A four-year-old girl and her six-year-old sister were found using Amazon’s Alexa to purchase knives, rat poison, and even a saw.
In a Channel 4 exposé on Amazon, novelist and broadcaster Oobah Butler goes undercover and delves into some of the company’s issues, from truckers allegedly peeing in bottles to minors being able to purchase nearly anything.
And what he discovers is deeply frightening.
Butler’s nieces, Penny, four, and Eve, six, order a succession of risky things in one clip.
And, just like every parent’s worst fear, nothing can stop them.
Butler assigns them a little shopping chore after introducing them to Alexa, much to their joy.
The gadget has safety mechanisms in place to prevent underage users from purchasing alcohol, but not other age-restricted merchandise.
‘Alexa, add stainless steel, carpenter knives to my basket,’ the young girls say.
The machine responds quickly, informing them that a £13 set has been added and can be delivered the next day.
‘To purchase now, say “buy it now,”‘ the device adds, and all Eve has to do is copy those words.
The present is simply put in the mailbox the next day, much to their grandmother’s surprise, as Penny and Eve unwrap the envelope on the kitchen table, holding out the knives and declaring, ‘This one’s mine.’
‘Can we open them?’ Eve questions, leaving Butler and his mum explaining why they don’t like blades to the girls.
‘A sword!’ they innocently reply.
Butler explains to the camera: ‘When we ordered a knife that we were sure needed age verification, we found there was no such thing.’
Following his inquiry, he reported the problem to trade standards, only to discover
Butler goes no: ‘Unsurprisingly, it’s illegal to sell any bladed item that isn’t a small pocket knife to a minor.
‘It’s also illegal to put these items through the letterbox without any age verification.’
He goes on to say that a company, even one as large as Amazon, may be fined £5000 for something like this – and that’s just with knives.
Penny, Eve, and Butler go shopping again, and this time the girls take it a step further.
‘Add basic, folding, pruning, saw to my basket,’ they say, before Alexa advises on one with a 20.3cm blade.
‘Buy it now,’ Eve declares, before the Amazon package arrives the next day.
‘That’s like a monster which has sharp teeth,’ Eve describes, seeing Butler unpackage the saw.
As part of their 67-item shopping binge, their next purchase is rat and mouse poison.
‘It’s a knife party!’ Penny says.
‘We acquire 67 products that we feel should have been age-verified,’ Butler concludes.
‘For each of these items, three offences were potentially committed, as none had age-verification at the point of purchase, none were packaged to indicate age verification and there was no age-verification at the point of delivery.
‘In fact, most went into Amazon lockers, making age-verification impossible.
‘That could be 201 offences all together, so 201 times £5000 suggests that me and my accomplices hit Amazon for around £1,000,000.’
He subsequently discovers that changing the company’s operations to avoid this from happening comes at a larger expense.
In response, Butler says Amazon told him that the majority of the products they bought didn’t need age-verification but ‘admitted four of them did and that they’ve now been reclassified’.
A statement from Amazon provided in the documentary reads: ‘We take our responsibility to carry out age verification extremely seriously.’
The Great Amazon Heist airs Thursday, October 19, at 10pm on Channel 4.
