Such a measure is rare. But after an investigation by the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), the Wish site and application should disappear from major search engines like Google, and from application stores.
The compliance and safety of a large number of products put online by the platform are singled out, reports Wednesday, November 24, The Parisian which quotes the Ministry of the Economy. Access to the Wish site will however still be possible by entering the address directly.
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.
“There is no reason to tolerate online what we do not accept in physical stores”, said Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, on a daily basis.
One hundred million users claimed
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 regains compliance with the law.
More generally, as part of its investigation into the safety of products sold on online marketplaces, the DGCCRF announced in mid-October that it had observed the presence of 60% of non-compliant products on various platforms, including 32% were dangerous.
Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, Wish is owned by ContextLogic Company. It claims some 100 million active users, and went public on Wall Street in December 2020. In November 2020, the platform had already been pinned down by the crackdown on fraud in another investigation: she was notably accused of making price reductions “Misleading” and put on sale lead products that were not actually available.