Account Suspension - 'Inauthentic' Items
Hi all,
Have recently started selling on Amazon, and have quickly had our account suspended, with the following message from Amazon:
Your Amazon Seller account has been temporarily deactivated and your listings have been removed. Funds will not be transferred to you but will be held in your account while we work with you to address the following concern(s).
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Why is this happening?
In accordance with Section 3 of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement, your account has been deactivated because you are offering items that may be inauthentic. A list of these items is provided at the end of this email.
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_In order to ensure that customers can shop with confidence on Amazon, we routinely request additional documentation from sellers to verify their account information and confirm authenticity of certain items. _
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How do I reactivate my account?
To reactivate your selling account, please send us the following information:
– Copies of invoices, receipts, contracts, delivery orders, or authorization letters from your supplier issued in the last 365 days. The quantity of items shown should match your inventory.
– If you are not the brand owner, provide an authorization letter and a complete set of documentation, including authorization letters, to prove a valid supply chain.
– If you are the brand owner, provide a copy of the brand registration certificate, and business license or personal identity card.
– Contact information for your supplier, including name, phone number, address, email, and website.
We quickly replied providing all the relevant invoices from our suppliers, and very clearly explaining our supply chain position. Needless to say, we have never sold an inauthentic item.
We then had a copy/paste reply from Amazon, stating:
We received your submission but do not have enough information to reactivate your ability to sell on Amazon at this time. Please address the following concern(s):
_ You are offering items that may be inauthentic. A list of these items is provided below._
We made a further submission, attempting to further clarify our position and again attaching invoices for the ASINs in question. Yesterday we received the following reply:
_Your Amazon Seller account has been deactivated and your listings have been removed because you have not sent us acceptable information to address the concern(s) with your Amazon selling account. Please ship any open orders. Funds will not be transferred to you but will be held in your account while we work with you to address this issue. _
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Why is this happening?
Your Amazon seller account has been deactivated in accordance with section 3 of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement. We previously emailed you to request additional information that we needed to verify the authenticity of your products, and we did not receive a sufficient response to reactivate your Amazon selling account.
This message invites us to “submit the product authenticity information by clicking the Appeal button next to this message” - but I’m not clear what more information Amazon require.
Having read around these forums, I’m wondering if the invoices from our suppliers are insufficient on their own, and in fact Amazon is also looking for documentation from the brand themselves confirming we have permission to sell the product on Amazon.
If we are unable to supply this, is there any hope for us? I note that lots of sellers submit a Plan of Action, which we’d be happy to do, but Amazon has never requested this from us, whereas I notice with other cases they have.
Any advice would be gratefully received.
11 replies
Seller_cDarHnP6PRJ0v
Hello @Menico_Store,
As per the information provided I understand that you want some advice on how to activate your account.
In the post I can see the performance team is only asking for the invoice of the ASIN hence you have to send the invoices only and not the Plan Of Action.
To activate your account make sure you provide invoices of the given ASIN with the below mentioned details:
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Invoices must be procured within last 365 days.
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Invoices should be prior to the date which you have received the warning in the Account Health.
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Quantity in invoices must reflect the sales volume on Amazon.
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Invoices should have the supplier details and your details.
If the invoice which you have send to the performance team and the same have already been rejected. You need to check with your supplier as to what is the problem with those invoices?
You can send a Plan of Action and it should be very strong in order to get your account reactivated.
Root Cause - Did you have the approval to list the brands/products that were flagged? Do you have the invoices, authorization letter or brand approval certificate to sell them? If you do not have the approval, provide the reason because of which you have listed the product.
Corrective Measure - What measure did you take after receiving those complaints? What have you done with the asins?
Preventive Measure - What is the process you will follow while sourcing and listing branded items? What proactive steps will you take to ensure items are sourced from reliable suppliers?
Please the send the necessary documents so that the team can review the same and help you.
Good Luck,
Dhoni
Seller_UDqz0Jc0Yg39U
Hi Dhoni,
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to me.
The difficulty we’re having is that we have already submitted our invoices for the requested ASINs. Initially there were three ASINs referenced in the suspension notice, and we submitted four separate order confirmations from our supplier, covering our stock of these ASINs. I’ve attached an example here (with some personal details redacted):
In the most recent communication from the performance team, they only reference two ASINs. So I assume they were happy with the evidence we had supplied for one of the ASINs. We don’t understand why the evidence we have supplied is insufficient for the other two ASINs, and the reply from the performance team doesn’t give any explanation, simply stating “you have not sent us acceptable information to address the concern(s) with your Amazon selling account.”
Is there any way of finding out what was wrong with the order confirmations we supplied? Or if not, what should we do to get our account reinstated?
Many thanks again for your help.
Seller_dka8slYhgeNJ2
The issue I have with those that state retail arbitrage is not selling new items is that we have Amazon employees at conferences stating on video that they do not have an issue with retail arbitrage as long as the receipts state the item clearly. On the one hand your encouraged to use retail arbitrage and then on the other your penalised for it.
The above responses may be technically correct however I am not sure there is a specific rule banning it. If there was clarity I am sure it would help many of us.
Seller_ytkwHC6VvUrhW
Retail arbitrage is a land mine to deal with, avoid.
Its easy to get suspended if you go down that route.
