Misusing variation-need help
Hi all,
We got a warning from Amazon because of misusing variation, we deleted all the variation and submit POA on the same day, but our account still inactive after we submit POA.
We have submitted POA about 7 times, and we only got a message from Amazon shows
‘‘After received your information, we decided you may not sell on Amazon.’’
Now Amazon responds nothing to us.
We don’t know what’s wrong about POA, we contacted with seller support for help, they told us the prevention plan is not strong enough. However, after we revised that part and submit again, Amazon didn’t reply anything so far, but we can still submit POA or other documents.
Can anyone give us advice or how to reactive the account?
We are stressed because our account suspended for about three weeks.
But it’s wired that our product still selling on Amazon UK, but the seller becomes Amazon.
Thanks for the help and advice!
Kozygear Europe
6 replies
Seller_VaJgSkghHtwc5
First of all, you need to recognize this is a mistake. You feel so sorry for disrupting Amazon’s shopping catalog, and adversely affects the buyer’s shopping experience.
Reason Part:
you need to read the Variation Policies on Amazon one by one. And then list each Variation Policy on your analysis title and show your reason why you violated the policies one by one. This is very important. It’s just like writing a note after reading books.
Action Part:
what you have done after it happened, tell the truth.
Plan/ Prevention Part:
List each Violation Policy again, and say your plans one by one according to the reasons mentioned above as thorough as possible.
At last, show your attitude, let Amazon related team feel that you really want to be a good seller on Amazon and offer better service.
Good luck
Seller_IwweoP9xXVR2P
Hello @Kozygear_Europe,
As per the information provided I understand that you want suggestion as to how you can activate your account.
Its a good thing you have already deleted those asin where you were violating amazon policies for variation. Variations (also known as parent-child relationships) are sets of products that are related to one another. If the parent and the child are different then it will be considered as a variation violation.
For an example of a variation violation: A mobile phone charging cable and a portable charger, while related, are not the same product and should not be listed on the same detail page.
Click on the link below to see the Variation Help page:
https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/gp/help/G8831
Since you have sent so many action plan which was rejected that is the reason you are not getting a reply from Amazon and when that happens you will also get notified from the performance team that they will not reply to your further emails. Incase you have received an email from the team that they might not respond to your emails then you will only receive a response once required documents have been accepted.
To activate your account you have to write a strong action plan, below are some point which will help you to construct the same:
Root Cause - What was the reason the asin were listed in a variation incorrectly? What process do you use when listing your items? Do you understand the reason of the variation violation?
Corrective Measure - Like @Sheland mentioned What have you done after you have received the warning? How did you fix the issue?
Preventive Measure - What will you do to ensure that you are adhering to Amazon policies? What proactive steps will you take to ensure your offers adhere to our policies before you list them on Amazon? How will you ensure Amazon that the same thing will not happen in the near future? (Give the whole details as to what research do you do before listing a product?)
Make sure you implement the changes before providing the Plan of action.
Thanks
Elena
Seller_fjUzZOHEpWtJT
Hi guys,
After submit plan of action, still no respond so far.
But I can still submit new plan of action, don’t know what’s wrong with it.
Here’s plan of action version 1:
To Amazon UK Seller Performance Team,
We resubmit our appeal information to provide more clarity and detail on the changes we have made over the last few days.
We understand what we did was a violation of Amazon’s variation policy, and we are very sorry. Please kindly check our plan of action below, we have studied Amazon’s variation policy and listed the root cause, what we did after received warning and action plan to prevent we will never against Amazon’s any policy happen again.
THE ROOT CAUSE(S) OF THE VARIATION POLICY VIOLATION:
The reason for ASIN was listed in a variation incorrectly: We created these variations based on the product’s function, we combined child ASIN with the same function for a variation.
- B07D284B1L, B07Q5X177X: External enclosure for 2.5 inch HDD.
- B0827GH6YX, B0824ZW75T, B0824ZMV2M, B0824YNJGM: External enclosure for SSD M.2 NVME.
- B07MXV2JTZ, B07MSHM5H7, B0827KFH49: External enclosure fit SSD M.2 NGFF.
The process we use when listing our items before we received the warning:
- Choose child ASIN with the same function.
- Confirm child ASINs are in the same catalogue.
- Download inventory file template
- Upload inventory file template to create a variation.
After received the warning, we studied Amazon’s variation policy very carefully to find out the reason for the variation violation:
*Variation Relationship Overview
*About Parent-child Relationship
*Inventory file templates
After we studied all these policies, we analyzed the reason for the variation violation as below,
- The product should fundamentally the same.
Violation reason: The child ASINs of misusing variation aren’t fundamentally the same.
