The impossible task of registering an account

#1

According to the various pages on the seller hub, my individual seller account has either been deactivated or suspended but there is no information on how to resolve this.

When setting up my account I was instructed to allow sales in a range of countries, even though I have no intention of selling my product outside of the UK. Some of these just didn’t accept standard UK cards (Germany, for example), although I don’t wish to sell in Germany.

I have a small business but I can’t see that my business (registered with Companies House and HMRC, etc) would be eligible for an Amazon account as we have neither a credit or debit card attached to our bank account (as there is no need for this). So presumably I can’t have a business account through this.

I am at a complete loss as to how to proceed and I’m looking for how I might resolve this.

#2

You don’t need a business credit card on your account - you can use a personal card. But you will need to validate it on every site

You will need to add your Ltd company bank account though as your deposit method

What is an issue though is this

An individual seller account is a private account for selling off your own used personal items

As you are a business registered with hmrc, you need a business seller account

#3

So presumably you are a limited company ?
Amazon will need to have your various documents uploaded to open a Business Seller Account, as Little_Shop has said, not Individual Account.
As for the various countries, you just need to ensure that holiday settings are on for each one of them so you don’t get any orders from overseas.

#4

I am the author of the book and have five copies allocated to me. My intention was to sell these first as an individual account and if that is successful then open a business account (I am a director of the publishing company) and sell through the company. £25 per month is a lot of money to pay if there’s no interest on here.

#5

There is no cost for a business account
The £25 is for the professional selling plan - like a subscription

If you are a ltd company you must register as a business for your legal entity
But you can choose the individual selling plan - the subscription

#6

I am confused by this. I studied several ‘official’ videos and there was no mention of this being a possibility. So do I scrap my account under this name and set up a separate account under the business name but as an individual account? The whole process is very stressful and it seems to be impossible to get any proper information.

#7

On amazons own seller university ?

Do not close your account and start again - it will cause more issues

All you need to do is contact amazon seller support and tell them you need to change your legal entity to a ltd company

Then you upload your articles of association and shareholder details etc

#8

I can’t see any way of doing this. The messages I am getting say I can only discuss my ‘Account Health’ and the only way to do this appears to be by asking questions here. My account is either suspended or deactivated depending on which screen I look at.

#9

In that case the first job is to get it approved as an individual account which means adding your credit card to all the sites
Presumably you’d need to add a personal bank account too at this stage for verification and then once you are up an running - but before you list any stock - you request the change of legal entity and upload your CH docs and change to your ltd company bank. Which unfortunately will restart the verification process

Was it amazon seller university pages you looked at ?

#10

I was directed (via Google) to a film on You Tube where the presenter basically stated they were an official Amazon representative.

I’ve already up-loaded my details to the Amazon account but for some reason Germany didn’t accept my credit card. I have another credit card but its an online account so I can’t see that can be verified. Why does it have to be a credit card and not a debit card? Also I now seem to have an even longer list of countries to register for: Singapore, USA, etc which I definitely have no plans to sell in. Its a real nightmare for me. Is there a real person its possible to speak to?

#11

Sounds like you’ve signed up for a global account

#12

I only want to sell in the UK. Is it possible to change it to a more appropriate account?

#13

You need to downgrade the other sites to the individual selling plan but you can’t close or delete the EU ones as they are linked to the UK account

#14

Just to clarify, as we know that Amazon’s sign up page is very misleading and does not explain things clearly.
There are two seller account types - the legal entity:
Business Seller Account - where you need to be registered with HMRC as sole-trader/limited company/partnership and provide Amazon with either your UTR or CH documents - to sell for profit.
Individual Seller Account - ONLY for selling ones own personal used items eg.books/DVDs/CDs etc., and not new items.
Then there are two selling plans:
Professiona Plan - where you pay a £30 a month fee, and there are some perks, eg. you can set your own shipping charge and have access to various reports.
Individual Plan - (yes, ridiculously the same name and this is where much confusion lies with new sellers !) - no monthly fee, but you pay an extra 90p per sale, so if selling less than about 33/34 items a month is cheaper than the monthly fee, but you have to use Amazon’s default shipping charge for customers, which is £2.80 for books.

Do not rely on YouTube videos - they are often outdated, do not go into all the potential pitfalls and some of their ‘official Amazon representatives’ are nothing of the sort !!!.
Amazon has their own Seller University where everything is explained - go to ‘Learn’ on your seller dashboard.

#15

I was hoping you had that copied and pasted from somewhere Jilly :grinning:

#16

You are being very helpful and I’m not yet ready to give up. I’ll have another look tomorrow. Thank you

#17

Some of us do have debit cards on our accounts but there have been reports that they require credit cards and that’s what it states on help pages
it’s always worth trying a debit card

#18

Hello @Soccerhistorian ,

Thank you so much for posting your post here.

We are here, to help you in addressing your issues.

From your post, we understand that you need help with reactivation of your selling account.

We would like to help you with more information, Could you please share the first performance notification that was sent when your account was deactivated?

You can find the detailed information by following the below pathway:

Seller central > Performance Tab > Performance notifications

This will give us more clarity on the problem so we can help you better.

For any further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us as I and the forum community are always here to assist you.

Regards,

Mary.

#19

I’m going to try and open this again. According to Performance Notifications, my account was deactivated on 19 September 2022. I tried to reopen it but then received a lengthy message which was hard to match to my circumstances.

I registered the account in my personal name. However, I need to change this to the name of my business (which has been registered with HMRC for many years), with the account as a Business Seller Account in the name of the company and using (initially) an Individual Selling Plan. if this is a success I will then switch to a Professional Plan. I have uploaded my personal details (I am a director of the company) onto the portal, not the company details. I want to keep the store name as I use this to sell in other market places.

The main product which I want to sell is a book, which is published by the company with myself and the other director as authors. Presumably, if I ever reach that stage, there should be no issues verifying the product (we have an ISBN number).

However, i can’t see a way of changing the account from my individual name to the business name, which I would assume is the starting point.

Any help would be much appreciated, thank you in advance.

#20

Still looking for help with this