It’s a nightmare scenario that has befallen many – too many – Amazon sellers and brand owners: the dreaded account shutdown email and subsequent appeals process. Titled simply “Your Amazon.com Selling Account”, no matter the perceived transgression, this cryptic email offers little of use in terms of what happened and how to reconcile the issue. It’s the seller’s responsibility to figure it out, and that can be tougher than it looks. To make matters worse, an incorrect appeal can result in permanent account loss, even if there was in fact no offense committed. In this four part series we explore some of the most difficult account suspensions to come back from, ones that even we thought might be hopeless, and share what we did for our clients in each of these situations to get them back online.
Selling On Amazon: It’s Just Business
Did you know? If there is a valid business reason to have multiple seller accounts on Amazon, it’s actually OK to. Here is a video with more information about that. The main takeaway is that there are strict rules to follow so you don’t violate the Terms of Service.
Here are 3 legitimate reasons you may want to have multiple Amazon selling accounts:
- You own more than one brand and maintain separate businesses for each.
- You manufacture products for two or more separate companies.
- You are invited to join an Amazon program that requires multiple accounts.
If you do have multiple Amazon accounts, be aware: If one account is suspended, any related accounts may be automatically suspended, depending on the violation.
As you can imagine, the allowance of multiple accounts can create a bit of room for interpretation among brands who may want them for various reasons. As Amazon enforces policies to curb illegitimate multiple accounts, sellers may be left confused by these kinds of warnings and suspensions, which often contain vague or even incorrect messaging from Amazon. They may think “this doesn’t concern me… multiple accounts are allowed…” and disregard the notice.
Amazon Will Not Be Ignored
Particularly when no detrimental action has been taken yet, or the reason for the notice is inaccurate and Amazon simply has their facts wrong, it’s easy to blow off an account warning.
But this is the wrong answer. Why? Because if you ignore Amazon’s communication, and continue whatever behavior they have deemed a violation, the assumption will be that the warning was appropriate and so too is a suspension. They won’t “figure out their mistake”… that will simply be the end of your time selling on the platform.
To make matters worse, when the dreaded suspension notice does come through, Amazon’s generic messaging often misleads sellers into filing ineffective appeals, which, as you know from Part 1 of this series, can earn you the silent treatment. When that happens, for all intents and purposes, you’re dead in the water just as if you had never responded to the initial warning at all. You really can get your Amazon account shut down for doing nothing. We see it all the time.
That was the case with our client who was shut down for a multiple accounts violation.
The Back Story
The client came to us in 2020 on recommendation from their law firm. Their Amazon selling account had been shut down, and a business associate had told them to look into hiring a lawyer to help get the account reinstated. The client had been incorrectly advised that hiring a lawyer is the correct approach for an Amazon account reactivation because lawyers “increase the attention”, which is patently untrue.
As you know from Part 1, an Amazon appeal should be a one and done proposition. There is no need to lawyer up. In fact, if you do, it may seem to Amazon that you’re trying to hide something.
One cardinal rule of account appeals: don’t introduce even the tiniest bit of doubt into the situation. The stance of any appeal should be that the warning is incorrect and the appeal should lay out the reasons why, with no drama.
“Lawyers are trained to aggressively defend their position, which is not how you want to deal with Amazon. Instead, Amazon needs to know that you are safe to trust and that you didn’t screw up, or that you didn’t intend to screw up.” Rachel Johnson Greer
It’s Important That You Care
The underlying issue for our client was that an employee, not understanding how Amazon works, created several related accounts using different emails and phone numbers, which is a major issue. It’s highly suspicious; from Amazon’s perspective it appears as if someone is trying to defraud them.
It took us a while to sort out which accounts belonged to whom. The employee had no process to speak of, was highly disorganized and only recorded some details, making it even more confusing. After working everything out, and creating a strategy (that included escalating to Amazon’s Legal department), it took over six months to recover the account. It was above and beyond what any account reinstatement should ever entail.
Amazon expects that you take your business there seriously. Amazon is there to make money, and it wants brands that are there to do the same. It’s never appropriate to expect someone with no process and no ecommerce experience (or training) to grow your business on Amazon. You have to care enough to put a professional foot forward at all times. If you don’t, it’s only a matter of time before you make a major misstep and find yourself sidelined.
Amazon’s Support Is Not Very Supportive
As you might expect Amazon was not happy, and even with escalation, they provided vague guidance throughout the process. This is something important to understand about appeals, that we touched on in Part 1: Your appeal must state what is wrong/what happened and how the issue has been permanently resolved.
