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| France asks search engines and app stores to remove Wish |
Several French ministers issued a joint statement declaring that the country's major search engines and mobile app stores are required to completely hide the Wish website and mobile apps.
Wish is a popular e-commerce platform that mainly refers to products from Chinese retailers. The platform does not maintain inventory, but rather sends products directly from retailers to customers.
Last year, the French agency responsible for consumer rights and fraud opened an investigation into Wish.
At that time, the General Administration of Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention believed that it would be easy to mislead consumers into selling counterfeit products such as sports shoes and pictures of perfume with fake logos of famous brands through Wish.
The French administration ordered 140 different products through Wish, most of which were imported. She wants to know if these products are safe.
The government found that 95% of games purchased via the platform did not comply with European regulations and that 45% of them were classified as dangerous.
In the case of electronic products, 95% of them should not be sold in Europe. Although 90% of them are dangerous in one form or another.
Even the cheap jewelry sold on this platform is considered dangerous as 62% of the jewelry I order is classified as dangerous. These indicators are based on a very small sample of 140 products.
If Wish is notified that it is selling dangerous goods, those products will be withdrawn from the market within 24 hours.
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The French Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement that in most cases these products are still sold under different names, sometimes by the same seller. The Company does not keep a record of unsecured and incompatible transactions with the Products.
According to the same survey, Wish explained to the customer that they purchased an unsafe product, not the reason for the product to be withdrawn.
In July 2021, the French consumer rights and fraud service Wish reported, asking Wish to comply with European regulations on e-commerce and product safety. The government gave him two months' notice before taking any further action.
Four months later, the French government took advantage of recent changes to European regulations. This is used to de-reference or block problem websites and apps.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is asking relevant French services to require search engines and app stores to remove references to Wish.