UKC

The Reach Climbing Wall has put up a post on Instagram today about counterfeit harnesses being sold via Amazon, there have also been reports of them turning up at climbing walls run in schools. If you're starting out and are looking for equipment to buy please have a read through this article about avoiding counterfeit equipment when buying online:

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/buying-climbing-equipment-gear-online

This is the original Instagram post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3nWVzAt4kF/?hl=en&img_index=1

Buying climbing gear is expensive, however that is driven by the extensive testing, and engineering work, which is undertaken to demonstrate the safety of products used to protect the safety of yourself, and your climbing partners.

I worked at a small lead wall for 15 years and throughout that time came across several harnesses which had fake safety labels and CE marks on them, exactly like those in the photos in the post. These harnesses have been around for many years.

These harnesses were usually bought by a relative or family member buying it as a present via ebay or other auction sites, duped by the often low price, photos and spiel that went with them. 

I gave one harness to a friend who worked at Lyon equipment at Tebay and it failed drastically at the stitching.

The harness pictured was the last one I came across back in 2018.

Terrifying. You'd think sticking to fake Burberry and Stone Island etc. would bring in enough dosh why diversify into safety critical equipment! 😢

I saw it too. Was surprised it made it through the moderators. 

I would like to think that the consequences for such poor behaviour are quite severe, however I don't have confidence that they can be properly applied to those responsible.

Generally UK engineers wouldn't want any involvement in anything ethically dodgy, but it's also routine to ensure things are well documented and correctly filed such that you can demonstrate that work was done competently as you don't want to be scratching about for the proof when lawyers are asking you about it following a death relating to your product.

Crucial message: don't buy anything from Amazon. They can't be trusted with the quality of any of their stupidly branded knock offs.

One caveat, if it is a trusted company such as inglesport selling through amazon then you can trust it. Just make sure you check.

Not necessarily, Amazon comingles products delivered from their warehouses, if they are sent in using the manufacturers bar code/ SKU so if one company is sending in counterfeit goods is possible to get counterfeit goods delivered to you even if the company you are buying from via Amazon has sent legitimate goods to the Amazon warehouse.

There used to be something on the page indicating if it was dispatched from an Amazon warehouse, I think it used to say something like "Dispatched by Amazon EU sarl" or similar, but I couldn't see it on the products I have just checked.

Good point , didn't think of this. Any excuse to not support Amazon is always a good one anyway.

Sorry, what did you see and which moderators are you talking about?

I remember the Castle posting the same years ago. Seems that as soon as they're taken down from Amazon they pop up again.

If it's a trusted company such as Inglesport selling through Amazon, just buy it from Inglesport!  They have their own website and can do without having to give Jeff Bezos a cut of their meagre profits.

There's a fairly straightforward solution to this, Amazon to stop selling PPE if it can't keep uncertificated, or counterfeit products out of its supply chain.

I don't think the BMC wants to pick a fight with Amazon, but I intend to do my best to address the issue once I have a bit of free time to put a pack of information together to discuss with the committee and send over to Trading Standards.

To be honest I don't think Mr Bezos is that bothered about the retail business anymore, it's becoming more enshittified every day (check out Corey Doctorow).

If Amazon can keep ahead on cloud computing the rest of it will look like peanuts in a few years time.

Good luck with that...

It's not high up on my priority list (because the chance of success is low), but realistically Amazon are selling counterfeit and/ or none compliant PPE which is incorrectly marked. 

But realistically, isn't there very little Trading Standards can do about it?

FYI, Dan and I have had a couple of meetings with Amazon UK. It is actually quite complicated and though I am no fan of the company, they have engaged with us in an effort to get these items off their platform.