Hello

ASIN B001E5CF4E

I received a parallel export warning from the product. I bought the product from amazoncom. After I put the product on sale in my UK store, I received a parele export warning and my list was closed. When I examined the product, I saw that it did not have brand approval in the UK, and that it did not have an authorized distributor or online store in the UK. I sent my invoice to Amazon and a screenshot showing that the product was not brand approved in the UK, and therefore I stated that this was not an illegal parallel export and that it was not against Amazon policies. But each time I received automatic answers that I had not submitted the requested documents. Can you help with this?

@Ange_Amazon

HI we want to ask how you handle with parallel import situation?

This was originally a reply to a forum post by @Seller_z3k8APxGfbQEK@Seller_DNQGSsdC7DccM. I decided to post it separately as this will soon become a serious issue. I'm hoping Amazon will be proactive to keep honest sellers' businesses getting damaged by ill intended people/sellers.

TLDR: fraudsters find small US brands and fraudulently apply for UK trademark (fake ownership documents +170GBP), then kick other sellers off the listing via "parallel import violation".

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Hi Julia,

Sorry for replying so late.

The trademark itself is a fraudulent application. If you check the address on the UK UPO website, it shows up as a company "Mint Formations Ltd", which is a business that forms UK Ltd companies. Also the company owner (public info) owns 10+ other UK Ltd companies, all classified as "Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet" businesses. I am pretty sure all the other companies have or had Amazon Seller accounts which were suspended/banned, or simply exist to illegally evade HMRC VAT (keep annual turnover below 85,000 GBP and switch owner of Amazon account to the new LTD)

I can go on about the illegal and fraudulent behavior of such sellers from abroad. This IP claim is one of those. Sellers such as these find small US based companies who are not active in the UK and fraudulently file for IP to the UK (fake ownership documents + 170 GBP filing fee), so they can sell the products on amazon.co.uk exclusively. There are "courses" being sold by "amazon gurus" that show them step by step how to do this. This is also how I know such an organized crime gang exists.

Such US companies do not even have any idea about having UK trademarks.

This is a serious issue that is hurting our account (we received yet another parallel import violation today, ASIN B0001LE1VC). If you look at the account that is now exclusively selling this item - which by the way sells 400+/month- is of course a brand new account with 0 reviews and only 1 product for sale. No brand owner would give such an amazon account exclusive rights, let alone letting them hold the trademark to their brand.

Amazon needs to take this issue seriously, as these cases are going to increase -because these "gurus" are selling "courses" showing them the way.

Let me know if you need any further details on this issue. It will hurt resellers like us as long as these types of mischievous and fraudulent people are allowed to carry out their actions on Amazon.