to sue.

The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.

Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.

Is temu much worse than amazon here?

There's a lot of work to be done.

Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?

"compared to Temu that does not give a damn by design" would be more accurate.

I mean the same goes for most US companies, every time they first arrive in Europe they stumble around breaking laws and what not until they get fined to act properly, happened a bunch of times before, most famous examples being Uber and AirBnb, but Amazon been in trouble for the same thing in the past too.

I'd still say Temu and Wish are in a whole other league compared to other predecessors (AliExpress, Banggood, miniinthebox, etc.).

Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend?

Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.

Not really, Aliexpress is from Alibaba, who has been in the exporting business for many years. While Temu is from Pinduoduo, a competitor to Alibaba known for malicious business practices including exploiting an Android 0-day vulnerability [0].

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...

Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1]. Stay safe, EU folks.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/fistfight...

So, like Aliexpress is considered more ethical at this point? Asking as I heard Aliexpress’ ware could sometime be produced forced labors from prison in the underlying retailers. Not that prisoners situation seems particularly fine across all EU and USA either.

More ethical makes it more palatable. The reality is that alibaba is a lesser evil

Like the other commenter said, all you can say is less evil. Basically everything from China is made by factory workers working 12 hour shifts with 1 day off every 14 days, or programmers working 12 hour a day with 1 day off every 7 days. So forced labors from prison is not that bad comparing to daily life there, just another one of these first world problems.

AFAIK Temu is like the fleamarket for excess Chinese production.

They get stuff that the factories can't sell for any reason and just shove them out the country as cheaply as possible.

Certainly in the UK, we don't have the same issues with terrible Chinese fakes that I hear about from US Amazon users.

Amazon UK these days is definitely full of Chinese reproductions and drop shipped knock offs.

Whether they're dangerous I don't know, I've not tried them.

We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.

One of the many reasons (up to and including US foreign policy) I don't buy from Amazon any more.

I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day.

They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think".

One of the best usb chargers for the money is the 40W IKEA charger. I trust their quality control.

I wasn't aware that Ikea sold a charger, so I googled it - this is the very first result: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/product-support/...

The fact they're even doing a recall tells you they care.

When people buy from Alibaba and resell it on Amazon, they're not bothering to issue recalls.

The good people at qzzdfghjww company would NEVER sell a defective product.

I agree. They’ve also devalued prime - I used to know that prime meant next day, now it just means “free delivery” but it could be 2+ weeks depending on where it’s coming from.

argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.

I don’t know about fakes, but browsing Amazon DE feels like browsing AliExpress when looking for any technology products. Especially cables, adapters and such.

Yes.

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