If you are an Amazon Seller, the worst possible thing that could happen to you is if you lose your ability to keep selling your merchandise. These account terminations are more common than you’d think. They don’t just impact the low-level sellers but also those people that provide their families earnings and lifestyle with these businesses.
But the highest level of anger caused to the sellers is to the reasons their accounts are terminated. They don’t get a solid answer and they try to find the answers themselves, trying to figure out what they did wrong and how to rectify their mistakes.
When these people do appeal in the removal of these terminations, they lose focus and when they see those fancy lawyers in the courts, they lose their tongue and are unable to state their facts clearly. This leads to them just blaming the seller performance as their fault for illegitimately ruining their business, which only gives them nothing but denials by the authorities and that is, even if the people get a response at all.
Although there are better ways through which you can fight against this suspension and why it even came into being. You just need to run it through proper back channels and clarify the main reasons behind it, especially when the details they are giving are not too much. You need to properly map out your course plan for this ordeal and give yourself as much backing as you can for getting your account back.
Why would Amazon terminate my account?
Most of those people behind the accounts usually lead with a blank statement like, “Amazon just terminated my account, I am not sure why.” See, with such statements running around, why or how could anyone take them seriously? This problem has gradually increased in the past few years.
Amazon Seller messaging platform isn’t as good as it used to be in the old days either now. Back then, you’d get instant texts with proper detailed reasons as soon as your account would get terminated but that doesn’t happen anymore. They just leave you vague and blank messages now, like “Your account has terminated. You violated this or that.” It doesn’t tell the sellers what they did wrong or why even. These vague emails or texts don’t do them any good and they have to go through the dirt, dig their way out for answers. The most they get is if the buyers complained regarding the sellers and that’s why their account is no longer available.
More often than now, you would need to speak Amazon Seller performance’s technical language to understand half the things they are saying to you. You might need to call their Accounting Health Centre to get clarity over the reasons, but that is only possible as well if you get a specific answer from them. Suppose you would need to call five times, you know what would happen? You’d get five different answers and then you would be confused as to what you are going to do now.
What is the best course of action if my account has been terminated?
First of all, you will understand all the reasons as to why your account is no longer available. After that, you will appeal it through the proper back channels. But to make sure your appeal is a result-oriented one, list all the possible reasons they might have done this. Identify all of those and choose which one you are going to fight with. What made them do this? They could have just sent a warning even but they closed down the entire account. Why? Were the reasons or reasons that big to ignore? Understand the nature of the situation and then the main reason behind it. Because if you don’t even know what the problem was, you can’t appeal this. If you are unaware of what caused the termination, your case will be thrown out almost immediately.
If you are confused up until this point, concentrate then. Think. Were there past warnings? Was there any indication that trouble was on the way? You need to figure out what caused this. Did you ignore any warnings that might have prevented this?
Now, think about how you will address this ordeal. Whatever the issues were, how will you solve them? What will you improve? What can you show to Amazon which will make them understand that you will do better this time around if given the chance? That is what you need to figure out.
Suppose you sent some wrong products or something old instead of new, how will you change that? What will you do to manage these obstacles? What can you do to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes as before? These are the sort of things they will look to ask you while they review your case and be prepared. Because they will expect proper, detailed answers with solid information.
What is the best appeal approach for this ordeal?
The best way to ensure that your appeal is perfect and doesn’t get squashed is by following all the guidelines and offering good, convincing arguments against the termination, try to show that you will take all necessary precautions in order to get the account back. But if you fail to do all that, they will just assume, that you likely repeat your mistakes and they’d have to suspend it again.
The main steps that you need to remember.
- Specifics: You can’t just go, okay so these were the issues and whatnot. You need to properly explain those issues and why they happened in the first place.
- Rectification: Have you corrected those mistakes? Did you double-check just for the very issues Amazon told you about? Have you made sure those problems won’t arise again?
- Improvements: What kind of precautions have you taken to ensure those issues don’t come again? Have you improved your account and those problems enough that your account is given back to you? What steps did you take to stops those issues from ever coming up again?
Amazon needs to believe that you have done all you can to ensure those very mistakes aren’t made again. They need to be reassured that you can be trusted with their buyers. They need to hear you state proper facts with proof. Otherwise, they will just as easily deny your appeal. You need to justify as why you should be reinstated. Use points instead of essays in your report so that they lose interest in the case, and can just skim through it easily.
How long can the terminations go on?
These terminations can go differently, they can vary from seller to seller. They can go from just a few hours to forever. If handled well enough, Amazon will likely the account back to you sooner than you’d think. If not, then, you are in for a long wait.
In the best-case scenario, Amazon would just take a look at your appeal and course of action and then accept it. But these days, Amazon would just ask for detailed answers and if you are missing out on some official documents, then your case will just as well be thrown out. Or even in a lot of cases, they just take one look at the case and when they realize, it is not even worth a look, they stop reading and then move on with the other pending cases.
A lot of the sellers have problems with their appeals because they forget to revise the details of it even when they are highly required. And when the court asks regarding this, the sellers are blank and don’t have a good answer. This almost always happens. Sometimes, when that line of inquiry is ignored or something, only then this can give a positive outcome for the sellers.
