No mistakes allowed?
Amazon’s new reinstatement SOPs (standard operating procedures) turn the e-commerce giant’s decades-long second-chance ethos on its head. Why is this happening, and what does it mean for third-party sellers?
Amazon is hurting sellers and breaking an explicit promise it made to sellers. This is already resulting in unfairly blocked seller accounts and ASINs. Is this an experiment that Amazon will correct, like so many of its other misguided Seller Performance initiatives? Or is Amazon truly weeding out sellers, one-by-one, with over-enforcement?
Since January, Seller Performance has changed the workflow for some account and ASIN suspension types. Instead of asking for an appeal or Plan of Action, Seller Performance is demanding proof that the seller never broke the rules.
That may sound reasonable to the uninitiated. But as someone who helps sellers comply with Amazon’s rules for a living, let me assure you – it is not.
The good news? Riverbend Consulting has developed strategies to combat unfair enforcements that hurt Amazon sellers. But first it helps to understand what is going on, and why.
The land of second chances
When Amazon welcomed third-party sellers onto the platform in 2000, the expectation was not perfection. The company realized that a few different things could be true at one:
- It is important to have an enforcement and risk management department that oversees sellers’ performance.
- Sellers must be held accountable if they do not live up to the rules.
- If sellers break the rules, they may see punishment in the form of warnings, restrictions on privileges, account suspensions or permanent account blocks.
- Amazon’s rulebook is extensive and complicated. Even veteran sellers may not understand all the rules. How to manage variations and bundles are perfect examples. Even Amazon’s internal teams don’t all agree on those.
- Everyone makes mistakes. It’s easy to mess up a listing, forget to ship a package, or need to cancel an order. In a large seller account, team members or virtual assistants are necessary but may make errors.
Because of this, Amazon has a 24-year track record of second chances for sellers.
When a seller breaks a rule – whether intentionally or unintentionally – the seller almost always has an opportunity to appeal and ask for another chance. Historically, this has come in the form of a Plan of Action that explains:
– The root cause of the violation
– Immediate actions the seller took to cure the violation
– Steps taken to ensure the rules are not broken again
Over the span of more than a decade, I’ve helped sellers formulate appeals. I’ve seen second, third and even fourth chances for sellers grappling to build a business on Amazon. And yes, I’ve even seen second chances for huge, damaging errors. These have included:
- Restricted products
- Counterfeit inventory
- Platform manipulation
- Forged and manipulated documents
- Detail page abuse
- Variation abuse
- And more!
Does it sound risky to allow a rule-breaking seller back on the platform? That’s why Amazon has a risk management and enforcement department called Seller Performance. These folks calculate which sellers deserve additional chances and which do not. And I know plenty of high-quality, honest sellers who were suspended, reinstated, and never ran afoul of policy again.
Put simply, perfection has never been the Amazon standard. Until now. So, why is Amazon hurting sellers in this way?
Dispute the enforcement, lie, or give up?
During the last few months, we at Riverbend Consulting have been seeing new workflows rolled out by Seller Performance for various appeal types – both account-level and ASIN-level. As mentioned above, past appeals typically ask for the cause of the error, the actions a seller has taken to solve the error, and actions to prevent future errors. Additional asks might have included invoices, letters of authorization, business and personal identity documents, or even a video verification call.
Now, this has flipped to one ridiculous question: Explain how you didn’t break the rules. Amazon calls this a “dispute only” appeal.
In other words, Amazon is asking sellers to explain how Amazon messed up in its enforcements against them. From experience, I can tell you one thing for sure. Amazon doesn’t like to admit when it makes enforcement mistakes. At Riverbend, we call these false positives. And like most negatives, they are incredibly difficult to prove.
Regardless of how well a seller can prove Amazon was wrong, Amazon workers don’t tend to believe it. They believe Amazon’s technology, even when it is ridiculous. For example, Amazon’s technology may report that a Vitamin D supplement has cocaine in it. You’d be amazed how difficult it is to get front-line Seller Performance to admit that just isn’t true.
Unfortunately, this new enforcement regime puts average sellers in a really bad position if they actually did the bad thing. They can lie and dispute the charges laid against them. Or they can give up. What other choice do they have?
