Under concentrated attack! Many of Amazon's best-selling products were removed from shelves

During the Black Friday online promotion, electronic products and toys led the sales, and holiday products also saw a surge in demand. With this as the node, Christmas products ushered in the highlight of the year's sales, but some sellers were "punished" at the beginning of the carnival.

In recent days, Amazon's Christmas products have been attacked in the US. Many sellers have been complained of infringement and their listings have been removed from the shelves. According to feedback from sellers, all the complaints they received came from the same email address. The other party first took the seller's product pictures as their own, then reported them to Amazon and told the sellers: either remove them from the shelves or pay copyright fees. This made the sellers furious. Extortion incidents have occurred repeatedly. Is Amazon's complaint threshold too low?

Best-selling Christmas products on Amazon removed from shelves

As Christmas approaches, related holiday products are hot-selling. The sales period of such products is from November to early December, with the peak sales period from the end of November to around December 10. Amazon Operations Li Huan's company is one of the companies that focuses on holiday products.

In 2018, Li Huan's company designed a set of Christmas card inserts and sold them for four consecutive years, with annual sales of 3,000 to 5,000 sets and a customer unit price of between $15.99 and $16.99. Last year, the product sold about 5,000 pieces, and this year the company made some adjustments to the original product.

According to expectations, the daily sales of this product would exceed 100 orders, but the explosion of orders did not occur - this product was suddenly taken off the shelves and the number of orders dropped sharply.

At 11 o'clock in the evening on November 25, shortly after the start of Black Friday in the United States, Li Huan's company account received a warning letter from Amazon.

(Warning email)

Amazon said it had deleted the listing in the email because the platform received a report from the copyright owner, alleging that the products or product packaging in one or more of the seller's listings may have infringed their intellectual property rights. If the seller believes that the products and product packaging of the relevant ASIN will not infringe on the copyrights of others, they can submit a counter-notification in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If Amazon does not receive a response from the seller, the listing will continue to be deactivated, and this violation may also lead to account deactivation.

The email also gave the copyrighted content and the copyright owner's email address. Li Huan's company contacted the copyright owner, who, without knowing who the person was, asked him to pay the copyright royalties based on the inventory quantity. When the seller asked him to provide the copyright certificate and product ASIN for verification, the other party asked him to contact again.

The seller was very surprised when he saw the copyrighted pictures. "This is the picture on our listing. It was designed by us. He took our picture and registered it with the Guizhou Provincial Copyright Bureau, applied for a Chinese copyright, and then took this copyright to report us to Amazon in the United States. Our listing was removed," said Li Huan.

Li Huan's company contacted the complainant again, hoping that the other party would provide evidence of infringement. If there is no evidence, they will report it for blackmail. But the other party did not reply again.

Li Huan said that this type of copyright application is very easy. As long as there is a floor plan, you can apply directly without AI source files, and the cost is not high. "They definitely don't have a design draft, but he seized this loophole and hit it right away."

There are many sellers of brand-insertion products on Amazon, and their own product sales are not outstanding. With limited information, it is difficult for Li Huan's company to determine who the other party is, whether it is a peer in the same category or someone who is specifically trying to extort money. However, judging from the tight Black Friday sales period, it is more likely that it is a peer in the industry who is causing trouble.

Currently, this card product has been deprecated and cannot be edited. To make matters worse, the company's other Christmas product was also complained about. Both product listings have thousands of stocks, and the total sales loss exceeded $60,000.

"We provided the source files of the design draft and also filed a counter-appeal. It should be no problem to get the link back, but Amazon will not reply to communication by phone until Tuesday. According to the experience of peers, it takes about 2-14 days to restore the link. Before that, the listing cannot be sold." In Li Huan's view, getting the link back is not a problem, but the sales opportunity has been missed. "The sales of this product dropped very early. If the volume does not increase in the next few days, it will be difficult to bring it back later. The order volume has plummeted."

Li Huan's experience is not an isolated case. Before and after Black Friday, many sellers' Christmas products were maliciously complained about, resulting in the links being removed from the shelves. The complaining parties deliberately blackmailed many sellers .

Concentrated attacks, widespread malicious complaints

Wang Xiaolu and Zhang Feng are also sellers who have been victims of malicious complaints.

Wang Xiaolu said that on Black Friday, November 25, she received a warning email from Amazon, warning that its hot-selling Christmas sign products infringed on copyright . The specific problem was that it infringed on a picture registered with the Guizhou Copyright Bureau.

After being complained, Wang Xiaolu's two hot-selling product links were removed from the shelves. These two products were sold as early as 2020 and 2021. If the links cannot be restored, she will suffer a loss of up to tens of thousands of dollars. So she tried to contact the complainant, and after getting in touch, the complainant threatened to continue to remove other products from the store.

Zhang Feng's situation is similar. On November 26, the Christmas sign products he was selling were suddenly removed from the shelves. The reason for the removal was also copyright infringement. The complainant also complained about his products based on the pictures registered with the Guizhou Copyright Bureau. Zhang Feng estimated that if the removal period is 1-2 weeks, the total sales loss will be US$5,000.

Three sellers were subjected to malicious complaints and extortion before and after Black Friday. The complainant was the same person and used the same pictures, which shows that the complainant had a clear purpose and filed a batch of complaints against Amazon sellers. The victimized sellers speculated that it was done by a peer, but could not find any other clues about the complainant, only knowing that the purpose was extortion.

The victimized sellers further speculated that in addition to themselves, there must be more of their peers who have been victimized!

This peak season, malicious complaints and threats seem to be particularly frequent. An informed seller said that recently, such malicious complaints and extortion cases are breaking out on a large scale, and a seller's 19 links were attacked by concentrated complaints. The seller was maliciously complained by the same person who uploaded the original pictures and 5-point descriptions of the Amazon website on his own website, and Amazon easily approved them. Contact the customer service specialist, they need to submit the review to the internal team, and the unblocking time is unknown.

A seller said that he had received four or five such complaints and extortion requests recently. The contact name of the complainant always contained words like "If you don't respond after three hours of contacting to withdraw the complaint, continue to complain." The complainant's email address was basically changed every time a complaint was made.

After contacting the other party’s email, the other party will quickly reply to inform the seller that the lawsuit can be withdrawn, but it will require a payment of 500-800 yuan via WeChat . After receiving the money, they will indeed withdraw the lawsuit quickly, but will file another complaint soon. Malicious complainants all use pictures to file copyright complaints, which is the same as the situation encountered by the above sellers.

The seller further introduced that after he complained to Amazon, the platform restored the link and sent a restoration notice . The email contained a total of 30-50 ASINs from different sellers. This also shows that the complainant complained about many sellers at the same time and blackmailed them one by one. This malicious complaint extortion has occurred on a large scale.

Until recently, these malicious complaints continued to occur, and it took some time for Amazon to restore the links.

"Bulk complaints and extortion can be made with just a picture. The cost for malicious complainants to do bad things is too low! But sellers suffer huge losses, especially during the peak season. Not only will sales be greatly affected, but even if the link is complained back, the ranking will drop significantly." Li Huan was helpless.

Many sellers are exhausted after repeatedly encountering malicious complaints and extortion. They don’t know when these threats and extortion will end?

(All names in this article are pseudonyms)

Amazon

Removed

Christmas Products