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Hi @TaylorR_Amazon,

This is a long post, so I hope you can make it through to the end. If you can, you’ll understand clearly why we have researched the conclusions we have.

But before I get start, I want to thank you for looking into this further. I've reached out to my SAS rep to see if she can provide me with any internal case numbers that she has. This is one of the cases we opened with the SAS issue assistance team, Case ID 14431178361. I'll add another response if our Rep is able to get us more case numbers. But this is not an issue that we believe can be seen at a top-level view of our account.

We believe that a series of four restricted product notifications, during attempts to create a new product, all going against the same ASIN to be the root cause. The employee creating the bulk uploads was not on the email list for performance notifications, so did not catch the error. We create and manage our vendors' Amazon listings, but often times sellers without the authority attempt to create listings that end up being locked on Amazon's back end, and we have to work through a series of errors to get the products live.

Our employee believed that was what had happened, as this product was just one of a number of products that contained errors on the backend of Amazon. We had safeguards in place to catch any keyword terms that could be linked to restricted products, but this particular keyword was not in our screening process. I say this all to express that we were attempting to audit product data coming in from our vendors, but it wasn't enough, and in this case, we received 4 separate performance notifications, as you can see detailed in the case file above.

Through the years, we have learned that all types of infractions a seller might receive from Amazon, are not visible on the Account Health Page. This is not conjecture and I can provide case ids for many examples of this and we only learned of them from the Amazon lending team when it was typing up million-dollar loans. I can provide a sample of such case numbers if you'd like. But with that knowledge that Amazon, for very reasonable reasons, does not show all of the metrics it grades a seller on, and such grading isn't done by a human, but an algorithm.

In our discussions with higher levels of Amazon Support over the years, we have learned that there is another score separate from the Account Health Score. I'm not sure of its official name, but let's call it Seller Reputation Score, or as I like to think of it, the "Do We Invite Uncle Frank to the Wedding" Score. If Uncle Frank has a stellar reputation, you can put him up front at the wedding, let him dance with the bride and the flower girl. But if you're not sure about him, you stick him in the back away from anyone you care about. And if his reputation is bad enough, you don't even risk inviting him to the wedding.

It makes sense to me, Amazon is grading us sellers across a spectrum. The most important thing that they watch for, is something that could damage the Amazon Brand Name internationally, start a social boycott, cost billions. To the shareholders of the company, this would rank many levels higher than something a kid might choke on. Those things are important too, but misfortune happens all the time and such misfortune wouldn't cost billions.

Now, from what we know from the release of the Account Health Dashboard. Amazon has metrics in place to catch bad sellers both small and large. They also have metrics in place that will help protect large sellers from the occasional invalid violation, allowing time to clear it. But these soft and hard infractions can be calculated in a variety of ways to help catch the fish that aren't good for Amazon or the Amazon customer. And one such way is how it handles infractions against the same child ASIN, and I'm sure a 1,000 other things I've not thought of or haven't been shared on the forums.

But if a seller received one infraction on B08QBXWBVR (a pair of Nike men's size 9 sneakers) from a customer on seller or product feedback that included a trigger term like "fake" "not genuine" or "counterfeit" it wouldn't be a big deal. If the seller has proper documentation of their supply chain with genuine invoices, then eventually, Seller Performance will clear them (though I've learned that is rare on the first attempt which wastes everyone's time and scares good sellers needlessly). But if the same seller receives another violation on that same ASIN before the first has been cleared, the impact to the seller's account is significantly increased, as is reasonable. If the seller gets a couple more just like it, watch out, because despite how many listings you sell on, Amazon knows it is statistically unlikely to have four such violations from different customers on the same ASIN without there being a serious problem. It could be something as simple as the wrong product got sent in, but because of the risk to the Amazon customer, it will likely cause the seller's account to be suspended regardless of size.

I'm sorry to go into such detail, but it is important to know where the logic comes from and why we believe we have fallen afoul of a particular Amazon Bot that seeks to protect Amazon and the customer from products that could endanger the Amazon brand. Because of insufficient protections on our side, a product with "Rebel Flag" in the title was pushed via a new product file that included a large number of listings, on four separate occasions in 2023. After pushing the product files, we received performance notifications on July 12th, Sept. 2nd, and Sept. 5th, and Sept. 12th. (please note that the case id above erroneously includes dates on our creation files, not when the performance notifications were received). As you can see from the graph on my previous post, there was an extreme BB% drop off. Looking at the SKU level, the critical event happened on Sept. 5th.

We believe that like visible Account Health Violations, where multiple infractions on the same ASIN produced exponentially greater impacts to an account, that there is a similar algorithm in place for non-visible violations that play a significant factor in determining the BB and determining if lending offers are extended to a seller's account. Because it stands to reason that Amazon would not wish to grow accounts, or promote accounts that have Seller Reputation Scores below a certain level. We are still allowed at the wedding, but they have placed us at a back table. And just like that creepy uncle, he's back there for a reason, but from all appearances, he's just like every other guest. Those other guests are sellers and support staff that aren't privy to this other grading scale, because this scale is based on a feeling and on impropriety, suspected of being dangerous, but not enough evidence to convict, but enough signals to ward against.

I believe that is what has happened to our account. I had hoped that such hidden penalties would follow a similar logic of Account Health violations, allowing them to age off after 180 days, but we have passed these anniversaries and things have not improved much. I have waited to contact Jeff and Andy's team in hopes it would clear itself, but I fear this cloud is following our account, despite everything we've done to be a model seller. We continue to pay the penalty for an unintended mistake, one we were even watching for, but missed as we had already flagged terms like "Confederate", but we missed this one. Despite all we've achieved and contributed, we're at the back table and we don't know who else we can go to for help. We can't talk to the Bride & Groom, and the other guests that inquire on our behalf, are told that things are working as intended, and they are, but there appears to be no way to appeal, except perhaps in writing a letter to the Father of the Bride, and hoping that he'll intercede on our behalf.