Being a seller at a big online marketplace such as Amazon is no cakewalk. You worry about account suspension and staying compliant with their Terms of Service because you know very well that a blocked listing will eat your profits. In this article, I will teach you how to approach the whole process with ease and hopefully lead you to find effective solutions.
A truly valuable piece of advice I learned practicing e-commerce is to be astutely aware of the early warning signs present before the Amazon account gets suspended. Account suspension is preventable and a smart online seller will aim to avoid it from happening in the first place. A highly efficient seller will diligently sift through the myriad of misconceptions and misinformation in seller forums or groups to gather real intelligence about how Amazon works internally.
The right approach when your account has already been suspended is to take things from an individual strategy perspective rather than abiding by a cookie-cutter approach because there is a lot of apples and oranges type of situation going on in each seller’s account.
Amazon Sellers' Common Mistakes
Note that when a seller's account is being suspended or being considered for suspension, usually there has been a warning in the past. What the Amazon team does, is look at all these previous warnings and conduct a review on whether or not you made patent changes or have responded with them since you received it. One of the most common blunders amongst sellers is when warning signs are missed because people think the messages from Amazon are just bots. This cannot be farther from the truth. As a matter of fact, the warning signs can actually give you a clue how close you are to an actual account suspension and the perfect counter for that is to give it the attention it deserves.
In the present Amazon marketplace climate, an innocent violation or minor infraction is treated as if it is a major infraction. They are much more aggressive in policing. Putting content in the title that doesn’t belong there such as “Apple compatible” is a common violation because it is treated as trademark infringement in terms of intellectual property and may even lead to lightning bolt suspension.
Product Safety Complaints
Another big thing on Amazon right now is product safety complaints. As it is, there have been few initiatives of policy enforcement in Amazon for the prevention of future safety complaints because they want to polish the image of the marketplace. If you get enough product safety complaints, your entire account can get suspended. If Amazon thinks that by suspending you now, it will save them a lot of work from a liability standpoint in the long run, they are more likely to do it because product safety complaints hurt the integrity of the marketplace.
Counterfeits or inauthentic items inside the Amazon doesn’t mean what it means in a typical layman term. For Amazon, it is a catch-all term in a way that sometimes, even a packaging upgrade can be construed by the buyer as a knock-off item if it wasn’t corrected on the product detail page. The seller might feel they are being accused of selling counterfeits even if they are not and this can cause unmerited negative product reviews. A good countermeasure is to get authenticity letters from the brand suppliers.
Rules of thumb on writing your Appeal Letter to Amazon
Before you hit the Appeal button at the Seller's central page, here are some few things worth keeping in mind:
Finally, bear in mind that Amazon thinks in terms of which market players are going to be worth their time, who can double or triple the revenue year after year because Amazon is a hot marketplace. The key element to remain competitive in this tough environment is to remember that account suspension is preventable if you are willing to learn how to tackle the warning signs as they come and create a solid plan of action with proactive measures in place.
Do you have a personal experience with Amazon account suspension and/or reinstatement? Please comment down below. We would love to hear from you!