Selling on Amazon lets you access the 151 million visitors who search the site for products every month. In exchange, you should follow site rules to the letter. While Amazon accounts for more than 50% of all e-commerce sales, they secure their customers with strict quality and content regulation. If you violate any of their rules, even by mistake, Amazon can and will suspend your seller account, occasionally without even sending you a warning.
While Amazon does not release data on who or how many seller accounts are suspended, you only have to hit the forums to understand that accounts are suspended continuously, and much more often than you’d like to consider. Once your selling privileges are suspended, the only thing you can do is submit an appeal and expect that Amazon listens.
Even though many suspended accounts are those that blatantly violate rules by having dual accounts, selling copycat products similar to original brands or not selling enough, a large percentage are also suspended over minor issues or mistakes.
What takes place when Your Account Is Suspended?
In most cases, you will just receive an email from the Amazon Seller Performance Team that you may no longer sell on Amazon, that your listings have been removed, and that you must fulfill your existing orders and then remove your funds. In most cases, they will aware you if the issue is associated with a product or order number, or list the reason, but they are not obliged to.
Your only choice is to figure out what you did a mistake and to write a convincing Plan of Action to submit an Appeal. In many cases, it will take 40-60 days to get your account back. During this time period, you’ll lose money, rankings, and consumers that you might never get back. More significantly, Amazon might not reinstate your account.
Your best defense against an Amazon Account suspension is to avoid it from happening in the initial place.
Amazon Vendor Central Vs Seller Central
Amazon Vendor Central sellers act as suppliers or manufacturers who sell straightly to Amazon.com. Amazon Seller Central accounts act as merchants or independent sellers through Amazon. Amazon Vendor Central first-party sellers sell in superior volume and are usually given access to Amazon Vine, Subscribe & Save, Amazon Marketing Services, and other functions. Because Amazon Vendor Central is by invite only, usually only established, high-volume sellers make it onto the platform.
While many people consider that Amazon Vendors are less possible to be suspended, this isn’t true. Amazon has no doubts about suspending accounts worth millions of dollars if they consider those accounts are affecting the quality of their customer experience. Amazon Vendors are suspended for similar reasons as Amazon Sellers, and it’s vital to take the same steps to avoid issues.
How to avoid Amazon Suspension
Amazon suspends sellers for violating the rules, which means that you should be familiar with their needs. Not understanding the rules is not a security, and Amazon will suspend you. For instance, some small business sellers on Amazon are banned for basically using terms like “Compatible with Apple” or including an iPhone in their product. Go to the Policies and Agreements page to study up on Amazon’s necessities for Sellers and if you notice violations, update your listings.
Maintain Your Performance Up
Amazon wants you to perform to their principles, and if you don’t, they will suspend your account. Check your Seller (or Vendor) Central performance and metrics to guarantee that you meet or exceed minimum standards for shipping time, customer satisfaction, and sales. Small Account Health can lead to suspension.
You download your Order Defect Rate to notice any current issues Amazon has with your products or orders by visiting Seller Central > Performance > Customer Satisfaction > Performance Over Time > Show order defect rate components > Download
As a rule, you must have an order defect rate of 1% or lower, a pre-fulfillment cancel rate of 2.5% or lower, and a late shipment rate of 4% or lower.
Amazon pays notice to Order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate, Late Shipment Rate, Policy Violations, On-Time Delivery, Valid Tracking Rate and Contact Response Time. If your entire performance is below 95%, consider cutting bottom performers (products that are frequently returned or have the most complaints) from your inventory and switching to Amazon FBA to increase your rating.
Monitor Your Account
Answering to and examining warnings promptly will help to avoid a suspension. By guaranteeing that you tackle customer service issues and shipment issues as promptly as possible, you can do your best to avoid suspension. If you buy and resale mass-market products, you must also keep receipts to prove genuineness, as Amazon will suspend your account if they consider you are selling fake products.
