eBay bans airbag sales as concerns about faulty or counterfeit parts rise

A car and its airbag are pictured after a frontal crash test with another car, without a safety belt buckled in the back seat, as part of France's Road Safety Commission's (Delegation a la Securite Routiere, DSR) campaign "Buckle your seat belt, be attached to life" on November 7, 2017 at the motor-racing track of Linas-Monthlery in Linas, south of Paris. BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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The online retailer eBay is joining a pack of its competitors in banning sales of airbags and many kinds of airbag parts in the U.S.

Although eBay hasn't said what motivated this action, the company's move comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released investigation results in April which found that certain substandard airbag inflators imported from China were responsible for a dozen deaths or serious injuries since 2023. In July, The Wall Street Journal traced the origins of several such faulty — and potentially counterfeit — airbag components, and found that one had been purchased as an aftermarket part on eBay.

eBay declined an interview with NPR, but pointed to an online statement saying the decision was made "following a comprehensive review of the risks these products may pose to eBay users." In an emailed statement to NPR, eBay said that the company would enforce the new policy by using seller compliance audits, filtering algorithms and AI-supported monitoring.

Consumer safety advocates welcomed eBay's move. "It's a good thing that eBay is no longer going to be offering airbags or airbag components on their platform. And it's about time," said Rosemary Shahan,  president of the nonprofit Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. "There are a lot of dangerous airbags out there."

But William Wallace,  director of safety advocacy for Consumer Reports, cautioned that faulty or counterfeit airbags could still crop up on other sites. "It is a game of Whack-A-Mole," he said.

After all, eBay is not the first company to ban the sale of airbags or components. Amazon, the nation's biggest online retailer, prohibits airbag sales . So does Meta , the owner of Facebook Marketplace, and so do the Chinese retail sites Temu and Alibaba .