Appealing a Policy Violation which I reported
Apologies for the duplicated post. I’ve posted about this in the General Selling on Amazon section but am hoping for more specific in this section which is more relevant to my issue.
Another seller has repeatedly changed the product images of one of my best-selling products over the past year. The images are changed to a completely unrelated product. This happened recently and so I reported it using the report a violation tool. Unfortunately, I then got the listing violation warning myself and was told I must remove the copyrighted material from my listing. The product is registered under the Brand Registry scheme and I am the only seller, and do not give permission for anyone else to sell under my brand.
I have removed the violating images and uploaded my old product images. These are now in the recommended images section of the product image page but are not “live on Amazon” maybe because the listing has been yanked.
I appealed this violation initially explaining what has happened but received the reply below telling my to make a POA. I did this but was not sure what to write as I have not used any images or text in my listing which I do not own the copyright for.
“Thank you for submitting your plan of action. We reviewed your appeal and determined that the corrective action items you have listed have not been implemented. Please make sure all corrective actions have been completed and violating content has been removed to be in compliance with your plan of action.”
I again got the same reply telling me that I had not actioned on my POA and the listing remains yanked. I have submitted another appeal saying that I think that the violation has been wrongly flagged to my account instead of the seller who changed the images but fully expect to receive the same reply again.
I have no idea what they want me to say. I don’t know how to stop this exact same thing from happening again in the future. Non of my listings contain any material which I do not own the copyright for. The only thing I can think of is that from their end, they are still seeing the images which the other seller has uploaded and therefore they don’t think I have removed them but I genuinely have no idea what the issue is.
Any help with this would be very much appreciated. I have a huge amount of stock of this product so pulling the listing isn’t really an option.
41 replies
Seller_n3kq7gcIclCDM
I have just received the same reply to my latest appeal:
Thank you for submitting your plan of action. We reviewed your appeal and determined that the corrective action items you have listed have not been implemented. Please make sure all corrective actions have been completed and violating content has been removed to be in compliance with your plan of action.
The only think I can think of is that in my POA I stated that I have removed the violating images which the other seller uploaded and have replaced them with my own. My images are now showing in the “Recommended Images” section of the images page of the listing, but are not live on the listing. I have just spoken to a Seller Support agent who says that she cannot see any images from her end.
I am wondering if this is why my appeals are failing - because no images are uploaded on the listing.
Seller_cS5duyC7Qby8k
Hello Damian1,
I understand you have provided with plan of action, but it was not accepted by the appeals team and they need some more insights on corrective measures.
Please note corrective measures resembles what all steps you have taken in order to resolve this issues.
If a seller’s offers are infringing on your intellectual property or a product sold on Amazon is infringing your intellectual property, you can use RAV or the Report Infringement form to report one of the following:
- All sellers listing on the ASIN (product)
- Specific sellers’ offers
Once you have determined what ASINs to report, the seller IDs are automatically populated in our systems by the Report Infringement form and RAV.
Both RAV and the Report Infringement form will auto-populate a list of sellers that are listing an ASIN or product detail page once you provide either an ASIN or URL. Select either ALL sellers or the Specific sellers option when submitting your report of intellectual property infringement.
Infringement reporting should not be used as a mechanism to restrict other sellers listing the same product, selling a genuine product or thwart competition.
Amazon does not enforce distribution channel control reports or check for a seller’s authorization or ability to sell a brand’s products through the infringement form. If you report counterfeit on the basis that a seller is not authorized by you to sell or, you have not allowed other sellers to sell your product, it may not constitute an infringement complaint.
If you are reporting counterfeit offers mapped to your ASIN, make sure the ASIN is branded with your brand name or logo and that is clearly visible to customers on Amazon Detail Page image(s). If you are reporting infringement of your brand name on other products not manufactured by you, explain how the ASIN is misusing your rights.
If you want to know more about the Amazon Intellectual Property policy kindly refer to the link below. Intellectual property for Rights Owner - https://sellercentral.amazon.in/gp/help/help.html/?itemID=GU5SQCEKADDAQRLZ&ref_=xx_GU5SQCEKADDAQRLZ_a_r16_cont_sgsearch
Hope this answers to your query!!
Regards,
Amar.
Seller_n3kq7gcIclCDM
I’m closer to getting this sorted.
The reason my POA’s have been failing is because apparently the violating images which I reported are still attached to this ASIN - therefore my appeals are automatically failing.
I’ve restored my recommended images in my inventory, and the violating images are not there - I thought they’d been removed. It says there are no live images on Amazon.
However, when I use the “Why is my listing not displaying” tool with this ASIN, as well as saying it’s been manually yanked, it also brings up my ASIN title, and a photo of a girl with a dog - the image that I reported. This led me to suspect that the images are still attached to the ASIN, I just can’t see them.
I’ve opened more cases with Seller Support to try and get my images restored, but they can’t help. They either say you don’t sell on this listing and so can’t request a change, or give me the link on how to appeal a suspended listing.
The Account Health Team are going to look into this and get back to me.
Seller_n3kq7gcIclCDM
I’ve just checked mine again - it’s still associated with the dog collar 
Seller_n3kq7gcIclCDM
Another update on this - still no good news.
Account Health Services have reviewed this and concluded that I need to get Seller Support to fix it - great!
Just to re-cap - I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, I reported a violation because one of my ASIN’s images was changed to an unrelated product, I couldn’t over-write the images myself. This is apparently the correct way to report this.
Because I was the only seller on the listing (it is my listing, my brand, I manufacture the product), I received the violation and the ASIN suspension.
All of my appeals / POA’s are failing because I am still unable to overwrite the violating images and therefore the bot report of my listing says -" Image - incorrect attribute corrected = NO" and it is automatically rejected.
Seller Support have up to now either said that the ASIN is suspended - here’s how you appeal it, or if I’m lucky enough to get them to pass it to the catalogue team, they say you don’t sell on this ASIN (because Amazon suspended me from it) and therefore I can’t request a change on it.
I’ve opened another case with Seller Support who have now passed this to a team who deal with incorrect information on detail pages. I’ll post back again with an update once I hear.
Everyone I speak to at Amazon understands it is not my fault and is a technical problem and yet up to now, there is no way to fix it.
Seller_n3kq7gcIclCDM
I think I have made a breakthrough with this.
The ASIN which has been suspended on .co.uk is still for sale on PAN-EU so I opened a case with SS France (in French) to ask them to change the images. I thought that this might avoid the “You do not sell on this ASIN reply”.
So from SS France I got a different reply which was - You are not the Brand Owner for this ASIN - we have asked the Brand Owner for permission to change the images.
So it looks like another seller has somehow been able to register this ASIN with their own brand and this is why I was unable to change the images myself.
I opened a case with Brand Registry and explained that I suspect another Seller has claimed brand ownership for this ASIN and that I was unable to remove the violating images.
I got a reply back almost immediately saying that the images had been removed, and sure enough after 15 mins, when I use the “Why is my listing not displaying” tool, the dog collar image has been removed, and my product image is back in place.
I’m going to wait a while longer before I submit another appeal to Account Health to make sure that all the various sections of the catalogue have been updated so that the bot doesn’t reject it again but am hopeful that I’ve actually solved this. I will update this again once I hear.
Seller_w90coxRQg7M6P
Hi @Leah7 did you get anywhere? I am having the same issues…
