Hard blow before Black Friday. The French fraud control services have requested the delisting of the Wish online sales platform, a rare measure taken due to the presence of non-compliant and dangerous products, reported “the Parisian”, this Wednesday, November 24, citing Bercy.
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In the coming days, the American site and the Wish application, which sells inexpensive products mainly made in China, should therefore disappear from major search engines like Google and application stores. Access to the site will however still be possible by entering the address directly.
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Wish summoned to comply with the law
This sanction intervenes as part of an investigation of the General Directorate for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) on the safety of products sold on online marketplaces.
Out of 140 products sold on Wish and analyzed by the DGCCRF, a large number had been identified as non-compliant. Thus, 90% of the electrical devices analyzed were considered dangerous, as were 62% of costume jewelry and 45% of toys.
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“Le Parisien” gives examples of products sold on the platform and deemed dangerous to health by the DGCCRF. Among them, some can directly endanger children. This is the case with a plastic pacifier or duck, both of which contain chemicals that increase the risk of cancer or infertility.
After notifying the platform of the presence of these illicit products, the DGCCRF noted that, even once removed, they often reappeared under another name. She therefore called on Wish to comply and considers that she has not since received any “Satisfactory answer”, hence his decision. The penalty is expected to last until Wish comes into compliance with the law.
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The Mayor threatens to ban the site in France
“There is no reason to tolerate online what we do not accept in physical stores”, Bruno Le Maire told the daily “le Parisien”. “Either Wish complies with the rules of consumer protection, or we will go even further and we will ban Wish on French territory”, warned the Minister of the Economy this Wednesday, November 24 in the morning on Franceinfo.
Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, Wish is owned by the ContextLogic company. It claims some 100 million active users, and went public on Wall Street in December 2020.
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In November 2020, the platform had already been pinned down by the crackdown on fraud in another investigation: it was notably accused of making price reductions “Misleading” and put on sale lead products that weren’t actually available.
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But Wish is not the only one affected. As part of its investigation, the DGCCRF announced in mid-October that it had observed the presence of 60% of non-compliant products on various online marketplaces, 32% of which were dangerous.
