Last updated 11 April 2023
We work hard to earn and maintain customer trust, meaning that safety is a top priority for us. In 2022 we invested more than $1.2 billion to protect our store and our customers, building robust safety and compliance programmes, and we continue to invest for our customers. We want them to shop with confidence and, if ever a customer has a concern, they can contact our customer services team and we will investigate. Amazon offers customers hundreds of millions of items – all of which we require to comply with applicable laws and regulations – and our objective is always to block unsafe or non-compliant products from ever being listed to our store.
In 2022 Amazon employed thousands of people - including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators - who were dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners and our store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse. And in 2022, our proactive controls found more than 99% of blocked or removed listings before a brand ever had to find and report it.
Our tools use natural language processing and machine learning, which means new information is fed into them daily and they learn and get better at proactively and automatically blocking suspicious offers. When a concern arises, we move quickly to protect customers and work directly with sellers, manufacturers, brands, and government agencies. Additionally, any Amazon employee can pull an ‘Andon Cord’ if they receive feedback that a product is unsafe or non-compliant. Pulling this ‘Andon Cord’ immediately triggers an investigation, and the product will be removed from our store if it is unsafe.
We are in close contact and work regularly with European regulators and market surveillance authorities. The information we share helps them identify trends, and in turn we listen to feedback so that we can continuously improve our product safety and compliance programs. We see data as key: a better mutual sharing of data that is complete and actionable is important to inform proactive systems, understand trends and where action may be needed, and help enforce against rogue actors. We are also active in industry working groups and committees that are dedicated to developing new solutions and guidelines that will benefit all retailers and consumers. We engage with a broad range of other stakeholders, such as consumer groups, striving to understand common goals, such as developing publicly available product safety guidance for consumers and sellers.
In addition, Amazon is a founding signatory of the 2018 EU Product Safety Pledge and we are pleased to continue our cooperation with the European Commission by signing an updated agreement in March 2023 – the ‘Product Safety Pledge+’. ‘Product Safety Pledge+’ has been signed by all the signatories of the original Pledge, and features commitments beyond what is already established in EU safety legislation, strengthening cooperation and dialogue between signatories and authorities to protect consumers. In addition, the pledge has served as the backdrop to a pilot project between consumer groups and the pledge’s signatories, meant to facilitate the exchange of information and timely coordinated action for the takedown of unsafe products. To read the commitments in full, you can visit the European Commission’s page here.
All of these initiatives and actions - as well as our human expertise and technology - are there to keep our customers safe, and safety will always be our priority.
To view the full interview with Dr Jeremy Opperer on Amazon’s commitment to product safety, click here.
Read more about our continued efforts to ensure customer protection on our stores.
