Amazon Sellers Blog

When you receive a performance notification from the Amazon Seller Performance Team stating your Amazon suspended your account, your first and most important task is: Not to panic and study it carefully, as it gives the answers to your questions.

​Why is my Amazon seller account suspended?
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Under “Why this is happening?” When you receive an Amazon suspension, Amazon provides you a general identification of the reason of your suspension. Of course, you won’t receive a specific clarification to your case, but you will know, which exact policy you have violated and where to search for the root causes of the issue.
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Amazon Seller Account Suspensions for Inauthentic Complaints can happen to absolutely anyone who has ever sold on Amazon. And that is the reason why it’s one of the most common issues, which some of you need to deal with right now.

​On the other hand, it’s one of the most difficult cases to resolve, because Amazon is very sensitive to this issue. It’s very understandable, as Amazon (as a company striving to be the largest online marketplace in the world) has to keep its reputation on a high level, and selling inauthentic items on their platform may cause huge damage not just to them, but also to other sellers. Root causes for such suspensions may vary, but there are still ways to prevent your business from unnecessary suspensions:

• Invoices.

If you don’t have invoices from manufacturer or brand owner, this might cause a problem with verifying your goods. Even a simple buyer complaint may cause you this type of suspension and again, you will have to prove the sources. Amazon needs to make sure, that the products you sell, are genuine and authentic. So, INVOICES, INVOICES, INVOICES!
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Because of its customer-centric approach, Amazon cares more about the customer experience than anything else and will suspend your seller account and remove your selling privileges if you receive complaints about the following.

If this happens you need an experienced Amazon sellers attorney to write an Amazon appeal and plan of action to get your suspended Amazon seller account reinstated:


Products not as described
Amazon suspended item not as described?  According to Amazon policy, the product you sell must match exactly the one described in your listings. If you have this issue, you should included in your plan of action that you will monitor your listings to make sure they conform to Amazon policy. Ruthless competitors will often sell a generic product and complain against other sellers who list under them.

​Be careful! Your Amazon seller account can be suspended if you are not selling the exact item described in the listing.

Retail Arbitrage is Permitted on Amazon but Be Careful if You Do ItIn economics and finance, arbitrage (/ˈɑːrbɪtrɑːʒ/, UK also /-trɪdʒ/) is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded – Wikipedia
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In simple words, you purchase a product at a retail store and resell it on any e-commerce platform for a slight profit. For any online markets, such as Amazon.com, it is a widely known concept, often used by those who are only starting their online business. 

The simple idea of it is to find a retail store, a clearance section or any sales – your task here to search for a good quality product (because you don’t want to be suspended for an inauthentic item) and a great deal on it, so that you are able to add a good margin.
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This can take some time, but after a while, once you know what you are looking for and how the system works, the process will go faster and smoother. 

​Clients often ask, "Are you kidding?  We send the email to Jeff Bezos?"  "Does he really read them?"  The answers are yes, we send the email to Jeff Bezos and no, the richest man in the world does not take the time to read your emails.

He does, however, have a staff that opens them and routes them to the appropriate manager within Amazon's network.

Often called Bezos escalations, these are actually not a new appeal, but a new place to send your denied appeal to get a review from Amazon management.

They always answer, and they usually give a final decision, except in cases where they will ask for more information.  

As to how long they take, this is a question that has become impossible to answer.  We used to give an average time, but that average time was one month, then two months, and now we have seen them take as long as seven months.

Despite changes in their agreement with third-party sellers, Amazon.com continues to suspend accounts without notice and often without stating a reason. This has fueled a cottage industry of sales of inside investigative reports gained from bribing Amazon employees. Sellers whose businesses have been crushed, many times by Amazon’s arbitrary account closure decisions, made algorithmically by its artificial intelligence, are buying the reports online at a 3 to 400% markup.

