China's Alibaba bans sales of shoddy home appliances

BEIJING: China's e-commerce giant Alibaba today banned the sale of 14 types of small home appliances, the largest so far, from its two popular online shopping platforms following numerous complaints over quality.

The products were banned from the online shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall.

They include electric boilers, electromagnetic ovens, rice cookers and other home appliances, covering eight domestic brands, including popular consumer brands Peskoe and Royalstar, Alibaba said in a statement.

Trading data showed customer complaints of the products are much higher than average, it said.

Last year, electric boilers worth about 70 million yuan (USD 10.75 million) from the eight brands were sold via Alibaba.

This is the first large-scale expulsion from Alibaba's e-commerce platforms.

"Substandard home appliances can lead to great safety hazards. We hope the manufacturers will improve their quality," the company said in a statement.

In April last year, Alibaba banned Wonderflower, a copycat home appliance brand, after receiving numerous complaints from customers.

Alibaba conducts random monthly quality checks, and products that fail the inspections twice are likely to be removed from online listings, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.