alt Hacker NewsEnforcement can be better, but I'm gonna give grace given how recently it was imposed. It's easy to point at extreme levels of enforcement being a key part of any regulation, but I have seen the breadth of the EU's scope and what needs to be balanced. Quite often I find that nonaction against compliance violations falls into the following:
- Lack of resources
- Lack of real consumer impact
- Awaiting legislation meant to clarify or strengthen impact of enforcement.
The article to me doesn't offer enough to justify any shout of doing anything different at the moment, rather it's just that they failed an audit. If they failed an audit and coupled this to swaths of consumer complaints, sure, but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations, it is far more likely in this case that they just don't care for the violations this particular group cares more about (like the links to Temu. I suspect a consumer doesn't care if it actually works still in practice, but we'd need surveys to confirm).
Consumer-replaceable batteries will be one area that WILL be a hot issue for consumers, so I would bet we will see much stronger reaction once that rule comes into effect.
> but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations,
The problem is the response is toothless. I reported Amazon for a violation to ICO in February 2019, received an automated email a month later asking for a swathe of information, replied to that, and 3 months later got an update that it would be assigned a Case Officer. That was the last time I heard from them on that matter.
Meanwhile, my local council will respond to pretty much _everything_ within 24-48 hours. I’ve reported all sorts of “small” things and when it comes up naturally friends are surprised that the council did anything. They’ve never actually tried reporting the issues, and assume it’s all fruitless.