The U.S. consumer organization Consumer Reports (CR) recently released a special evaluation of major C2C (consumer-to-consumer) secondhand trading platforms, covering the four largest platforms in the United States: Craigslist, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Mercari. This follows the organization's February 2026 assessment of B2C third-party seller platforms, once again turning its attention to online marketplaces where individuals trade directly with one another.

In October 2025, CR conducted a nationally representative survey of 2,191 U.S. adults. The results showed that 95% of consumers had shopped through digital platforms in the past 12 months. People's online spending has long gone beyond buying new products from merchants; more and more people are buying from and selling directly to other consumers through platforms. The growth momentum of the C2C model is clear: the overall market is projected to expand from $584.62 billion in 2025 to $1.41 trillion in 2035.

But product safety and liability policy in the United States is updating slowly and cannot keep pace with the evolution of the e-commerce ecosystem and business models. When the law does not clearly define when platforms should bear product safety or liability obligations, consumers often have limited recourse after buying unsafe goods. Compared with B2C platforms such as Amazon and Target, C2C platforms intervene less in the transaction process and have a smaller scope of control. Therefore, in the absence of current law, CR believes C2C platforms should do more to make the areas they can control safer: require sellers to provide clear, sufficient, and accurate product information; promptly block and quickly remove recalled or banned products; and promptly notify consumers about recalls and bans.

CR's evaluation focused on three aspects: whether platforms can help buyers and sellers understand unsafe products; whether they can block or proactively remove banned or restricted products; and whether they provide clear channels for reporting violating products or safety issues. CR stated that its recommendations are actionable for digital platforms and can substantially improve consumer safety, and called on platforms to implement them in accordance with its Digital Marketplace Safety Playbook and Digital Marketplace Safety Framework. The organization also noted that legislators need to pay attention to gaps in current laws and regulations, with related recommendations available in its November 2024 report Market Accountability in the Digital World.

For the secondhand clothing and used goods circulation industry, the signal from this evaluation is that online C2C channels are being brought under the same safety scrutiny as traditional retail. As resale continues to expand, platforms' compliance performance in information disclosure, removal of prohibited goods, and reporting mechanisms may become a new variable affecting secondhand sellers' traffic and transaction costs.

Source: Secondhand Marketplace Safety and Accountability: CR Evaluation of Consumer-to-Consumer Marketplaces · Originally published 2026-09-23