Brand Abuse
Sorry if this sounds a little tortuous but I’ve changed the product / company to protect identities
Brand Abuse.
My competitor has registered their company name as a trademark (Brand). Let us call them ‘CraftySellers’
They decided to raise a listing to sell another trademarked companies product. As an example let’s use ‘Cadbury’s Crème Egg’
Now along comes me, and I see a listing for ‘Cadbury’s Crème Egg’ with a picture of a ‘Cadbury’s Crème Egg’ and I think to myself, I sell them, In fact I’ve been selling them for years.
Anyway so muggins here links to each of the five listings (think 1egg, 2 pack, 4 pack etc)
For a year or so nothing happens because ‘Craftysellers’ have the buy box. But at some point I decide I really want to sell my eggs so lower the price to get the buy box.
At which point all hell breaks loose.
CraftySellers have raised the listing and are selling ‘Cadbury’s Crème Eggs’ but have set the BRAND on the listing to ‘CraftySellers’. They immediately change the image on the listing to be a bag labelled with their logo that says ‘Crafty Sellers – Cadbury’s Crème Egg’
I am then accused of selling counterfeit products, and parallel importing. Amazon ‘insist’ I provide a Letter of Authority from the manufacturer to sell the product. So I get the LOA and I send it along with a letter explaining that said CraftySellers do not own the Cadbury’s brand and cannot monopolise it.
Four of the five complaints were resolved but the 5th is outstanding. I contacted Amazon through the ‘speak to an account health specialist’. It seems clear to me this is an abuse of the brand process. But after about an hour on the phone I am told by Amazon that I have to stop selling this product because ‘I don’t sell it in a bag with CraftySellers Logo’ and I have no right to do so. I am told to delete these listings and re-list. And the real kick in the teeth, I am told to clear the violation I HAVE TO ADMIT FAULT.
I point blank refuse to admit fault. Anyone know how I might get the violation removed.
0 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
When you listed your items originally, did you go to catalogue - add products and enter the EAN of the product and was the brand name correct originally ?
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
Technically this was a craftysellers listing as they created a bundle (hopefully with written permission from Cadbury… but that’s another situation entirely) and it therefore became a new product, with a new barcode (probably theirs)
This should, in fact be packaged in a box/bag with craftysellers logo on it, however its probably not.
Sadly though at the end of the day forgetting about what craftysellers did or did not do or what rules/regulations/laws they may or may or may not be breaking… you sold an item on a listing that said the brand name was craftysellers, knowing that your product was not craftysellers.
You are therefore in the wrong.
Seller_sSxf9ltVoIMz9
Fair to say we are about 12-18 months ahead of the curve on this issue. We trademarked our company years ago and now (with a few exceptions) would only seek to sell products we produce under our trademark. We are fortunate in being able to manufacturer and protect our products this way which allows us the time and money to be able to invest in listings and advertising.
So I guess Amazon set the rules, you can only operate to the best of your ability within them.
Seller_x1xMSBwZsJrTE
The only option I can see is that you come to some agreement with the other seller to get them to drop the claim.
You could contact them and tell them that you will agree to remove your products and not sell them on again on their listing if they withdraw the IP claim against you. Obviously they are very unlikely to do that so you could tell them that if they do not drop the claim you will submit evidence to “Cadbury’s” that they have violated “Cadbury’s” IP and that this could have repurcusions for them.
You can use Wayback Machine, an internet achive, which shows the history of any internet page. With this you can present evidence to show how the listing has been changed and what the listing used to say.
Seller_WIndmNYDp7rQF
Own brand labelling of “generic identical products” is a confusing issue for buyers
Seller_L1A4u7LImWRtC
I’ve looked on here for the same issue really…though I’m trying to avoid the above scenario as I’ve got painful experience of being absolutely whacked by Amazon for listing a mass-market range of products that are in reality the brand we sold, but were falsely “brand owned” by another retailer; going through the whole rigmarole of providing absolute proof (the genuine brand in question even including EAN-13 barcoding on the invoices) that the products we sold were correct and the Amazon branding was wrong, but still had to suck it up because we could not supply proof that the products were genuine “fakebrand” products
Today I added a product in our own website that links up to Amazon - Product found in Amazon catalogue, the product is right by both EAN and MPN, image and text…only now it’s listed, I can see in my inventory that the brand is incorrect and cannot be amended.
I can issue web evidence, packaging evidence and the whole shebang however Amazon just say “you knowingly listed your product against the wrong brand”. Or I can make a new listing and Amazon will just link it up anyway because it can’t (rightly) have 2 listings against one EAN
The craziness is that the SAFEST method is to issue an EAN from our own GS1 bank of numbers and create a whole new product under our own brand, which no other seller can list under without our approval, and rip the original labels off, but that is doing what Amazon wish to avoid and cluttering the site with duplicate listings. And of course we have to start the listing with zero history or rating which defeats the object of looking for products that are proven to sell. Plus it is a lower-end budget product that I wouldn’t go as far as Gerald Ratner as describing it but still is “cheap and cheerful” which isn’t the desired brand positioning
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
And on top of that, I’ve just had to withdraw from sale one of my best selling wrapping paper, and refund a customer who received the wrong paper because someone has changed the photo to something similar, but not the same.
Its not worth my hassle or sanity trying to get it changed back, and as they have taken up every photo slot with the new images of the different paper so there’s no way of getting it changed again without going through SS.
I really wish the mods here would pass on some of the problems we have with the catalogue and fix them. its not good for the customer either if products suddenly change to different ones, its review manipulation at the least as the reviews for that listing will be against the old paper, not the new paper which could be a completely different quality
Seller_kDDd1Gc0AQiWi
We’re having the same issue.
A listing that was created years ago by a seller that no longer trades on Amazon. They put their own name as the ‘brand’ as most did years ago.
The sellers name was trademarked in Feb and, presumably, became ‘branded’ - they have proceeded to raise an IP complaint for each of the sellers on the listing and had them removed but oddly they aren’t selling on it either.
Stupidly the GTIN is the manufacturers therefore we’ve been selling against it for years.
Find it really bizarre that a company can raise an IP complaint yet they are the one infringing on an IP by using the manufacturers GTIN and then claiming it as their own.
I assume we will just have to take the violation and loose the £1.5K’s worth of stock that is over there as we can’t prove that it’s the ‘brands’ item as it simply isn’t - it’s the manufacturers!
