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Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

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Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#41

Post by binarysolo »

> The sad part is that I sell a book, Computer Engineering for Babies

Oh no way, I bought your book (I think via kickstarter?). :)

First off -- Amazon's super bureaucratic so all of their processes require a certain language and esclation path. I'll have to ask my team's support specialist on what she thinks, but my gut is telling me your language needs to be "compatible with Samsung" or "Samsung compatible" instead of "for... Samsung TV remote".

I've been doing Amazon for 13 years and have a team + a few brands I own in the ecosystem -- just some basic tips:

1. Get brand registry (or find a maker buddy and put it under their brand) for listing control. Generic is not the way to go for listing control -- you need brand registry. Then you can edit away under your own brand.

2. You shouldn't be losing any money doing this. If you're doing 3D printer stuff you should expect your cost to be like 5-10%, Amazon takes 40-50% between all fees, ads around 10%, and the rest is labor/margin... and if your numbers aren't there you need to figure out what's wrong.

I have lots more thoughts but I realize this can become an essay haha. Feel free to ping me if you need some help, loved your books. :)

===

Edit: I don't think you're at risk of getting banned, but you might need an escalation to a higher level support (a captive or escalations specialist within Amazon).

Edit 2: I had some extra downtime to look at it, my approach to resolving the issue would be: a. You should first try to clearly indicate you're a product accessory and not a Samsung-branded product; review sellercentral best practices for SKU naming but it's gonna be something along the lines of "compatible with Samsung TV remotes" b. If you get stuck here for too long, I would first remove all reference to Samsung for now from the listing and make it a more generic accessory, acknowledge the brand confusion, reinstate your store, then create a case to add Samsung back into your listing (and be sure to have this case handy if you get future problems so you can reference back and show you're doing this the right way). c. Phone support works a lot better in recent days than email/chat support. But since you're deactivated I'm not sure if you get access to this.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#42

Post by ejo4041 »

throwaway150 wrote: post #38
ejo4041 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with most of your comment, although I don't think my tips are questionable, they are well within Amazon's guidelines. I have been through counterfeiter issues on my account before and very familiar with the brand registry process. Changing listing titles also happens on a regular basis to chase trends in search results. My recommendations are pretty much directly from the cited guidelines in sellerce…

Sorry, I didn't mean questionable. I meant unverified and I updated my comment soon before you posted yours. But looks like my "unverified" complaint was wrong too? Do you know if the seller guidelines doc is published somewhere? I tried searching but I see multiple results and cannot tell which one of them is the actual deal. Curious to find out what kind of guidelines they officially recommend. Could be a great res…

No problem, I was trying to not take it personally.

OP linked the source, but you need a seller account to view https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GZUQ6GBB...

Here is the relevant section copy pasted (which his original listing is pretty close to adhering to, it's really just the second brand mention which I was concerned about):

" When making truthful statements that a product is compatible with a trademarked product. For example, if you offer a cable that is compatible with the Kindle e-reader, you can use the brand name “Kindle” to indicate that compatibility in the text of your detail page. You cannot use a logo to indicate compatibility, only the brand name. Any statement you make about compatibility must be true. If you want to indicate the compatibility of your product with a product of a different brand in the product title, build your product title using the format below, taking account of the Amazon Brand Name Policy. If you do not apply this format to your product title, your listing may be removed as potentially trademark infringing.

Title format for branded compatible products

[Your Product’s Brand Name] + [Product Name] + "for"/''compatible with''/''fits''/''intended for'' + [Brand of Main Product] + [Main Product Name] + (other product title elements, if applicable)

Examples:

Xandu USB charging cable, compatible with AmazonBasics speaker TonTon Sleeve intended for Kindle Fire Title format for generic compatible products

"Generic" + [Product Name] + "for"/”compatible with”/”fits”/”intended for” + [Brand of Main Product] + [Main Product Name] + (other product title elements, if applicable)

Example:

Generic Replacement filter for AmazonBasics Waterfilter A3

Note: When making genuine claims that a product is compatible with a trademarked product, use either of these terms that indicate compatibility as listed above, in the bullet point and product description as well. "

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#43

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Closi wrote: post #19
IChooseY0u wrote: post #3

I think people would be surprised what is on the internal seller forums. There is really like a huge amount of issues that Amazon fails to help with. Literally everything from onboarding to protecting sellers from refund scams. I suspect big sellers must have dedicated account managers

I used to work for a large Amazon Seller (>$100m per year revenue) who got automatically deactivated with no warning and it took them a week to get re-activated. We are talking a very minor infraction - It was something like one of their marketing copywriters putting 'refills can be purchased on our website' on one of their thousands of listings, and Amazon delisting their entire account on the basis that this was mo…

> We are talking a very minor infraction - It was something like one of their marketing copywriters putting 'refills can be purchased on our website' on one of their thousands of listings, and Amazon delisting their entire account on the basis that this was moving customers off their platform. No warning - permenant ban that took over a week to remove - c$2m revenue loss (I've changed the details here significantly to avoid disclosing the company)

Holy cow.

What is so wrong with writing refills can be purchased on our website.

Amazon right now feels to me like a large landlord seeking rent kicking people for no reason because they didn't like that some person spilled some water.

Probably gonna share this story online more. I mean I didn't expect the situation to be this extremely bad.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#44

Post by ejo4041 »

rorylaitila wrote: post #32

Don't use other companies brand names in your product titles. Regardless of what other people get away with. Regardless of what is in the Amazon fine print. Don't use trademark logos in your product images. Make your own brand name. Make it "compatible with" in the product description.