When sellers submit traditional appeals – like those Amazon has accepted for 24 years – Seller Performance tells them that only disputes will be accepted. Imagine these very real scenarios Riverbend has seen with our clients:
- A seller has offered an ASIN for many years. It is a supplement that had medical claims that should not have been included on the ASIN detail page, though they are not horrendous. For example, the claims may be something like “helps manage high blood sugar” or “assists with wound healing.” Amazon suspends the product for “restricted products,” and the seller promises to remove the claims. But Amazon only allows the seller to dispute and say they didn’t break the rules. So, the ASIN can never be reinstated.
- A seller creates three variation families that don’t follow the rules and gets suspended. The seller genuinely made a mistake and did not understand the policy. Amazon only allows a dispute-only appeal. Therefore, since the seller did break the rules, they will never be reinstated.
We’ve seen dozens of scenarios but the current focus is on Restricted Products. They are the biggest target area for dispute-only actions. Whether intentional or not, Amazon is hurting sellers. If you can’t prove you were in compliance with the rules all along, what happens? Your ASIN is dead, or your account is blocked. Forever.
What about false positives?
Since Amazon allows dispute-only appeals, you’d think that sellers taken down by false positives would be covered.
Nope, that’s not the case. Why? Because sometimes false positives mean that Amazon is enforcing the wrong thing – or something entirely irrelevant. Here’s an example. A client had multiple ASINs suspended because of an abusive trademark complaint. Another seller claimed that our client violated its trademark, when they most absolutely did not. Amazon gave the seller two options:
- Acknowledge they violated the trademark; or
- Provide a Letter of Agreement, invoice, order ID or trademark from the “rights owner”
Since my client did not violate the trademark, they could not appeal in this workflow. The did not acknowledge the violation. And they could not provide invoices or an LOA for a brand they were not selling.
So even if a seller did nothing wrong and wishes to “dispute,” there may not be a way to do so in this new workflow.
Selling isn’t that simple – and what about fairness?
Selling on Amazon is complex. There are hundreds of standards and rules.
Checkboxes are not an adequate tool for managing risk and enforcing policy violations. But if a seller needs to explain their situation, Amazon, too often, ignores it. They only focus on wanting “proof” that the seller never broke rules in the first place.
And that brings us back to the concept of fairness. Take a walk back through recent history. It’s 2019. The State of California’s legislature is considering AB-1790, a bill purported to protect sellers from abusive online marketplaces.
In response, Amazon rolled out changes to the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement, also known as Terms of Service or TOS, for sellers. Amazon promised to explain suspensions, including the reason for termination. Amazon also implied it would give a 30-day notice before terminating “use of services.” Eventually, this morphed into Amazon’s Account Health Assurance program, which promises to not suspend an account immediately. Instead, Seller Performance is to “work with” sellers to prevent suspension.
So, how’s that working out for everyone? Sellers with Account Health Assurance and perfect Account Health Ratings have been suspended immediately. There have been fewer 72-hour notices and invitations for pre-emptive appeals. Instead, sellers are deactivated and put in the position of appealing while behind the eight-ball. It’s a no-brainer, Amazon is hurting sellers in a big way.
Again, this goes against Amazon’s promise to treat sellers fairly, explain what rules were broken, and allow for a fair appeals process—a promise made by Amazon when it faced potential legislation by the state of California. Yes, Amazon gave itself plenty of caveats and “outs.” But why the sudden move away from fairness, pre-emptive appeals, advanced notice and Plans of Action? This dispute-only model doesn’t benefit anyone – not even Amazon. During a time when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is already actively investigating and prosecuting Amazon, how is this a good idea?
Talking about the FTC brings up another thought. What if this is just an example of bad stuff rolling downhill? Several government agencies are all over Amazon right now, including the FTC, the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and more. Does Amazon believe that stomping on sellers – usually smaller sellers – will protect it from more regulatory scrutiny? If so, that’s a heck of a strategy to embrace, and one that will only garner more fear and resentment from sellers that provide broad selection and innovative products for the Amazon catalog.
Is there any good news?
There’s no doubt that Amazon is hurting sellers. I do have one bit of good news for sellers stuck in an appeal-only conundrum. Riverbend has found a way to overcome many of these suspensions. Outside of Seller Performance, there are Amazonians who agree that this approach to enforcement is not a good thing. We have been escalating to those teams and executives for help – and it’s working.
If you’re a seller stuck in one of these conundrums? Reach out to Riverbend. We can help.
Seller Account Health. Solved.
