Lighting products sold on online marketplaces catch fire under testing

Lighting bought through online sales platforms fails safety standards and poses fire and shock risks, experts warn In short: The Lighting Council of Australia has released the results of testing of 131 lighting products available at popular online marketplaces. The report found almost three in four products failed to meet Australian standards and three products that underwent laboratory testing failed safety tests. What's next? The council has called for online retailers to pull non-compliant products from Australian websites. Experts have warned that people buying lighting products on online marketplaces may be putting themselves at serious risk, after a report found almost three in four products failed to meet Australian standards. The Lighting Council of Australia (LCA) assessed 131 lighting products purchased through popular websites including Temu, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay and Kogan. It found 73 per cent were non-compliant with Australian standards. Three downlights selected from the online marketplaces underwent independent laboratory testing. All three downlights failed a required safety test and caught fire when exposed to heat and flame. Two of the samples were destroyed during a high-voltage strength test. The report noted two of the products that failed the laboratory testing are unable to be identified, traced or recalled because they did not carry a model number. "Even armed with laboratory evidence of serious safety defects, a regulator would struggle to identify the responsible supplier, compel a recall, or prevent the same product being re-listed the following day under a different seller name," the report said. 'Cheap and attractive' price "These are the two ways electrical products kill people: fire and shock," LCA chief executive Malcolm Richards said. "This is no longer a question of whether someone gets hurt. It is a question of when, and of who will be held responsible when it happens, and right now the answer to that is nobody." Mr Richards said the products are available at a "very cheap and attractive" price. "Home owners buy them thinking they're upgrading their lighting but all they're going to do is ignite a significant fire or cause a shock to someone in their own home." The report found Temu and AliExpress scored the worst, with none of the lighting products sampled from the platforms passing compliance. Only 8 per cent of tested Amazon lighting products passed, along with 12 per cent of eBay lighting products. Need for more accountability Mr Richards said the council wrote to the platforms in June with the results. He said Temu was the only platform to remove all of its 240V lighting products from its Australian website, while Amazon, AliExpress and Kogan did not respond. "Temu proved this is fixable in a week," said Mr Richards. "The others had the same evidence for two months and are still selling. That is a choice, not a technical problem." The council has called for the online marketplaces to pull all unregistered 240V lighting products from their Australian listings. It has also called for more regulatory powers and more legal accountability for online marketplaces selling electrical products. Bea Sherwood, senior campaigns and policy advisor at consumer advocacy group Choice, said research showed about 6 per cent of people buying products on online marketplaces suffered an injury or property damage due to an unsafe product. "We're not seeing isolated reports or incidents, we're seeing people who have experienced harm multiple times from buying products online," Ms Sherwood said. She said Australia's product safety regime was "a bit of a patchwork system". "I think a lot of people assume that products being sold online have to be safe before they're sold online and instore, but that's actually not the case" she said. "What we're calling on the government to do is introduce a general safety provision that would make it illegal to sell unsafe products online." Choice had similar experiences to the LCA when trying to raise concerns with the platforms, and Ms Sherwood said the online marketplaces had proved they were unwilling to remove dangerous products. "We need the government to step in to make sure that everything that people buys is safe, because at the moment it is not." The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been contacted for comment.