I agree that this would be a much safer route.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#45

Post by paulpauper »

nikkwong wrote: post #25
njarboe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you had good reason not to, but this is a situation for a lawsuit. Did you sue Amazon to get your money?

Amazon has some terms in their TOS that you have to go through mediation on their terms—I tried to get the process started but could never get them to respond when I/we contacted their legal teams. I probably should have pressed harder, I'm sure there was some way to do it, but I wasn't able to figure it out at the time.

The TOS is worded in such a way that it's almost impossible for them to lose. The best legal minds who are paid 7 figures write these things to be impenetrable. Arbitration is slow, time consuming, likely to not lead to desired outcome. Retain a lawyer just means more money and time down drain, and these companies laugh at legal threats, knowing it it ever got that far they would still win either getting the case dismissed or attrition.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#46

Post by mtlynch »

TMWNN wrote: post #40
mtlynch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to sell on Amazon, and Walmart Marketplace reached out to me to convince me they could offer me a better seller experience than Amazon. I was excited because I hated dealing with Amazon, but I had the call with the Walmart rep and he couldn't cite any benefit over Amazon. Would Walmart take a lower fee? No, it would be the same as Amazon. Would Walmart give back its fee if the customer sent the product back fo…

I sell on both platforms. >Would Walmart take a lower fee? No, it would be the same as Amazon. Walmart charges less in two ways: * No monthly membership fee. * Seemingly random fee discounts, up to and including 0%. More than once I've sold an item early in a day, then sold it again later that day with a different fee percentage. >Would Walmart give back its fee if the customer sent the product back for a refund? Whe…

This was 3-4 years ago, so it's possible that they've improved since then or that the rep I was speaking to was misinformed, but at the time, he told me there was no fee advantage on Walmart Marketplace, and I tried to be polite in my reaction of, "Then, why would you be an attractive alternative?"

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#47

Post by jasonjayr »

throwaway150 wrote: post #27

*smh* Every time I hear a story like this (and there's one like every month) I wonder how we ended up here. The internet was meant to be this place where anyone could set up a website, run a business, and reach customers directly. Instead it has turned into a collection of walled gardens, where your existence and livelihood depend on the whims of an opaque algorithm. Luckily in my country Amazon does not have the lev…

We ended up here because certain people realised that there is oppertunity in exploiting the window of time between "I trust that you are selling this in good faith" and "This is a scam and I will drag your name, and any of your associates in mud". The internet enabled people to just 'make up names', and keep exploiting this.

So rather than investing time and effort into investigating, we just built faceless tools to punish anything that looks even remotely suspicious, and ignore any appeals, and if a few (or a lot) of folks just trying to make an honest living get caught up, then oh well.

Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#48

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

throwaway150 wrote: post #27

*smh* Every time I hear a story like this (and there's one like every month) I wonder how we ended up here. The internet was meant to be this place where anyone could set up a website, run a business, and reach customers directly. Instead it has turned into a collection of walled gardens, where your existence and livelihood depend on the whims of an opaque algorithm. Luckily in my country Amazon does not have the lev…

If I remember correctly, they might be fined a lot.

But when the only punishment for crime is fine, then crime becomes legal (and even preferred if doing the crime actually makes more than the fine)

Amazon also does malicious compliance. Yes they are following the law but they are trying to stoop as evil foolishly low as possible while still following the law and sometimes they don't even follow the law but get out of free jail card by paying some fines and oh did I mention, lobbying?

I completely agree with your message. We might need a better alternative to Amazon but one of the reasons why I sort of prefer Amazon sometimes is that you can get a 5% discount on all products if you have a decent credit card and pay bills on time on all products in my country, there are special cards just for amazon and also some cards which pay 5% on all online payments.

On small businesses this is not really possible.

Theoretically if one keeps money in a short term market fund or somewhere safe and uses this or other apps, they can probably safe upto 5% on all expenses, (uses credit cards and then pays the bills on time)

Combine this with the bloody fact that Amazon's tos's requires you to sell the cheapest on amazon, there just ends up being no competition.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#49

Post by TMWNN »

mtlynch wrote: post #46
TMWNN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sell on both platforms. >Would Walmart take a lower fee? No, it would be the same as Amazon. Walmart charges less in two ways: * No monthly membership fee. * Seemingly random fee discounts, up to and including 0%. More than once I've sold an item early in a day, then sold it again later that day with a different fee percentage. >Would Walmart give back its fee if the customer sent the product back for a refund? Whe…

This was 3-4 years ago, so it's possible that they've improved since then or that the rep I was speaking to was misinformed, but at the time, he told me there was no fee advantage on Walmart Marketplace, and I tried to be polite in my reaction of, "Then, why would you be an attractive alternative?"

The refund structure has always been in place in the going on five years I've sold on Walmart. The random discounted fees have started in the past year.

Re: Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

#50

Post by paulpauper »

globular-toast wrote: post #18
nikkwong wrote: post #16

Good luck. Amazon banned my seller account 7 years ago because my wife, who was also an amazon seller, used our shared CC (which has my name on it, although she's an authorized user) to pay her $45/month seller fee. The account had $48,000 in it at the time I was banned, and I was never able to get the money back; after an endless number of hours of pleads with their teams, mails to jeff@amazon, working on it from th…

Surely that's enough money to go to small claims or something?

statute of limitations passed, exceeds the small claims threshold, and unwinnable and more time and money on lawyers
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