Amazon’s Seller Performance teams can’t give you any meaningful advice or guidance, only feedback. If you call Account Health, they can’t actually say “Here is what’s wrong”. Instead, you have to say, “I think this is what’s wrong, let me explain it” and if you’re right, they can then provide you feedback. Even when you pay for extra support, you won’t get it here. In fact, any extra support you’ve been paying for will be removed from your account. So you need to be able to articulate the problem. If you’re unfamiliar with Amazon’s processes, this can be confusing and frustrating.
You Can’t Count On Strategic Support Services
After more than six months of pushing we finally got the account reinstated. From there we took them on as a client to help grow their account from the ground up.
We were doing well, when in December of 2023, an issue arose with a spike in product returns being labeled “defective.” Customer comments were that the battery-operated item stopped working quickly. The problem boiled down to old button batteries.
As you may know, products are often manufactured several months in advance of being sold. And with no protective seal over this product’s button battery, it was possible to activate it at any point on the up-to-years-long journey to the customer’s doorstep. So a fair percentage of them were not lasting as long as they should have, and for good reason.
We provided all the necessary inspection reports, testing data, and defect analysis to get them going again, which should have been a three-day process, tops, but instead it took months for us to resolve the issue.
We requested support from the SAS rep and she talked to multiple internal teams for months, including the compliance manager, and got nowhere until we wrote an escalation and complained over both their heads.
“Paying for internal support at Amazon doesn’t always mean you’ll get the help you really need, and that must be so frustrating for sellers. Particularly because they don’t find that out until it’s too late,” says Rachel.
Need To Reinstate Your Seller Account?
One of the reasons Amazon is so light on support, is that “support” often means sifting through a mountain of information, most of which is not useful, and making easy sense of it.
A hard truth is that at the end of the day, most account issues that result in warnings are warranted; indeed there was an issue somewhere down the line, often there are many issues. So not only do appeals need to be prepared (and often escalated), but first, systemic changes need to be made so the appeals are true.
The amount of effort it takes for us to cull the information into a storyline that makes sense, then break it down further into a one page report that will bring the Seller Performance rep up to speed and yield a “yes” in around 3 minutes, and often still, after all that, have to leverage some inside connection, is too much.
And we’re good at what we do… but we don’t always win. Sometimes, all that time and effort is for nothing.
For this reason, we now only do reinstatements for existing clients. This way, if a suspension or a warning happens, we are already familiar with the brand, its catalog, its marketing, and even its potential for issues on the Amazon platform, for example sexual wellness brands. Amazon is notoriously tough on sexual wellness and adult products.
The higher the potential for your brand to have issues, the more we advise that you work with a qualified agency now, before there are any problems. There are a lot of great reasons for this, but mostly it’s simply because then your agency knows you. When we know you, the mountain of information is a molehill. And in reality a suspension is something that you may never experience when you work hand-in-hand with the right agency because they will know how to steer you clear of risks.
Whether you’re a “high risk” brand, or just trying to reinstate a blocked Amazon account, do yourself a favor and hire a great consultant who can really help you. Like we said in Why You Need An Ecommerce Marketing Agency Help To Grow Your Amazon Brand “If you do hire an agency, (and for most brands it’s a great idea) it’s crucial for you to know what they know, and how they can help you in meaningful ways. There are plenty of consultants and Amazon agencies out there who are calling themselves experts but doing little more than staying one step ahead of their clients.”
You’ll want to find the right consultant the same way you find the right employee: Ask them questions that will help you see what they know, and how they can help you. Find an agency with a history of working with brands with catalogs like yours, and get to know the problems they solve for their clients. If they solve the same kind of problems you have, that’s a green flag. So much of what we do every day is leverage some kind of wisdom we encountered in a different, similar situation. Use an agency’s prior experience to your advantage!
Partner With An Amazon Expert
Working through an Amazon account suspension can be a complex and frustrating experience, especially when it stems from unclear warnings or misunderstandings around multiple accounts.
As we’ve seen in two different cases now, it is imperative that you handle appeals with precision and a clear understanding of Amazon’s expectations.
An incorrect or hasty response can lead to permanent account loss, even when no true violation has occurred. But by partnering with a knowledgeable team that understands how Amazon works, you not only mitigate the risk of suspension but ensure your business is equipped to efficiently resolve any issues that do arise.
Investing in expert help now can save you from the immense headache of reinstating your account later, giving you peace of mind and the confidence to grow your brand on Amazon. Let us know how we can help.
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At Troveres we help brands articulate their story in unique and beautiful ways that utilize strategic, data-informed steps that drive engagement and increase conversion rates. Our content strategy was developed by former Amazonian of eight years Rachel Johnson Greer, who was part of Amazon’s private label team for more than two years, developing and maintaining brands with hundreds of products across dozens of product lines. Click here to download Rachel’s guide to Content Marketing That Converts for free.