- The product should vary only in a few specific ways.
Violation reason: The misusing variation was based on function but different design and physical appearance. We against the policy ‘’Inventory file template’’: The catalog ’’computer & Accessories’’ variations allow customers to choose the desired colour and size of the product from a single detail page.
- Would customers expect to find these products together on a single product detail page?
Violation reason: The misusing variation with different design child ASIN, it would make customers confused on a single product detail page.
- All products should share the same title.
Violation reason: The child ASINs are fundamentally the same, but with different design and material, child and parent ASIN could not share the same title.
THE ACTIONS YOU HAVE TAKEN TO RESOLVE THE MULTIPLE MISUSED VARIATION ON YOUR ACCOUNT:
- All listing specialists study Amazon’s variation policy, analyze why we violated the policy and the reason for the violation, found how to fix this issue.
- Separated incorrect child ASIN.
- Deleted parent ASIN.
- Checked all the listings and variations, all non-genuine variants have been removed from their parent. Delete the parent ASIN which against Amazon’s policy, to make sure all the listing follows Amazon’s variation policy.
THE STEPS YOU HAVE TAKEN TO PREVENT THE MISUSE OF VARIATIONS GOING FORWARD:
After received the warning and fix all issues, we studied the following variation policy again:
- Variation relationships overview
- About parent-child relationships
- Product page style guides
- Inventory File template
- Use check my file features.
We lay down standard operating procedures of creating and upload the variation to make sure our offers adhere to Amazon’s policy before we list them on Amazon, and we will never misusing variation in the future.
- According to ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’: Follow the recommendation in the ‘’product page style guides’’ when determine the variation attributes to use for each child ASIN.
What we will do: Check and confirm the catalogue of child ASIN, make sure child ASIN can be created for a variation.
- According to ‘’, Product Page Style Guide’’ and ‘’Inventory file template’’: The catalogue ‘’Computer & Accessories’’ variations allow customers to choose the desired colour and size of the product from a single detail page.
What we will do: We sale external enclosure for HDD SDD, so we will check and confirm every child ASIN is belonged to ‘’Computer & Accessories’’, ensure child ASINs are only with different colour or size. We will make sure all child ASIN and variation follow this rule.
- According to ‘’Variation Relationship Overview’’ and ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’: The following questions can help you to determine whether certain products are valid variations:
Are the products fundamentally the same?
Do the products vary only in a few specific ways?
Would customers expect to find these products together on a single product detail page?
Could the products share the same title?
What we will do: Check and confirm all child ASINs must fundamentally same,
same function, same design, same logo, the same material, and same physical appearance; Child ASIN varies only in colour and size; child and parent ASIN could share the same title; Make sure child ASINs are the same product, only display different colour or size for customers choose and purchase.
- According to ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’: Fully describe each child ASIN and include data for all the variation attributes of the parent ASIN.
What we will do: When we list child ASIN, we will fully describe each child ASIN include title, bullet point, description, UPC code, part number, SKU…etc. Parent and child ASIN use the same title. We use only SKUs for building relationships, and we won’t include price and quantity values for parent products.
- According to ‘’Use the Check my file’’: This feature detects errors in the file, and adds information and formatting that allows you to identify items that have triggered errors and warnings.
What we will do: Upload inventory file template to ‘’Check my file’’ before creating or updating our listings in the Amazon catalogue, correct the errors and warnings in this same file, and then upload the corrected file to create or update our listings on Amazon. We will make sure every variation and listing is correct before create or upload it.
CONCLUSION:
After receiving the warning, we realize that we made a very big mistake. Because of our negligence, we didn’t spend enough time to study and understand the guidance of the creation of variants in detail, we violated Amazon’s variation policy, disrupted Amazon’s shopping catalog and adversely affects the buyer’s shopping experience, we are deeply sorry and we very regret about this mistake.
Now our listing specialist and marketing teem attend the weekly meeting to check back and update the newest Amazon’s policy.
We put the variation creation of standard operating procedure as above to our New Employee Training SOP to make sure our listing specialist follows Amazon’s policy.
We promise we will check every detail of Amazon’s policy and make sure we are adhering to Amazon policies before uploading any variation or any listing. And we will never let the same error happen again in the future.
Thanks for your review and support.
Best regards,
Kozygear Europe
Seller_fjUzZOHEpWtJT
Hi guys,
I have submitted another version yesterday, but still no response.
To tell the truth, I have studied all variation policies to find out the root cause, and my supervisor also studied policies, we list some ways to prevent violation in the future.
We try our best to understand every part of the policy, but we feel helpless about no respond from Amazon.