But when they realize you don’t have sufficient information and facts, they will easily throw your case out. You need to have solid, convincing details before going against them.
Will I be warned before my account gets terminated?
Most of the time, all you receive is just one warning email that your account may be in danger of suspension. Amazon might also send a notification that lets you know that you have three days to issue a course plan to stop the removal of your account. At that point, you are granted a chance to come clean and tell them about all the improvements to the problems which caused the almost suspension of the account. You must have solid factual statements or you risk losing your account. From here, your account could be terminated until you can prepare a better argument for your account’s suspension and properly present them.
As a potential seller with Amazon, you can’t assume that you will always get a warning that it is about to happen or something. Many times, it will just happen at any time and you won’t get a chance to prove your case before them first. With that in mind, there are rarely such instances where the seller has not received at least one or two warnings till this point. But it is up to the seller, if they keep ignoring them, their account will likely end up getting suspended.
Can I open another account after the termination?
A new account will likely not work because it would also get closed. The reason being that it relates to one that used to be on Amazon’s platform. In detail, the reasoning behind this is because Amazon needs to understand and know first that you won’t just repeat your same mistakes and you will keep working on improving and show them that you have actually done that. You can’t just keep opening new ones every time one gets terminated.
Many sellers have multiple accounts and keep those alongside the main ones with illegal ways. They work well too but with such accounts, you won’t just lose that one but also your main one. And the durability of these multiple ones is unsure. Hundreds like these were terminated earlier this year. You need to understand how Amazon’s policy works. You just need to try to rectify your previous mistakes and make sure they don’t come up again. After that, you just need to give them enough reasoning to reinstate your account. This is pretty much how you should go about your account’s termination.
Termination due to sabotage?
Seller accounts get taken down all the time after bogus claims from competitors or giving fake reviews, bad-mouthing the seller and their products. They are guidelines against such things but they don’t really exist. They can’t really smoke out if it real or not. But you need to be careful when shipping out large quantities of product and such, that’s when you need to be concerned. Is this real? Am I doing it right? That’s where your competitors will try to take advantage.
Look for negative reviews and such which use the same wording, try to find similarities, and report them, when you realize those people never even ordered from you. The enemies will always be trying to take you down but don’t let that happen.
Prevention of account removal?
The best way to make sure your account doesn’t get removed is to make sure that all the account health notifications you receive, you don’t keep ignoring them. They are a major key in this point. If you just keep putting them off thinking nothing will happen, that’s where you are mistaken. You are just then waiting to be suspended. You must act cautiously and quickly to avoid termination. Search through all the policies, see what you are missing, whatever that you are doing is wrong, look for the needle in the haystack. Then communicate back to Amazon that you have rectified your mistakes and they won’t happen again. You need to assure them of this and that’s how you won’t close your account.
Steps to take after the appeal are rejected?
You should continue appealing even after your first one has been rejected but one major thing, you must keep changing your course plan for this. If you keep sending the same thing over and over again, you will get the same outcome and when you are sure, your appeal is one hundred percent flawless, then send it again. If it still doesn’t get a positive response, ask them. Call them and inquire about it. Is it even being read? Has it been redirected? What is the current status of it? Is the answering team so behind that they need ages to respond to you? Keep pushing at it at that point.
Don’t depend on Amazon to just give you a full blueprint on how to manage this. Make sure you know what you are doing and keep at it if you know you are right. That’s the only way to go at this. But make sure you don’t end up wasting all your chances at appealing with a bad one. You only get so many.
Is a consultant compulsory for this?
No, you don’t necessarily need to hire a consultant for this but it is highly recommended. It can be beneficial to have another pair of eyes look at the situation and give you some more ideas. Suppose you think you are right and they just terminated it without any good reason but the consultant points out the mistakes you made and helps you make a better appeal. That’s how consultants work, they help a lot and with the legal services, not everyone can be familiar with them and that’s where their real use comes into play.
If I pay enough, will my consultant guarantee my reinstatement?
No one, in particular, can tell you that your account will be reinstated for sure and make sure it happens, for any price. If someone is doing that, take that as a big flag. In this case, the only way you get reinstated is how well you present your case and also depends highly on the adjustments you make in the mistakes which led to this. Don’t fall prey to such unrealistic guarantees.
A good consultant will make sure they know how to carry out all the major parts of your case. They would have assessed it well enough before, they will prepare not just themselves but also you for anything Amazon might throw at you to rattle your cage. They will need to get everything right because even if one thing is wrong, it will give the same outcome as one where everything is wrong, failure and you can’t afford that.
Most importantly, Amazon didn’t have any proper reasons to do that, the consultant must have a good response to that. One that doesn’t put you at risk but also ensuring that it doesn’t happen to you or anyone else ever again. A good elaborate plan is what they would need, not just a temporary solution.
Hire Experts to Submit The Appeal For You…
Hiring an expert reinstatement service such as ReinstateAmz enables you to leverage the expertise of seasoned experts in order to ensure maximum chances of success for your suspension to get reversed. Our team of talented professionals has helped numerous individuals get their accounts back up and running by crafting up tailor-fitted appeals to induce maximum success.