Make High-Quality Content
Amazon is increasingly cracking down on content that doesn’t fulfill their standards. This comprises images, text, descriptions, and titles. Review all your content, make sure that it meets current Amazon guidelines, and update it where essential.
Don’t Open More than One Account
Opening more than one account is a sure method to get suspended, even if you connect it to different credit cards or bank accounts. Amazon checks IP access and other details, so a second account could result in the suspension of both.
Every order must be about making the customer glad, even if it loses you money. While some customers are unfeasible to please, customer satisfaction is a big part of keeping your Amazon account. Answer to customer complaints or emails as promptly as possible, offer returns and free replacements, and work to make the customer as glad as possible.
While you do want to keep your return rate below 5%, negative feedback and customer complaints to Amazon are poorer than losing a small amount of money on an order. Likewise, you must contact consumers who leave negative feedback to notice if you can offer them anything to fix the problem so that they remove it.
Review Your Listings
Double ensure your listings to guarantee that you do not have inactive listings, mismatched listings (right product wrong photo), or duplicate listings, as any of these could result in a suspension.
Don’t Piggyback
While it’s a general trend to sell common products on other top-selling but unbranded listings, this can get you in difficulty. If the other seller notices, they can buy your product and report it as fake, even if you’re both selling from a similar supplier. Amazon is increasingly suspending accounts for this issue, and it is something you must secure yourself against.
Many of Amazon’s seller policies are purposely vague letting suppliers understand them as they hope. However, all of Amazon’s regulations are designed to secure the customer and all your choices must follow the spirit of that code. If you’re working to offer quality products, great customer service, and fast shipping, Amazon will possibly be on your side.
Related Blog: How do I Appeal Suspended Amazon Account?
How to answer an Amazon Suspension
While your instant response to a suspension might be to write a quick reply in hopes of being reinstated, this is the worst thing you could do. You may be panicking, but it’s significant to keep a few things in the brain. The initial is that you should know exactly what went wrong and what to say about it before you answer and the second is that once your appeal of a denied appeal has been denied, Amazon will most possibly just stop reading your emails. You only obtain a few chances so you have to make the most of them.
Cool Off – An Amazon suspension is worrying, and you don’t want to react foolishly. Take your time and do something to cool off before going on. If you can’t answer courteously and with all the facts, you shouldn’t be responding.
Do Your Research – What went mistaken, why, what issues do you have, how can you fix them? If it’s a mistake, how can you confirm it? Visiting your inbox for alerts and warnings, examining your metrics and performance data, and verifying your account health are all steps that you must take before writing an answer.
Sketch a Plan of Action – Sketch a short but concise plan of action explaining that you identify the issue and that you identify how to fix it. This must be facts only. Use easy language, use bullet points, and keep it to the point. Amazon outsources much of their customer service to India, where the performance team is expected to deal with a high volume of requests each day. The quicker you get to the point, the better.
- What is the reason for the suspension of your Account?
- What are you particularly changing to guarantee that this issue does not take place again?
- What changes have you made freshly or now to solve issues with your account health?
- Address all your A-Z claims and Order Defect Rate issues.
- Invest in enhancement. If you have customer service issues advance your customer service, if you have shipping issues, switch to Amazon FBA, and so on.
- Make a Plan B for every issue to guarantee that you have it covered.
Submit Your Appeal: Submit your plan of Action along with an Appeal to have your seller permissions reinstated.
Amazon will answer in their own time, and once they answer, you can appeal their decision. However, your excellent choice is to submit the correct appeal the first time to get your account reinstated. In most circumstances, reinstatement takes 40-60 days, if your account is reinstated at all.
Prevention is the most excellent heal for Amazon Account suspensions. Amazon has been becoming increasingly strict with rules and policies and has been cracking down on content issues and fake products more regularly since mid-2016. Your most excellent choice is to review your account, improve where probable, and make a conscious and intentional attempt to improve your account health with our tips above.