Holiday Breaking News! A Large Number of Amazon Seller Accounts Are at Risk of Deactivation

Today is the fifth day of the National Day holiday. The remaining holiday time is seriously insufficient and cross-border people will soon have to rejoin the army of brick-moving workers.

In fact, this holiday was not a pleasant one for many Amazon sellers. In the cross-border circle, Amazon always causes trouble during holidays, and this time was no exception. The continuous problems made Amazon sellers overwhelmed.

Sellers are confused about the need to update their tax identity information

On the second day of the National Day holiday, many Amazon sellers lost their happy mood because they received performance warnings from the platform. One seller said that he woke up and was informed by Amazon that his account was at risk of being deactivated, and to solve the problem, he had to provide updated US tax identity information.

Amazon requires sellers to provide a new W-8 tax form. If the form expires, the sales account will be temporarily suspended and the products will be removed until the seller provides updated US tax identity information.

Amazon has given sellers 90 days to resolve this issue, which means they have until December 30, 2024. Before the deadline, sellers need to complete the self-service tax information collection and submit the required information. It takes Amazon up to 24 hours to process the information submitted by sellers, so if there is no immediate performance news after completing the information submission, sellers do not need to be too anxious.

Judging from the current feedback, most of the sellers affected are from the US site, and a small number are from Japan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, etc. Many sellers were caught off guard by suddenly receiving such a "shock" during the National Day holiday.

"——Received it, looking confused, how did everyone solve it, waiting for a solution;

——Has everyone received it? Did Amazon send it by mistake?

——Received it, it’s so scary, it’s causing trouble even during the holiday. I was planning to go out for a trip tomorrow, but now I’m in no mood at all.”

This tax identity information update is mainly for domestic accounts. It is reported that domestic accounts need to update the W-8 tax form every three years. Sellers only need to complete the information submission according to the requirements, and there will be no major problems. However, many sellers still dare not act rashly, because they will still encounter many difficulties in the specific filling process:

1. Should I fill in the company name or the legal person name here? The tax classification is the business, not the individual.

2. What should I do if the company name contains brackets, for example, XXXXX (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. The company name column does not support input of brackets.

3. The store’s legal representative has changed, but the business license has not been changed in the background. Is the final signature signed by the old legal representative? Will there be any review?

4. How to fill in the permanent address and mailing address respectively?

5. Is it enough to just update it? Will it be successful if I submit it immediately? Is there any performance that has not disappeared after I submitted it?

6. Do I need to click on the other North American sites to fill in the form separately, or do I just need to fill in the form on the US site and wait?

7. According to my understanding, you should select "Individual" and fill in the name of the legal person as the beneficiary, but I'm not sure if this is correct.

Because of these issues, plus the fact that there is still a long time before the deadline, many sellers are still waiting to see how they submit. However, there are also a number of sellers who have successfully submitted.

"Enter the default company and address information, check the physical signature, then the phonetic signature (for example, fill in "San Zhang" for 'Zhang San'), and then submit the form. Currently two stores have passed." said a seller when sharing his experience.

Another seller said that if the business license has not been changed, that is, the legal person, address, etc. have not changed, you only need to fill in the information when registering the store before. If the business license has been changed, fill in according to the changed information. It can be solved very easily.

At present, many sellers will share their successful experiences after submission. If the seller is really not sure how to fill in the relevant content, it is better to wait for a while.

Bad things happened one after another, this holiday is really "troublesome"

In addition to updating tax information, Amazon had a lot of troubles during the National Day holiday. One seller joked: "I received a National Day gift package."

At the beginning of the holiday, Amazon's flash sales and promotions were reported as errors on a large scale. Sellers who were about to start "holiday mode" were surprised to find that overnight, all flash sales and promotions were marked as "potentially inappropriate", and the corresponding products would be removed from the promotion.

A seller said that the flash sales and seven-day promotions he reported were normal this month and next month, but errors began to appear from the third month onwards.

Another seller fared slightly better: “I had the same issue with a few links, and a few others were fine.

The flash sales and seven-day sales in October were normal, but the flash sales in November were reported incorrectly. "

The sellers were frightened by the exclamation marks everywhere, and even thought their stores were going to close down. They all sought solutions.

A seller opened a case and received a reply from customer service that the system reported a large number of errors and that they should not worry about it. Amazon engineers have intervened to fix it and they need to wait patiently. In addition, some customer service staff also said that this was just a display error and would not affect the flash sale.

The sellers found through practice that it was indeed as the customer service said. "I also reported all such prompts, but the ones that were running flash sales today were running normally." said a seller.

This is not the first time this problem has occurred. According to sellers’ feedback, a similar situation occurred before the Mid-Autumn Festival. “I finally opened an English case, and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, I received an email saying that it had been fixed, but it didn’t say what caused it to be marked as inappropriate.”

Some sellers speculated that this was probably because Amazon had added a new restriction algorithm and was testing it, rather than a system bug.

In addition to the widespread reporting of errors in flash sales and promotions, the US Consumer Rights Act also "joined in the fun" during the National Day holiday. Many sellers said they received email notifications from the Consumer Rights Act. According to the requirements, sellers need to verify relevant information within 10 days of receiving the notification, otherwise their accounts will be at risk of being deactivated.

As a result, some sellers were in a dilemma. For example, one seller’s company was listed in the abnormal operation list. After consultation, it was found that the abnormality had not been resolved and the certification could not be submitted, otherwise it would be rejected. However, the company had to wait until after the National Day holiday to remove the abnormal operation list, which was beyond the 10-day deadline.

At the same time, there are also cases where accounts are deactivated and product information is deleted due to Protocol 3. One seller said that the account was only registered in August this year, and only a few self-delivered orders were made when the account was registered, and it has been silent since then. However, now it has suddenly received a deactivation notice and needs to provide additional documents to verify the identity in order to reactivate the account.

Tax identity information