Violations of Amazon's Drop Shipping Policy

In the last half of 2022, we noticed an upsurge in the number of Amazon Seller Accounts deactivated due to violations of Amazon's Drop Shipping Policy.  Amazon allows sellers to drop ship.  However, the policy is very strict and drop shipping from other online retailers is strictly prohibited.  Successful appeals of drop shipping suspensions are possible, but they often take a long time, and you must assure Amazon that your Amazon Seller Account no longer poses a risk to Amazon, its customers, or its selling partners.  

What is an Amazon Drop Shipping Policy Violation?

Amazon's drop shipping policy states:
If you fulfill orders using a third party, a practice known as drop shipping, you must follow all Amazon policies to ensure a consistent customer experience that easily identifies only you as the seller of record.

You need to make sure that a customer buying the product from you on the Amazon platform will receive the item, and that all invoices, packaging and packing material only identifies you as the seller. This is very important for Amazon, and this is the reason why Amazon prohibits drop shipping from other online retailers (like Walmart for instance), as Amazon customers would receive a product with a Walmart label or in a Walmart box.   It is not a violation to source from Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, or Bed, Bath and Beyond, but you cannot drop ship from their online site directly to customers. You must buy the products and repack and ship them yourself.  Amazon does not want customers ordering from their site to receive something in a box with Walmart or Home Depot written all over it.
The next paragraph of the policy states another important aspect:
As an important reminder, all violations of the Drop Shipping Policy can break customer trust. As a result, any violation of our Drop Shipping Policy will negatively impact your account health and your ability to fulfill future orders using our Merchant Fulfilled Network (MFN).

This means, that if Amazon somehow finds out or suspects you are drop shipping from other retailers or suppliers who keep their labels on the package, your account could be deactivated and you will need to go through several rounds of appeals to explain yourself, or to use professional services like ours to resolve things faster.

The following drop shipping methods are strictly prohibited on Amazon:

• You may not purchase products from another retailer and have that retailer ship directly to customers, if:
  • the shipment does not identify you as the seller of record
  • anyone other than you appears on packing slips, invoices, or external packaging

Note: This means that the name, logo, or any other identifying information from the other retailer may not appear on what the customer receives.

• You may not ship orders with packing slips, invoices, external packaging, or other information indicating a seller name or contact information other than your own

EXPLANATION: Please forget about drop shipping from such online retailers, as:

1. Walmart
2. Home Depot
3. Costco
4. The Kroger Co.
5. Walgreens Boots Alliance
6. CVS Health Corporation
7. Target
8. BestBuy
9. eBay
10. Dollar General

Do your homework in advance and find a reliable supplier, if you wish to have a successful business through Amazon marketplace.
Drop-shipping is a very beneficial strategy:

•  If you don’t want to keep storage of a purchased stock – all products will be delivered from the supplier directly to the customer, which is extremely convenient
• If you don’t have an extra budget to purchase the items in advance
• If you don’t want to risk, whether the product will be sold or not

With a drop-shipping business model you have a guarantee that you will get paid as you purchase a product from your supplier ONLY if it’s ordered from your Amazon account. But in order to have all these benefits, you have to assure Amazon that you are a reliable and responsible seller, acting partly on behalf of the marketplace.  Put yourself in Amazon’s shoes and you will understand, that they don’t want the products to be delivered to their beloved customers from their competitors.

The last part of the policy pretty much repeats the above statements, except the one:

If you fulfill using drop shipping, you must strictly adhere to following requirements of our policy:

• You must always be the seller of record of your products, meaning you identify yourself as the seller of your products on all information included with the item.
• Remove any information identifying the third-party drop shipper before shipping.
• Be responsible for accepting and processing customer returns.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCEPTING AND PROCESSING CUSTOMER RETURNS. If a customer for some reason wants to return a product, you are the one to organize this. Not Amazon, not supplier, but you.
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Amazon Drop Shipping Appeals

Appeals of accounts deactivated for violating Amazon's drop shipping policy often state they are for violation of Amazon's Seller Code of Conduct.  This is a serious violation and the approach to an appeal should be serious as well.  These appeals do not go through Amazon's appeal process quickly.  You need to convince Amazon you are serious.  We take these appeals seriously and, though we will not take an appeal where a seller has entered false tracking numbers or acted fraudulently, we recognize there are many articles on the Internet telling new sellers that it is easy and not a violation of Amazon's TOS to drop ship directly from retailers.  If you have received a drop shipping suspension, it is important to present a professionally prepared Plan of Action.  Call, chat or email us today for help.