Amazon Account Suspensions with Joshua Price - a podcast by Michael Veazey

Amazon account suspensions create numerous headaches and affect a lot of businesses around the world. Find out what Amazon Account Suspensions Expert Joshua Price has to say on today's episode.

Are you at risk of Amazon Account Suspension?

If you think you might be suspended, you could use the “Suspension calculator” on Joshua’s site





Joshua’s Background

Working with Amazon for about 6 years 



Worked on suspensions for 4 years.  

Suspensions

Likelihood of suspensions

Almost everyone has experienced an amazon account suspension at some point. Especially if you get rapid growth. 

Listing suspensions are also common 

They are more prevalent than account suspensions. Also, Amazon will normally block a listing before suspending accounts. 

How long do suspensions last? 

They vary a lot - may be forever; Or it might be back in a day!

Downsides



You stop receiving money from Amazon - could be in the hundreds of thousands.

You’ll usually get the money back after 90 days, deducting A-Z claims and refunds assuming you have a suspension type that allows that.

However, Amazon may hold the money indefinitely!



What are the risk factors in account suspension?

The most common one is about performance, account health and metrics. 



Amazon sets the numbers and you can monitor those. 



The second one is the policy violations --There are over a hundred pages of regulations!



The detail pages might be wrong, there might be a misuse of variations or IP infringement. 



The third kind you might want to stay away from: related accounts, code of conduct, black hat stuff. 

What are related accounts?

Amazon policy only allows one account per business. 



If you have another business you can ask for another account. 



If you open a new account, Amazon is likely able to link that to you. 

Clampdown on conduct related things

In the last two weeks, Joshua has seen a lot of Amazon account suspensions, even for grey hat techniques. 



If you’re close to the grey area, at the moment. 

Do these things really go through waves?

It appears that way - but they don’t really. There are millions of sellers and there are constant changes by Amazon. 



We all end up with seller friends in that situation which can skew our view. 



Sometimes Amazon clamps down on things that become very public. 



E.g. counterfeit goods a few years.  

What are policy violations?

Commonest is Selling “inauthentic items” 

It’s very common to get a product listing blocked. It doesn’t have to be exclusively counterfeit. 



It could be that a customer has complained about the ASIN - or the brand. 



Amazon does operate in separate companies between North America and Europe. They have an Asian department for other marketplaces. 



They have separate teams and databases - It’s very rare to have something transfer across from Europe to North America. 



If you’re having issues with a product in the USA,  e.g. IP, that doesn’t mean it’s not okay in UK.



So one of the best things you can do is to get stock out of the problematic marketplace. 

IP complaints

They are quite a common thing. A lot of sellers will run into issues. 



It’s a complex part of product sourcing and selling. 



Some sellers have products more likely to run into that than others. 



Even products purchased from Alibaba may have patents on them. 

Listing things in the wrong category

For example, adult products in other categories.



If you’re using flat files,

Further episodes of Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Woocommerce business owners, and other e-commerce sellers and digital entrepreneurs.

Further podcasts by Michael Veazey

Website of Michael Veazey