Buying furniture in a physical store can be seen and felt, but if you want to buy furniture online, you can only understand it through the description on the page. The store has an objective description of the product, and there are also praises. The survey found that it is common for online furniture sales to lack key information. If consumers buy products that are not worthy of the name, and suffer from no evidence, it is difficult to protect their rights. The State Administration for Market Regulation recently released a supervision and spot check on wooden furniture sold online. The samples were taken from mainstream e-commerce platforms, and the failure rate of spot checks was 40%.
Mainstream e-commerce platform wooden furniture spot checks 40% unqualified
Among the 50 batches of wooden furniture inspected, 20 batches were unqualified, and the unqualified rate of random inspection was 40.0%. Among them, Vipshop will sample 3 batches, 2 batches are unqualified, and the failure rate is 67%; Pinduoduo and NetEase Yanxuan sample 2 batches each, and 1 batch each fails, and the failure rate is 50%; Jingdong sampling 27 batches, 11 batches failed, the failure rate was 41%; Tmall sampled 13 batches, 5 batches failed, and the failure rate was 38%. After the test, some wooden furniture overturned or broke, which may smash or pinch consumers during use. Some wooden furniture releases excessive formaldehyde, and long-term use may pose a risk of cancer.
Wooden furniture refers to the furniture made of wood, wood-based panels and other wood materials in addition to decorative parts and accessories. According to the different materials used in the main components of the product, it can be divided into solid wood furniture, wood-based panel furniture, board wood furniture and comprehensive wood furniture.
In recent years, in order to further improve the quality of wooden furniture products, the State Administration for Market Regulation has carried out state supervision and spot checks on product quality for many years. This is the first time that the online sale of wooden furniture products has been included in the national lottery field. Among the 50 batches of wooden furniture inspected, there are 25 pieces of cabinet furniture, 15 pieces of chair and stool furniture, and 10 pieces of table furniture.
According to the relevant national standard requirements, the testing engineer focused on testing the carpentry requirements, mechanical properties, structural safety and limit of harmful substances of 50 batches of wooden furniture.
After the sampling was completed, the testing engineer first tested the stability of the table furniture. This test requires that table-type wooden furniture should not tip over when subjected to external force, so that accidental injuries such as smashing users will not occur during daily use. Reporters in the laboratory saw that the testing engineer placed a single-legged table on the test bench and pressed the test button to vertically load a force of 200N downwards. It can be seen that the table tilted as soon as the test started, and the tabletop stability item failed.
Xing Bo, engineer of the National Furniture and Indoor Environment Inspection and Testing Center: The stability of the table does not meet the standard requirements, which may cause the table items to fall or the table to fall and hit people. The reason for the unqualified stability is that the design is unreasonable, such as the design is top-heavy, the product is particularly large, and the base is particularly small.
After testing, there are 5 batches of online wooden furniture and tables that are unqualified for stability↓
The amount of formaldehyde released from some furniture exceeds the national standard by more than twice
In addition to the unreasonable design, the reporter noticed that the national supervision and spot check on the quality of wooden furniture products sold online found that some enterprises cut corners and materials in order to reduce costs and use substandard parts and accessories for production, resulting in the problem of hidden safety hazards in wooden furniture. more prominent. The formaldehyde emission of some furniture exceeds the national standard by more than twice.
The testing engineer told reporters that in the production of wooden furniture with drawers, sliding slides are commonly used metal accessories. In order to ensure the reliable quality of wooden furniture, the standard requires that the strength of the push-pull members should meet the standard. This time, it was found that the strength of a batch of solid wood side cabinet push-pull components produced by Shandong Chengwu Senyu Wood Products Co., Ltd., the flagship store of Vipshop Muzhi Furniture, was unqualified.
Since the sampled products were destroyed after the test, the testing engineer used a batch of substandard products found in the previous testing process to demonstrate to reporters. In the laboratory, the reporter saw that the inspectors applied a vertical downward force of 200N on the corner of the drawer panel. The first time the force was applied after the start of the test, the push-pull slide of the bedside table was fractured, and the drawer could not be pushed back.
Xing Bo, engineer of the National Furniture and Indoor Environment Inspection and Testing Center: The strength test of the push-pull member is mainly to evaluate the strength of the push-pull member when the drawer of the bedside table is completely pulled out. If the strength of the slide does not meet the standard requirements, the service life will be affected first, and the drawer will fall off easily. If the drawer falls off, it will easily hurt people. This phenomenon is caused by the insufficient strength of the material selected for the slideway or the substandard quality.
During the investigation, the reporter found that in addition to the use of substandard push-pull components, the problem of unqualified formaldehyde emission due to the use of inferior adhesives in the product was not a minority in this supervision and spot check. The formaldehyde in wooden furniture mainly comes from wood-based panels and adhesives. Wooden furniture with excessive or poor quality adhesives is prone to the problem of excessive formaldehyde emission.
According to the testing engineer, formaldehyde is a colorless and soluble irritant gas, which has been identified as a class I carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Due to the continuous release of formaldehyde, the release period of formaldehyde in some wood-based panels can even reach more than ten years.
After testing, 5 batches of wooden furniture sold online were found to have unqualified formaldehyde emissions↓
In response to the problems found in this national supervision and random inspection, the State Administration for Market Regulation has asked all territorial supervision departments to urge e-commerce platforms to immediately remove substandard products from the shelves. Order substandard product sales enterprises to stop selling the same product, and comprehensively clean up and dispose of substandard products in stock.
Industry experts remind consumers to pay attention to signing a sales contract when purchasing wooden furniture, and ask for receipts, invoices and other consumer vouchers.