Plan of action(version 2)
To Amazon UK Seller Performance Team,
We understand what we did was a violation of Amazon’s variation policy.
We are very sorry to disrupted Amazon’s shopping catalog and adversely affect the buyer’s shopping experience.
We promise we will check every detail of Amazon’s policy and make sure we are totally adhering to Amazon’s policies before uploading any variation or any listing. And we will never let the same error happen again in the future.
We have submitted the plan of action several times, we know maybe our plan of action is not strong enough. Therefore, we studied each Amazon UK variation policies on the help page, find out the root causes of misusing variation, fix the issue, list the plan to prevent any possibility of against Amazon’s policy in the future.
THE ROOT CAUSE(S) OF THE VARIATION POLICY VIOLATION
*Account suspends reason: Misused ASIN variations repeatedly or impacted customer trust through the usage of incorrect variations
*The reason for ASIN was listed in a variation incorrectly: We only combined child ASIN with the same function for a variation.
*The process we use when listing our items before we received the warning:
- Choose child ASIN with the same function.
- Download inventory file template
- Upload inventory file template to create a variation.
We studied Amazon’s variation policy very carefully to find out the reason for the variation violation:
- Variation Relationship Overview
- About Parent-child Relationship
- Inventory file templates
After we studied all these policies, we analyzed the reason for the variation violation as below,
- The child ASINs of misusing variation aren’t fundamentally the same.
- The misusing variation was based on function but different design and physical appearance. We against the policy ‘’Inventory file template’’: The catalog ’’computer & Accessories’’ variations allow customers to choose the desired colour and size of the product from a single detail page
- The misusing variation with different design child ASIN, it would make customers confused on a single product detail page.
- The child ASINs are with different design and material, child and parent ASIN could not share the same title.
THE ACTIONS YOU HAVE TAKEN TO RESOLVE THE MULTIPLE MISUSED VARIATION ON YOUR ACCOUNT
- All listing specialists study Amazon’s variation policy, analyze why we violated the policy and the reason for the violation and found how to fix this issue.
- Separated incorrect child ASIN.
- Deleted parent ASIN.
- Checked all the listings and variations, all non-genuine variants have been removed from their parent. Delete the parent ASIN which against Amazon’s policy, to make sure all the listing follows Amazon’s variation policy.
THE STEPS YOU HAVE TAKEN TO PREVENT THE MISUSE OF VARIATIONS GOING FORWARD:
After received the warning and fix all issues, we studied the following variation policy again:
- Variation relationships overview
- About parent-child relationships
- Product page style guides
- Inventory File template
- Use check my file features.
We lay down standard operating procedures of creating and upload the variation to make sure our offers adhere to Amazon’s policy before we list them on Amazon, and we will never misusing variation in the future.
-
According to ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’, we check and confirm the catalogue of child ASIN, make sure child ASIN can be created for a variation.
-
According to ‘’, Product Page Style Guide’’ and ‘’Inventory file template’’: The product what we sale is an external enclosure for HDD SDD, we check and confirm every child ASIN is belonged to ‘’Computer & Accessories’’, ensure child ASINs are only with different colour or size, make sure all child ASIN and variation follow this rule.
-
According to ‘’Variation Relationship Overview’’ and ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’, we check and confirm all child ASINs must fundamentally same, same function, same design, same logo, the same material, and same physical appearance; Child ASIN varies only in colour and size; child and parent ASIN could share the same title; Make sure child ASINs are the same product, only display different colour or size for customers choose and purchase.
-
According to ‘’About Parent-child Relationship’’: When we list child ASIN, we fully describe each child ASIN include title, bullet point, description, UPC code, part number, SKU…etc. Parent and child ASIN use the same title. We use only SKUs for building relationships, and we won’t include price and quantity values for parent products.
-
According to ‘’Use the Check my file’’: we upload inventory file template to ‘’Check my file’’ before creating or updating our listings in the Amazon catalogue, correct the errors and warnings in this same file, and then upload the corrected file to create or update our listings on Amazon. We make sure every variation and listing is correct before create or upload it.
Conclusion:
After receiving the warning, we realize that we made a very big mistake.
Because of our negligence, we didn’t spend enough time to study and understand the guidance of the creation of variants in detail; we violated Amazon’s variation policy, we are very sorry about everything we did.
We put the variation creation of standard operating procedure as above to our New Employee Training SOP to make sure our listing specialist follows Amazon’s policy.
We promise we will check every detail of Amazon’s policy and make sure we are adhering to Amazon policies before uploading any variation or any listing. And we will never let the same error happen again in the future.
Thanks for your review and support.
Best regards,
Kozygear Europe
