It gives details of product recalls issued by manufacturers and allows users to stay up to date with new recall notices through email alerts and rss feeds.
We use data published by the European Commission on their Consumer Affairs, RAPEX web pages.
We built it to demonstrate other methods of making the data accessible to consumers. We included an email alerts facility & rss capability as well as a keyword search.
At the bottom of each email you receive there is a link to unsubscribe from that alert. Just click on it and we'll delete your alert. You can re-register for alerts at any time.
You will receive an email from us either weekly or monthly (depending on the option you select) containing the details of all recalls made since we last sent you a message. An example of the email is available here.
Unfortunately the European Commission data is by no means exhaustive - there other sources of recalls that are not currently included in the set.
We are currently looking at incorporating data from additional sources. We will be posting updates on our blog.
You certainly can. We welcome any offers to write screen scrapers to search these alternative sources for inclusion on this site.
Absolutely - we've released the code on Github.
Consumer Focus Labs builds online tools to make peoples' dealings with companies fairer, save them money, or keep them informed about products or issues that are important to them. We're very interested in receiving ideas for useful projects from as many people as possible. Please visit our main site at http://www.consumerfocuslabs.org for further information and to submit your ideas.
Your email address will be treated as confidential upon subscribing to this service and will never be passed onto third parties. It may additionally to notify you about important updates and changes to this website. We will not spam you.
The Product Recall data used on this site is sourced from the European Commission's RAPEX system and as such Consumer Focus Labs cannot guarantee its completeness or currency. We encourage users of this site to refer to the original notice on the RAPEX website if in doubt. If you are concerned about a particular product we recommend you contact your local Trading Standards office.
We believe that it is important to keep removed recalls on the site to avoid confusion over their status; if an item is eliminated from the site, users cannot be sure of its status. Thus we prefer to update the item with an appropriate message in order to provide a clear and current service.
To achieve this, we will mark removed recalls as 'removed' in our database and display this clearly on the site (you can see an example of where we have done this here). We will however prevent them from appearing in widgets, RSS feeds and email alerts as the data contained in these services might be re-used by third parties.
Just email us at team@consumerfocuslabs.org.
