Amazon’s billion-dollar sales were blocked, resulting in losses of tens of millions during the promotion!

For online sellers, account suspension is undoubtedly a fatal blow.

Just a while ago, when everyone was tackling the key sales node of "Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday", a store that had been operating on Amazon for 11 years and had annual sales of up to eight figures of US dollars suffered this kind of blow.

The billion-level account was blocked, and the founder had no choice but to post a message for help

Recently, the sudden closure of a store that had been operating on Amazon for 11 years has sparked a lot of discussion and attention on social media.

The store is called TB Superstore and is owned by BTW Global. LLC. According to Brent Wynne, founder of BTW Global. LLC, TB Superstore's annual turnover on Amazon reaches 30 million US dollars (about 218 million RMB).

According to data, TB Superstore has been selling on the Amazon marketplace since 2014. A seller rating website called it "a top seller trusted by more than 10,000 Amazon customers in the United States...ranked 1,285th overall on Amazon." (The website's seller ranking is determined by the number of positive reviews received in the past 30 days)

(Source: A seller rating website)

It is reported that TB Superstore was blocked this time mainly because it was " wrongly accused of copyright infringement " by Amazon's product quality department.

After receiving the notice, they immediately provided Amazon with all the documents from suppliers " National Book Network ( NBN) ", " Hachette Book Group ( HPG) " , "Simon & Schuster" and "Independent Publishers Group (IPG)" . These suppliers have also prepared proof that TB Superstore purchased goods from them, waiting for Amazon and them to confirm.

However, Amazon has not contacted these suppliers (at the time of posting), so the account has not been restored. Helplessly, Brent Wynne finally had to post the matter on social media platforms, hoping that Amazon would take it seriously and immediately restore the account permissions.

( Screenshot of Brent Wynne's post )

After two posts in two days, Amazon responded, but the problem was that they even got the name of Brent Wynne's store wrong in their response, let alone solving the problem.

Unfortunately, the account was suspended during the "most profitable period of the year" Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, which caused the company to suffer a loss of $2 million (about RMB 14.5243 million) . This $2 million loss was only during the promotion period, and as the account was unable to be restored, the amount of this loss continued to expand.

Due to the business shutdown, Brent Wynne had to decide to put 80% of the company's employees on leave. "My twin brother and I stood in front of 61 people and cried. We had to tell them that 80% of them needed to stop working."

What Brent Wynne cannot understand the most is that all the ASINs marked in the delisting notice have been (or are being) revoked by several publishers, but Amazon still refuses to restore the account. Brent Wynne said that he and his company have been operating in good faith and fully complying with the platform's policies for the past 11 years, but he did not expect to be marginalized during the most critical sales period of the year, which "not only endangers the livelihood of the team but also affects the future of the company."

The editor found traces of TB Superstore's existence on Amazon through other channels. According to previous product reviews, consumers have basically no negative comments on the store's products. Most of the negative comments are concentrated on the delivery service, but the store uses FBA delivery (don't look at Amazon, it's a bad review). Currently, when you click to visit the store page, it prompts No results for (no results found).

(Photo source: Amazon)

Although BTW Global. LLC still has DTC business, this part of the business only accounts for 30%. Therefore, even if the store resumes sales, the company will need more time to "recover". At present, Brent Wynne has sought legal help from the legal team, hoping to solve his problem as soon as possible.

The platform account blocking incidents occur frequently, and these reasons are the most common

With the tightening of policies, the blocking of accounts on platforms such as Amazon has become more and more common in recent years. However, these platforms are the "inevitable path" for cross-border sellers to go overseas, so it is the best strategy to strive to ensure compliance with regulations and avoid the risk of being blocked.

Taking Amazon , the largest online store , as an example , according to the sharing of many sellers, we can find that the reasons for account suspension are mainly concentrated in the following points:

1. Poor account performance

Including customer service performance, policy compliance, delivery performance, etc.

Service performance: mainly evaluates the order defect rate, which is an important indicator for Amazon to measure the performance of sellers on the platform. It reflects the proportion of orders affected by defects. Once the value is too high ( ODR is too high), the store is in danger of being blocked. At the same time, the cancellation rate (CR) cannot be ignored. The platform requires that it must reach <2.5%.

Delivery performance: For FBM sellers, the main assessments are the late shipment rate (LSR) and valid tracking rate (VTR). Once the LSR is higher than 4% or the VTR is lower than 95%, the account may be in danger. At the same time, Amazon also requires FBM sellers to maintain an on-time delivery rate of at least 90%.

Policy compliance: mainly involves buyers' complaints about authenticity, trademark infringement, patent infringement, copyright infringement, product description discrepancies, second-hand product complaints, defective product complaints, abuse of variants, etc. Among them, infringement is also the hardest hit area for sellers to be blocked, just like TB Superstore, which was mistakenly blocked by the platform even with relevant procedures.

It should be noted that Amazon has recently updated its “ repeat violation ” policy, which means that if a seller violates the same Amazon policy repeatedly (twice or more) within 180 days, the negative ratings of the account will continue to accumulate, and in serious cases, the account may also be at risk of being deactivated.

2. Account association

It can be said that many sellers have fallen into this trap. The wave of account suspensions caused by the new type of association that broke out a few months ago is still fresh in people’s memory. Generally speaking, there are generally the following situations that lead Amazon to determine brand association:

Use the same set of information : credit card, email address, mobile phone number, login name and password, payment account number, etc.;

Same computer and network resources : such as IP, network card MAC address and browser cookies;

Product information similarity : If the similarity of product information in different stores exceeds 30%, they are easily associated;

Simultaneous operation of multiple accounts : use the same tax number and the same payment account; query SKU, ASIN, and order number in different stores;

Brand association : Both the old account and the new account use the same brand, but the brand's registration information is usually on the old account and authorized for use by the new account;

In addition, even if it is an unfamiliar store, if you purchased it, it may be determined by Amazon as related due to the actions of the original owner.

3. Manipulating reviews and rankings

In addition to infringement, this has also been a focus of Amazon's attention in recent years. Since 2023, Amazon has taken legal action against more than 150 bad actors involved in abusing reviews in the United States, Europe, and China. In China alone, Amazon has successfully sued 14 fake order gangs, which shows how much Amazon values ​​reviews.

However, increasing keyword rankings and category rankings by releasing traffic outside the site , or increasing traffic through non-compliant methods such as reporting LD, BD, and machine simulated clicks are all very dangerous behaviors.

4. Lack of product certification

In recent years, various countries and regions have become more and more stringent in terms of product inspection and qualification requirements. Amazon has also been increasingly improving its product qualification requirements, which has led to many sellers facing the risk of being blocked due to failure to submit qualifications in a timely manner or incomplete qualifications. At the same time, sellers also need to identify the inspection agency to avoid having their stores affected by unreliable inspection agencies.

In addition, behaviors such as products not matching the pictures, VPS login, and placing positive review rebate cards in the packaging may also bring risks to the account.

In fact, it is not just Amazon. Shopify , eBay, Etsy, TikTok and other platforms have also seen many account suspension incidents in recent years. Brent Wynne's experience once again tells us the importance of diversifying sales channels, strengthening supply chain management, and establishing emergency response mechanisms. Most importantly, sellers need to ensure that their operations are compliant, so that even if they are misjudged by the platform, they can provide the most favorable evidence to resume their operations as soon as possible.

Amazon

title

Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday