E-Retailers Shine in Toy Recall

WASHINGTON _ When Mattel Inc., the world’s largest toymaker, announced Aug. 14 that it was forced to call back 9 million products because of lead paint and dangerous magnets, angry parents and consumer advocates asked why no U.S. federal agency was inspecting toys before they leave China.

But where parents saw problems, Denver-based online retailer eToys Direct Inc. saw opportunity. The recalls presented eToys a chance to separate itself from brick-and-mortar retailers.

EToys, which posted sales of $116.5 million last year, sent out 3,000 e-mails on the day of the announcement and more than 7,000 in total over the subsequent days.

Traditional stores like Toys “R” Us do little more than pull a recalled product from the shelf. If the toy was bought from online retailers, however, chances are good that the person who bought it will receive an e-mail alerting him or her about the recall.

“We go back and match up purchases of certain SKU numbers to customer information. We’ll e-mail a customer based on the e-mail they provided at the time of the order,” said eToys spokeswoman Sheliah Gilliland.

“We go back and look through our database,” confirmed Patricia Smith, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com. Many consumers can remember buying a Barbie toy but not which one, she said. “Amazon tells you its specific make and model.”

These electronic notifications are increasingly matters of public interest. That’s because staffing at federal regulatory agencies is falling and budgets are flat. Many Americans would be shocked to learn how few imports are inspected.

“People have been very surprised when we report that less than 1 percent of the imported foods gets inspected. … People are surprised that the Consumer Product Safety Commission only has 15 people working the ports to make sure these (dangerous) products don’t get past our border,” said Donald Mays, senior director of product-safety planning for Consumers Union, a nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports.

In fact, he said, staffing on the CPSC is shrinking to 401 employees next year, even as levels of imported consumer goods continue to break records and as faulty products cause an estimated 27,000 deaths annually. The commission has a budget of about $63.5 million.

Consumers Union believes that regulators could demand far more notification from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

That’s important because online retailing, which is growing by 25 percent annually in recent years, still accounts for only about 7 percent of U.S. retail sales, according to the National Retail Federation.

“It’s not just the `e-tailers’ who have the capacity” to notify buyers, Mays said. He noted that credit card information from in-store purchases could be electronically warehoused and searched when a product recall occurs in order to send letters to affected consumers.

In addition to Amazon and eToys, Wal-Mart.com and Target.com electronically notify consumers affected by recalls. Noticeably absent from this list, however, is one of the biggest names in toys _ Toys “R” Us.

“We post recall notices online,” said Kathleen Waugh, a company spokeswoman.

Toys “R” Us provides a link on its home page, just under a store-locator link, for product recalls. But it’s up to the consumer to find the link and check for recall information.

At least the link is on the home page, which isn’t the case for Target.com, which, according to a Nielsen/Net Ratings report this month, is the third most-visited online shopping site after eBay and Amazon.

To find recall information from Target’s online store, you first must click the “Help” link at the top of the home page. Then the browser takes you to a help page, where the recall information is mixed with links to product rebates and warranty information.

Wal-Mart’s recall information has a home-page link, under its Help section, that takes a consumer to a detailed page of product recalls. The list includes products sold at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores that have been recalled not only by the CPSC, but also by the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

There is no recall information at all on the most visited online shopping destination, eBay. Its media-relations office declined to comment.

Amazon.com doesn’t have product-recall information on its home page. It provides that via a product-recall link on its “Toys & Games” page.

Unlike its competitors, however, Amazon’s recall center pitches consumers to sign up for free e-mail information from the federal government on all sorts of product recalls.

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For more information on all government recalls, go to:

www.recalls.gov

To sign up for e-mail notifications of product recalls, go to:

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.aspx

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(c) 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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GRAPHIC (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20070824 TOYRECALL

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