Amazon Fined For Mislabeling Dangerous Products

Amazon has recently found itself in a bit of trouble in the U.K. over four packages shipped into the country containing dangerous materials. Three of the packages were stopped by the postal service, and one was detained by UPS.

According to reports, Royal Mail alerted Amazon about dangerous packages as early as 2013, but for some reason, the eCommerce giant continued to ship items classified as dangerous. Most of the offending items specifically contained aerosols or lithium batteries. Amazon has had this issue explained to it before — 782 packages between Nov. 2013 and May 2015 were found to have contained these dangerous goods, and Amazon had been repeatedly told not to send them by airmail.

So, what went wrong?

It isn’t that Amazon does not agree these items are dangerous if stored improperly — aerosols are kept away from other goods in its warehouses, and warehouse workers are trained in the dangers of lithium batteries.

Unfortunately, according to remote reviews by staff in China, Romania and India, the four packages in question were improperly designated as non-dangerous. This seems to have happened despite the fact that they were tagged as dangerous by Amazon’s system.

Amazon’s defense was less than stirring. It noted that it shipped 331 million packages between Nov. 2013 and May 2015, making its success rate “pretty cracking.”

The judge did not find it all that cracking and thus found the company guilty. Amazon will need to pay £65,000 ($84,000), as well as an additional £60,000 pounds ($77,860) for prosecution costs.

“The safety of the public, our customers, employees and partners is an absolute priority,” said the company in a statement after the sentencing hearing. “We ship millions of products every week and are confident in the sophisticated technologies and processes we have developed to detect potential shipping hazards. We are constantly working to further improve and will continue to work with the CAA in this area.”