Just Because it is Sold on Amazon, Does not Mean it is Legal.
[Thursday, August 29, 2019]

Online sale of illegal and/or low quality products, particularly those regulated by the FDA, is a major problem due to lax enforcement. But some websites are trusted more than others by consumers; Amazon is one of them. A product sold on Amazon is generally assumed by the consumers to be legally sold in the US, but it is far from it based on an investigation by the Wall St Journal (WSJ). Illegal and non-compliant products sold on Amazon included OTC drugs, supplements, medical devices, toys, and a variety of consumer goods regulated by the FDA. The Wall St Journal reported that Amazon is host to hundreds of thousands of illegal and mislabeled products due to lax enforcement of its own rules. While in principle, Amazon has a selection process for its more than 2.5 million third-party sellers, in reality, it allowed sellers who are anonymous or provide scant information about themselves, and sell thousands of products that have been declared unsafe or banned by the US FDA, contain false and deceptive claims, and fraudulent certificates for quality. When told about such sellers, Amazon mostly lets the violators off with modifications of the product description, and if removed, most sellers came back quickly with new names and identical products. The reports points that the screening process for vendors and products by Amazon is highly deficient compared to other reputed vendors such as Walmart and Target. And when consumers complained or tried to get legal action against Amazon for allowing illegal products to proliferate on its website, Amazon escaped any major penalties or significant corrections in its process by claiming to be just a provider of a “hosting forum” that cannot be held accountable for the activities of the providers on its site under the current laws. FDA has never issued a warning to Amazon, something FDA does all the times to brick and mortar stores. Truth is that Amazon is not just a provider of an online forum. Many products are shipped to the consumer from Amazon fulfillment centers, the Amazon warehouses where products are catalogued, stored, tracked from, giving the company ample opportunities to screen illegal and deceptive products. Also, many products come with the coveted label of “Amazon Choice” giving the consumer an impression of the company supporting the product based on additional information. But WSJ found that many illegal, deceptive, and misleading products were able to get the “Amazon Choice” labels as well showing that the company’s processes to at least confirm the accuracy of information on its website were deficient. Online sale of any product is regulated, so Amazon is technically responsible for products sold on its website. In any case, online sales are poorly regulated by the FDA, which makes most data coming from products sold online unreliable. The convention wisdom not to trust online info extrapolates to Amazon. If it is sold on Amazon, it could be an illegal product.