Amazon must recall unsafe products and notify consumers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Wednesday after the Consumer Product Safety Commission filed an administrative complaint to force a recall. “This is a forceful and decisive action by CPSC with a clear message to Amazon and other online marketplaces: knowingly selling dangerous and defective products that imperil Americans will not be tolerated,” he said. He cited certain AmazonBasics car chargers, surge protectors and microwaves as products that reportedly hurt consumers. He said Congress should give the CPSC the resources it needs. As the CPSC complaint acknowledges, “for the vast majority of the products in question,” Amazon “immediately removed the products from our store, notified customers about potential safety concerns, advised customers to destroy the products, and provided customers with full refunds,” a company spokesperson emailed. For remaining products, the agency hasn’t provided responsive information, the company said, noting it has expanded efforts to handle recalls: It’s unclear why the agency “filed a complaint seeking to force us to take actions almost entirely duplicative of those we’ve already taken.”

The FTC and DOJ should investigate how Amazon's “search and sponsorship algorithms may be misleading customers” seeking FDA-authorized products during the pandemic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a letter disclosed Monday. She urged the agencies to use authority granted by the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act to probe how Amazon is promoting sponsored products like masks that aren’t FDA-authorized even when customers search for FDA-approved products. The agencies and company didn’t comment.

Free shipping and sustainability remain strong incentives for Americans shopping online, even as brick-and-mortar stores reopen, said Ware2Go Thursday. Some 79% of Americans increased their online shopping due to the pandemic, and 89% plan to do as much or more of their shopping online in the future, said the UPS company. Eight in 10 said they're more likely to make a purchase online if the brand offers free shipping. Though curbside pickup spiked during the pandemic, 54% in the May survey of 1,000 respondents said they chose that fulfillment option only out of immediate necessity; 40% used it if shipping was too expensive. Twice as many respondents prefer one- to two-day shipping over curbside pickup. Nearly 90% of shoppers said sustainability is an important consideration for buying decisions, including recycled packaging (47%), eco-friendly shipping protocols (41%), green brands (30%), promoting conversations about sustainability on social media (30%) and partnerships with green organizations (27%).

Lenbrook is among the first firms to use Digital River’s new application programming interface toolkit that allows its e-commerce solution to be more seamlessly integrated into Lenbrook's existing web solutions, said the companies Wednesday. The results are a "smoother" customer experience and "cleaner analytics," said a Lenbrook spokesperson. The integration incorporates Digital River’s solution of payments, taxes, compliance and fraud mitigation into Lenbrook brands' sites to accelerate cross-border e-commerce expansion, they said.

The pandemic led to surging identity and account takeover fraud, reported Juniper Research Monday, saying merchant losses to online payment fraud will exceed $206 billion globally 2021-25. Remote physical goods purchases are the leading cause of online payment fraud, generating 47% of fraud losses.

Internet stocks had strong June results, rising 6.7% vs. 2.2% for the S&P 500, reversing a trend for the first five months of 2021, Canaccord Genuity wrote investors Thursday. Many internet companies will begin to face difficult 2020 comparables as they come up against COVID-fueled results from 2020, though two-year stacked revenue increases suggest growth across the category “remains strong and that the pandemic-driven acceleration of digital adoption is likely to persist,” said analyst Maria Ripps. Digital advertising momentum is expected to continue, while e-commerce should have “robust growth.” With millions of new customers acquired over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, e-commerce companies are focusing on retaining the most recent customers amid the reopening, said the analyst.

Consumers who stepped up their use of e-commerce deliveries for “critical goods” and to protect themselves during the pandemic plan to continue doing so with greater frequency after the health crisis, an Omnitracs survey found. The transportation intelligence software company hired Dynata to canvass 1,000 U.S. adults, finding 47% had groceries delivered for the first time during COVID-19. “Speed is the name of the game when it comes to deliveries,” evidenced by growth of one- and two-day shipping during the pandemic, “and consumers want to accelerate them even more,” the survey found. Three in 10 would be willing to pay more for same-day shipping, while a fifth either would pay more for real-time shipping updates or to join a loyalty program that offered shipping discounts.

Nearly four in 10 American consumers report not realizing that online shopping busted their budgets until seeing their monthly credit card statements, an American Institute of CPAs study found. The institute hired the Harris Poll to canvass 2,100 adults mid-December, finding 82% report that promotions like free delivery or free shipping make them more likely to make an online purchase. Thirty-one percent say their online shopping activity “increased significantly” since the start of COVID-19, while half increased their consumption of video streaming services and 33% made more frequent use of third-party food delivery apps.

Newegg kicked off its FantasTech presale Monday, the latest e-tailer to hop onto Amazon’s Prime Day (June 21-22) draft. Featured Newegg sales include a Klipsch K-100SW 10-inch powered subwoofer for $139 (vs. $169 at Amazon Monday) through Sunday, a Polk Audio TL1600 home theater system ($169 vs. $199) and a Samsung M7 32-inch UHD smart monitor ($249 vs. $349). Newegg’s presale segues into the “official” FantasTech Sale June 21-23. Best Buy’s The Bigger Deal Savings Event ends June 22 with “limited quantities.” An Apple “event” at Best Buy Monday showed savings up to $400 on select iMacs, $50 off an iPhone SE, $200 off iPhone 12 mini, a $350 Best Buy gift card with select iPad trade-in, and savings up $240 on a Series 6 Apple Watch with trade in of a Series 1 or newer model. Target added a day to Deal Days stretching the busy shopping week from June 20-22. The retailer is touting same-day fulfillment, no membership fee required and a 5% discount on digital Target gift cards online Wednesday-Saturday. Walmart has a day’s jump on Amazon, starting Deals for Days on Sunday. “Sneak peaks” on the website Monday included a Hisense Roku TV for $178 from $228, an HP laptop at $159 from $179, and an iHome robot vac for $299, from $599. Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day event will generate sales of $11.8 billion worldwide, said eMarketer Friday. Amazon's Prime Day growth will slow to 19% vs. 43% last year and 68% in 2019, but it's projected to exceed October's Prime Day by $2 billion, it said.

E-commerce fulfillment provider Ruby Has is forming the DTC Consortium as an “industry alliance and think tank” dedicated to the direct-to-consumer space, said the company Tuesday. More than 100 companies “from every corner of the industry have joined pre-launch as founding members,” it said, listing e-commerce companies Avalara and Nanoleaf. The consortium’s website says a partial list of founding members will be announced by month's end. Consortium representatives didn’t respond to questions about whether the new group intends to compete with the D2C Alliance, the Digital Entertainment Group affiliate that’s geared more to over-the-top streaming than e-commerce.