Random spot-checks of trader compliance
random-trader-checksDomain: marketplace-platformType: processDescription
Random spot-checks of trader compliance are the EU Digital Services Act and Product Safety Regulation answer to the question of how a marketplace can keep its trader inventory honest without inspecting every listing. The substantive obligation under DSA Article 30 (and parallel obligations under GPSR) is that the platform conducts random sampling of trader listings against publicly available authority databases (recall lists, banned-product lists, sanctions lists, restricted-substance registers) at a documented cadence, and records the outcomes and remediation. The randomness is doing real work: the regulator's interest is in catching listings that the platform's risk-based screening would not catch, which is why a sample drawn from the platform's already-flagged subset does not satisfy the obligation. The operational shape: a sampling methodology defensible against the platform's listing volume (statistical defensibility, not a fixed N), execution against the authority databases at the committed cadence, a record of each sampled listing and the hit or miss, a remediation track for hits, and an annual rollup the platform can produce on regulator request. The piece that consistently goes wrong is treating the sampling as a check on already-flagged listings rather than on the broader population; regulators have begun to ask explicitly whether the sample frame is the full trader inventory or a pre-filtered subset, and the answer matters for whether the obligation is met.
Applicability
Applies when: business model role is intermediary or mixed.
Required by (2 regulations)
- DSA
Article 31(3) — random checks against publicly available databases.
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Digital Services Act)
- EU GPSR
Article 22(6) — reasonable efforts to randomly check, in a representative manner, whether traders provide the trader and product information required by Article 22(7); methodology documented.
Regulation (EU) 2023/988
Fulfilled by (1)
- In-house build · medium effort
ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.
Evidence formats
- spot-check sampling plan
- audit log
- takedown record