Monitor your account health with new Account Health page features

#21

Yes indeed. Plus blame you for errors they made and massively overreact. Stock of our best-selling ASIN at FBA is currently under investigation because customers have said they received wrong products. It has happened a minuscule percentage of times (less than 0.02% of all units sold) and it’s also the case that Amazon have been responsible for the errors. Two customer comments we could see report receiving items we simply have never stocked. Unfortunately in Amazon’s eyes the seller is always guilty until proven innocent.

#22

hi kris i agree a counterfeit claim could be a critical incident however if your paperwork is in order ie proper invoices for your goods this should quickly go away without to much trouble
i am thinking more of a to z and delivery problems this is not a problem selling fba which makes your account health a little safer than an fbm seller

#23

This is again another of Amazon’s pitfalls.
On several occasions i have submitted Invoices from one of the largest suppliers in my industry to have Amazon respond with “we cannot verify your supplier” even though the same suppler invoices have been used to un-gate brands, and Amazon themselves have an account with my supplier !
They then start asking for suppliers supplier, which no supplier will ever give their business sensitive information away.
How Amazon cannot verify a supplier within literally 20 seconds from submitting the info to receiving the rejection just shows their bots are not up to any form of intelligence.
When you try to speak to a human, you soon find out the bots were more intelligent after all.

#24

sorry about that i know we have had to produce invoices several times without any problem
and the counterfeit claim has disappeared immediately all that im saying is that there are less things
which can potentially affect account health for an fba seller to worry about than an fbm seller that is fact or at least should be

#25

I have had a few over the years myself.
Some have been accepted and some not.
I have 1 on my account right now that is due to drop off in a few weeks time where a customer made a claim of counterfeit because the lid of the bottle was different to the one she had 5 years ago (manufacturer changed bottle design and listing showed correct item with new lid)
Amazon refused to verify my supplier and started demanding suppliers supplier.
My account manager at the supplier company pointed out to me that the exact same product from the same batch code were also supplied to Amazon and they were selling themselves supplied by MY supplier, that they could not verify.
I sent a complaint to MD email and they phoned me and went through the complaint.
They then turned round and said there was nothing they could or would do and that i had to basically suck it up.
IF i had this stock in FBA, Amazon would have confiscated it (and probably added it to their stock) and i would have been out of pocket for the stock that was legitimate and legal, as they would have refused to return it.
This is why i personally would never use FBA, as it only takes one malicious customer to make a complaint and my stock is toast, due to Amazon simply refusing to verify the supplier.
They also refuse to let you know WHY they could not verify your supplier as this is business sensitive information.

#26

yes you have to do what you are comfortable with i can only say it as it is from our point of view
we have never had a problem with invoices and sales are far far higher in my opinion and experience with fba than fbm

#27

I now know this new system inside out as I experienced it on the U.S site and there are a few very important items to note. The first is that if you have any unresolved intellectual property issues each one will carry a 30 point penalty and they vary from ‘high’ to ‘very high’ in their importance.

Every seller starts with 250 points out of 1,000, so if you have 5 unresolved policy violations at the time of the new system, you will be reduced to under 120 points and your account will go into the red and will be deactivated within 14 days if the violations remain unresolved, I know this because my account was deactivated for 2 weeks before the issues were resolved.

The issues with the ‘suspected’ intellectual property issues was that if the listings had been deleted, they could neither be relisted or edited, meaning that the violation remained on the account and could not be removed, or would not be removed until after 180 days, meaning that at the time of the new health system my account was due for deactivation and it was as at that time nothing could be done to remove them.

The good news is that Amazon changed the system and then allowed a seller to remove the policy violations by accepting them, removing the listing and acknowledging that error was made and that the rules concerning intellectual property had been read and there is a new page that allows you to do this next to the policy violation by clicking ‘submit new information’

It maybe that the listings that the violations have been received for were not listings created by the seller and unknown to the seller, but still violated the rules as in my case.

For a while it was a real Catch 22 situation as the listings could not be changed as they had already been de listed and it did not help that seller support had said that if the listings were removed they would not affect the health of the account, but remain on the page for 180 days, which was not the case.

I was able to remove any violation on the page by accepting them and happily my account now has no violations and a score of 380 out of 1,000.

More good news is that for every 100 sales you receive more points that add to your total and if you maintain over 250 points for a 6 month period, Amazon guarantee to not deactivate your account as long as you work with them to resolve any issue within 72 hours.

So for the honest and decent seller this is only good news, but it is best to ensure that your current dashboard is clear of any violations, because if you go into the new system with multiple unresolved violations, your account will be deactivated, however with the new policies introduced shortly after the new health system, it is now possible to remove the violations by accepting them and making sure that there are no others lurking that could cause an issue.

