One of the biggest fears of every Amazon owner is having their account suspended. Receiving a notification from Amazon that your account is under review is the worst nightmare for all brand owners. And that’s totally understandable.
Having your account suspended can cause you a lot of problems. Every minute your account is suspended you are losing money, customers, and the time you could have invested in updating your products and growing your brand. Sometimes it can take weeks or months for Amazon to put your account up again.
Getting suspended does not mean that everything is lost though. You still have the opportunity to appeal the suspension. Unless we’re talking about the worst-case scenario – getting banned from Amazon.
How to Prevent Your Seller Account from Getting Suspended on Amazon?
As a seller, you must follow the rules and Terms of Conditions Amazon has set up in the first place. You must obey the laws and regulations you agreed on when you became a seller.
Also, you need to have a spotless Amazon strategy that is based on several strong pillars that will enable your brand to thrive and grow.
That means having set up excellent advertising and marketing, content and creative, technology, strategic operations, and end-to-end channel management.
What’s the Best Strategy to Keep your Amazon Account Healthy?
A superior Amazon strategy consists of catalogue management, monitoring account health, and operations compliance. Doing catalogue management means actively monitoring and having automation to alert you if any issues come up.
Having a fulfillment strategy, pricing strategy, and planning purchase orders and shipments is all part of the monitoring process. On the other hand, being compliant and taking care of your operations implies doing inventory forecasting, purchase orders management, FBA shipments, and minimum chargebacks.
If you have all of the above set in place you are on a good path towards not having any issues with Amazon. But sometimes that isn’t the case. Experienced sellers have learned how Amazon views risk and are less likely to make mistakes that would lead to suspension.
They know that in the end, in the eyes of Amazon you are a stranger, just a collection of data points. Amazon as a company has a lot of external pressures, mainly coming from customers, then the FDA, the public perception, financial instruments, the federal trade commission, and loads of other institutions and third parties.
Common Reasons to Get Your Account Suspended
Amazon, as the world’s biggest e-commerce company, really cares about its customers.
That means that if you receive loads of customer complaints Amazon will label your brand as risky.
Some of the most common reasons for account suspension are actually a result of a combination of:
- Bad reviews = a bad seller.
They wont ask you if the reviews are right or not – they will just take further steps and have your account suspended - High return rates
- Poor quality of your products
- Poor order fulfillment
- Inadequate customer service
- Regulation changes & patent issues – regulations can change daily so you need to check often if your business is in compliance with them
- Brand registration issues
- Incorrect classification of your products
- Competitors messing with your ASIN
Remember you are just data to Amazon, and it remembers everything you have done in your past. If you perform badly in some area, Amazon will notice that straight away and they will notify you about it.
My Account is Suspended, What Next?
Act immediately! You will have to use the information Amazon provided you and the information you found on your account. Make your own action plan and appeal when needed. You can appeal if the offense is serious, the violation can be removed or the ASIN can be restored.
If your account is suspended based on bad customer reviews, take a step forward and inspect your inventory. Don’t assume that the customer is wrong. Sometimes it can be Amazon fulfillment centers or your warehouse that are messing up your products. If you find that your products are not what they should be and the customers were right then you should decide when to discontinue them.
With account suspension, you have a chance to appeal, make an action plan and resolve the issues. But not always do things go smoothly, sometimes your appeal can be denied. In this case, you’ll have a chance to submit a revised plan of action that will help restore your account. If this doesn’t work either, you are one step closer to being banned. This is the worst-case scenario. Basically, Amazon has kicked you out. Your appeal has been rejected one more time and they no longer will contact you.
We recommend keeping an eye on each action you take, avoid all risky situations that might jeopardize your account, and focus on improving your account health.
Important things to remember are – to be objective, to take one ASIN at a time, and to resolve one problem at a time. Resolve the problems that are the easiest to be resolved. Don’t get stuck on the big problems because that way you will lose precious time and the problem will not be resolved.
If the customers are complaining about the packaging then inspect the packaging and change it if needed. If they are complaining about the shipping, make shipment changes. The last thing you will have as an option is to discontinue the product.
To sum up,
How can you avoid account suspension?
- First, prevent the issues. – For this, you will need to spend some time in performance on seller central and review your account health.
- Check on intellectual property, laws, and regulations regularly – These are known as big offenses and can cause you a lot of trouble.
- Check your store feedback on product reviews and listen to customers’ voices.
- Look at your return rate and keep it low, monitor your catalog data, and flag them if some issues come up.
We understand that all of this might seem tedious and boring, but these are the right things to do in order to keep your account health at bay and keep your sales stable.
Our mission here at AMZ Operations is to remove Amazon sellers from everyday seller central frustrations such as getting your account suspended, and a variety of other issues that might emerge.
We’re here to educate you on how to avoid these complications and remind you to keep an eye of everything that might threaten your Amazon account health. In case you want to be instantly saved from the headaches, we can do everything that needs to be done on your behalf, all you need to do is schedule a call and leave the rest to us.