Wish has undoubtedly become a whole phenomenon in relation to online shopping. Or, to be more exact, with the low-cost purchases, many of them impulsive, made through the smartphone. And of course it is a more than understandable success, because it reproduces the Aliexpress pricing strategy, but with much more careful and localized marketing, programs to recommend to friends and a widest catalog, in which you can find everything from masks to bracelets, flashlights, clothing and, of course, all kinds of accessories and electronic gadgets.
However, it seems that the situation for Wish is going to get complicated in our neighboring country. And it is that as we can read in TechCruch, the French authorities have asked search engines and app stores to remove the Wish app from their results and catalogs. In this way, if Google, Apple, Microsoft and others comply with the requests of the French executive, Wish would go into a situation of “invisibility” for the citizens of the country.
As I indicated before, Wish has many similarities to Aliexpress, and one of them is its operating systemsince the company does not sell the products directly. What it does is offer a platform to manufacturers, mainly Chinese, so that they can sell their products internationally. And here lies, at the same time, his problem and the line of argument of his defense against the decision taken by the French authorities.
The reason our neighboring country wants to end Wish is the quality of at least part of the products sold through the platform. According to an investigation carried out last year, 95% of the toys they bought through Wish did not comply with European regulation and 45% of them were considered dangerous. When it comes to electronic products, 95% of them should not be available in Europe either, and 90% of them were dangerous in one way or another.
At this point it is important to clarify that A total of 140 products were evaluated for the investigation, so we are talking about a really very small sample, compared to the tens of millions of references that can be found on Wish (150 million depending on the platform). In my opinion, I think that the French authorities should have increased the sample size, although it is undeniable that the data obtained after valuing these 140 products is really worrying.
But, according to the same authorities, when Wish is notified that it is selling a dangerous product, it is removed from the catalog within 24 hours but “In most cases, those products are still available under a different name and sometimes even from the same vendor. The company does not keep any records related to transactions of dangerous products”. Also, when removing a dangerous product, the company would not inform about the reasons for such dangerousness to your buyers.
Could this happen in Spain? Could authorities try to block access to Wish? At the moment it does not seem probable because, unlike France, there does not seem to be any investigation in this regard in our country. However, the French precedent could pave the way in this regard, and European regulators could take note and focus on these types of platforms. In other words: everything is possible.
