Net proceeds £0 - Actual balance £15,140.43 - ENTIRE amount in reserve - 0 funds available

Hi all,

We recently changed our disbursement bank account and I don’t know if this is somehow related or a coincidence but 2 days after the change, our entire balance of £15K shifted into Reserve. Prior to this, the reserve amount was only around £4K, with 1 week remaining until next disbursement.

We raised a case with Amazon and the first response was a copy/paste response explaining what Account Level Reserve means - not very helpful. I pushed and asked the case to be escalated and now they’ve come back with the following:

“On reviewing your email, I understand that you want to know why all your funds moved to reserve after updating your payment method.On checking your account, I see that your seller performance has fallen below our benchmarks. Money might be reserved if performance metrics fall below our benchmarks. Lower metrics frequently indicate a higher likelihood of claims, chargebacks and returns. This is the reason for reserve funds.Your valid tracking rate is at 92.45% when the target is above 95%.”

It’s hard to believe that this would be the reason for Amazon to hold our ENTIRE balance as a reserve. Usually they only hold about a third of the total balance but never all of it.

Our VTR has always been between 85% and 93%. Besides, only about 1% of our orders are seller-fulfilled so how can they justify holding all of our funds over this? We use OBA C&D for seller-fulfilled orders and send everything RM24, tracking number is automatically uploaded to Amazon 100% of the time. Our downfall is obviously result of postmen not always scanning the item upon delivery, which is outside of our control. We recently spoke to the VTR team to explain this, and were told that it’s fine.

Does anyone have any idea what might be the cause of this? Is it something to do with changing bank accounts? Can VTR be the reason? Or is it something else entirely?

Other than the VTR, our account is in perfect standing. Order defect 0%, policy violations 0, invoice defect rate 0%, Voice of the customer Excellent across the board, IPI score 761.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

TL;DR: Our entire balance has gone into reserve shortly after changing bank accounts. Amazon are blaming it on VTR but we are not convinced.

Thank you!