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) announced in August that, as a result of its change of its Business Solutions Agreement with third-party sellers, in response to pressure from Germany, it was changing the way it dealt with seller suspensions. This news was taken well by Amazon sellers, who have long complained that Amazon not only suspends sellers without notice, but, many times, conceals the reasons or provides a false reason for the suspension. However, despite the welcome news, more than thirty days after the effective changes in the agreement, Amazon is still closing accounts without notice as usual, and seems to be relying on the “escape clause” that allows it to terminate an account immediately if determines the seller conduct has exposed them to third-party liability, such as counterfeit sales.  

When Amazon asks for invoices to authenticate products or product category gating, be careful! This is a new alert that has seen many sellers suspended and Amazon is in the process of cracking down. Since it is new, the machines are very sensitive and have often flagged sellers for suspension who are merely highlighting ASINs on invoices or redacting prices, both of which are allowed by Amazon's selling policies, but have resulted in suspensions. I have helped many clients who are wrongfully suspended for this recover their accounts. 

There are a few scenarios where we can mount a successful appeal for these:

1.  You blacked out the prices on a genuine invoice and sent them a copy;
2.  You highlighted an item to show the ASIN or wrote the ASIN on the invoice and sent them a copy;
3.  You did 1 or 2 above using a computer program like Adobe; 
4.  You sent a pdf instead of a jpeg of the invoice; or
5.  You produced a genuine invoice and Amazon thinks it is not genuine, but your supplier will authenticate it or vouch for your company.

Amazon.com (AMZN) announced in August that, as a result of its change of its Business Solutions Agreement with third-party sellers, in response to pressure from Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO), it was changing the way it dealt with seller suspensions. NOT!

Sellers and Seller Consultants still report Amazon is suspending seller accounts without notice, despite the provision that future suspensions would be preceded by a thirty-day notice and an explanation of the reasons behind the seller account deactivation or a seven-day notice in serious cases of material breach. However, more than thirty days after the effective changes in the contract, Amazon is still closing accounts without notice as usual, and seems to be relying on the “escape clause” that allows it to terminate an account immediately if determines the seller conduct has exposed them to third-party liability, such as counterfeit sales.  
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According to sources cited by Business Insider, Amazon claims the notice clauses only apply to account cancellations, not initial suspensions. To sellers, there is virtually no difference between the two. An initial suspension can last for days and even months and can kill your entire business.  

The Wall Street Journal broke a story this week declaring that Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) had “ceded” control of its site, resulting in the offering of thousands of banned, unsafe or mislabeled products. While it is true that Amazon’s E-commerce site is riddled with counterfeit, dangerous and sometimes even illegal goods, the fault is not control over its site, over which it has complete control.

​The problem is failure to properly vet third-party sellers on the giant E-tailer’s platform.  

The Wall Street Journal investigation found some 4,100 items that had been declared “unsafe” by federal agencies; including 2,000 toys and medications, which were missing required health-risk warning labels.
Other E-Commerce markets, such as Walmart.com, put sellers through an intensive vetting process. They ask potential sellers information about their business, what other sites they sell on, how you source your products, and more.

​There is also an actual approval process. But, at Amazon, anyone with a credit card and utility bill in their name can become a seller and the process is automated and immediate.  ​

Third-party sellers on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) often ask themselves this question: Does Amazon love me or hate me? In a week filled with headlines of DOJ anti-trust probes into the giant E-tailer, the news is filled with third-party sellers on the platform hitting back at the Goliath.

Amazon sellers account for 58% of all sales on the platform, according to Amazon’s own statistics. So why do third-party sellers hate Amazon instead of loving it? One reason is access to data. Amazon spends more money on computer programmers than any other element of its labor force. And its uses the data it gathers from the buying habits of third-party seller’s customers to compete against those same sellers.  
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Another is that Amazon is trigger-happy with suspensions. Sellers wake up in the morning to find their entire business has been wiped out due to one customer complaint. Often it is a competitor who plants a false customer complaint, but the bottom line is that third-party sellers on Amazon’s E commerce platform pay for the poor vetting process of Amazon, who allows practically anyone with a credit card and a physical location in a supported country to sell.