This new system is actually very good and may well weed out a lot of the sellers that we are often complaining about that are flouting rules, it is very simple a unresolved policy violation with a high or very high status is valued at 30 points, so you start with 250, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you have unresolved policy violations then you are going to be in trouble from day one of the new system.

My advice is, check your current health page, remove any policy violations under the new system and you will be ready to go from the start, anyone who is waiting for the 180 days for the violations to be removed, you need to act now and get rid of them from the health page as the day the new system is introduced, your health rating will tank and you will be on the back foot, hope you found this helpful.

#28

very interesting and very helpful thank you

#29

Same here I had a product removed for a counterfeit claim provided the invoice the distributor details and even got the brand owner to send a letter confirming the product I had was authentic the brand owner contacted Amazon on my behalf 16 times over a six month period before it was finally accepted.

#30

I am so happy to see another seller bring this up. I have been fighting and begging what Amazon calls support on this very problem from September 2019 when I first brought it to Amazons attention 8 items needed to be fixed now there is close to 3 thousand in my inventory alone so many of them where a long gone seller put his/her shop name down as the brand name.

#31

My pleasure, I had 3 weeks of hell and no way to resolve it, thankfully Amazon saw the issue and changed the system.

#32

yes it can be very frustrating at times selling on amazon and we have encountered similar problems as to what island boy alludes to in the past

#33

Thankfully there is now a very easy way to remove these where the seller is not to blame and did not create the listings, between U.S and EU I estimate that I spent over 20 hours on the phone to seller support and account health support, none of which could resolve the issue at the time as the only options were to amend the listing or relist it and get permission from the brand owner and as the listing was not created by the seller this was a paradoxical situation that had no remedy.

#34

There is a way to relist the item if my memory serves me correct.
As long as you have the SKU and ASIN of the deleted item, you can put it back in your inventory with a flat file upload.
I had an issue with the merry go round of SS saying nothing they can do etc. but if the ASIN is deleted, it wont affect health and will sit there for 180 days… so i deleted it as advised.
A day later i had another message from SS to say they had applied the update to the ASIN as requested !!
Luckily i had already tried to update the ASIN with a flat file (with no luck) and still had that template on my computer, so i tried uploading the file and hey presto… the ASIN was back in my inventory and could now be updated and relisted with violation gone.
So my advice would be… before deleting an ASIN from your inventory, make a note of the seller SKU and ASIN numbers just in case you need to put it back.

#35

Suspected Intellectual Property Violations are one of the main things that drive me absolutely crazy with the current system. For example:

  1. People can write the same brand name in different ways, e.g Black and Decker, Black & Decker, Black + Decker, and it gets even more problematic when one brand has different product groups, for example Bosch Home and Garden, Bosch Professional Power Tools, Bosch Professional Power Tool Accessories, etc etc. Amazon’s system just sees it as a violation when it doesn’t match what’s on their system, but won’t let you make any changes to it either…?

  2. Sometimes the original seller has obviously just not understood something, e.g they’ve listed a Dewalt Screwdriver Bit Set with the brand name as: Screwdriver. Again, no chance of updating it if you also happen to sell this same product, although any human being would instantly realise the problem just by looking at it.

  3. We’re always careful not to use unrelated protected trademarks in our listings, but it makes no difference if the brand owner has done - for example, we had a constant issue with Bosch sanding discs going up with “Velcro” in the title. I think it’s Bosch themselves putting it in there, but every time it gets our account health marked down, when in fact we’re making every effort to prevent it from happening! Again… Amazon never applies our changes when we try to edit this out.

Catch 22 is exactly what it is. Amazon is telling you it’s your responsibility to change something that is down to an error by the brand owner, or whoever originally listed it; however when you try to edit it, they tell you that only the brand owner can make these changes! It’s an absolute farce. I don’t know why the people in question don’t make these changes - I can only assume they either don’t sell on Amazon any more, have got too many to deal with, or simply don’t care? Hopefully this will all be improved in the near future then. My main concern is that we’ve currently got about 7 intellectual property disputes which are all impossible to resolve due to various reasons mentioned above, and due to them all having been delisted.

#36

Hi, all you need to do is go into to the policy violations and click submit information and a new page will come up with tick boxes, just tick the boxes and they will go away, that is the new system, so you can start the new AHS with a clean sheet, otherwise each one is going to be 30 points and you only start with 250, so the account will be in the red zone for deactivation.

#37

Also make sure that you have deleted the listings from the inventory.

#38

Uk states 4 points per 200 orders over 180 days so it seems slightly different here
Although I note it states ’ successful orders that you fulfilled’ so may only apply to fbm ?!

#39

You know what that notice will invite?

#40

Many thanks for the info! that’s really useful to know - I’ll see how we get on…