Europe 1 with AFP 4:28 p.m., November 24, 2021

The DGCCRF on Tuesday requested the delisting of the Wish site, after having checked 140 products sold online on the platform.

A rare decision that comes two days before the BlackFriday and a month before the end of the year holidays.

The French fraud control services have requested the delisting of the online sales platform Wish, a rare measure taken due to the presence of non-compliant and dangerous products, the Ministry of the Economy said in a press release on Wednesday. .

Access to the site is always possible by entering the address directly

In the coming days, the Wish site and app, which sells cheap products mainly made in China, should therefore disappear from major search engines like Google and app stores. Access to the site will however still be possible by entering the address directly. "These decisions are unique in Europe", specifies Bercy in its press release. "There is no reason to tolerate online what we do not accept in physical stores," Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, told Le

Parisien

, who first reported the de-listing in his Wednesday edition.

This sanction comes as part of an investigation by the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) on the safety of products sold on online marketplaces.

Out of 140 products sold on Wish and analyzed by the DGCCRF, a significant 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.

An "illegal and disproportionate" decision according to Wish

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 in mid-July 2021 to comply and considers that she has not received a "satisfactory response" since then, hence her decision. The penalty is expected to last until Wish regains compliance with the law. For its part, Wish defends itself Wednesday in a statement by declaring that the platform "still complies with the withdrawal requests of the DGCCRF". She says she "tried on several occasions to engage in dialogue" and indicates that she is initiating legal recourse against this action which she considers "illegal and disproportionate".

As part of its investigation, the DGCCRF announced in mid-October that it had observed the presence of 60% of non-compliant products on various online marketplaces, 32% of which 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: it was notably accused of making reductions of "misleading" prices and of selling out-of-the-box products that were not actually available.