Amazon's strict inspection has been upgraded! Use sensitive words with caution

The peak season is quietly approaching, and the darkness before the explosion of orders is also coming!

According to established rules, the Amazon platform will conduct wave after wave of large-scale account sweeps on the eve of the peak season every year . "Fake orders, variants and associations" are jokingly called the three old ways to block accounts by people in the industry.

Recently, some sellers have stated that their accounts have been blocked for manipulating reviews. In addition, there are reports that the platform has tightened penalties for violations of in-site messages, and there is no opportunity to appeal after being blocked!

Amazon updates new rules for internal messaging? Some sellers have had their accounts blocked

I believe that most Amazon sellers are familiar with in-site messages, which play a big role in order confirmation and follow-up , after-sales service , obtaining feedback and handling complaints.

However, in order to get better and higher reviews for their products, some sellers will ask consumers to delete negative reviews or perform other illegal operations through internal messages, which will have a certain negative impact on their accounts. Recently, there is news that Amazon is strictly investigating illegal internal message behaviors and has updated the new internal message regulations.

According to insiders, the US site has tightened the penalties for "sellers violating regulations when communicating with consumers through back-end in-site messages (emails)," from "warnings and appeals" to "closing the store and not accepting appeals." Sellers need to immediately stop talking about "reviews," "shopping experience," "gifts," and other terms when communicating with customers through in-site messages or emails.

In other words, before, when sellers violated the rules in the internal mail, they had a chance to appeal to get their accounts back after their accounts were blocked. Now, when their stores are closed, the sellers are directly deprived of the chance to appeal. Terms such as " paid review deletion, paid positive reviews, and positive reviews as gifts " are all sensitive terms that the platform focuses on, and sellers cannot touch them.

Is this statement really true? At present, the official platform has not yet made clear news, so many sellers have expressed doubts, because the platform is a bit inhumane to close the store because of the violation of the internal message. However, many sellers have said that they have received internal message performance warnings from the platform, and some sellers even said that their accounts have been blocked and they have no way to appeal. "My account has not been unblocked yet," said one of the sellers who was affected, and his account has not been saved after being blocked.

Another insider said that in the past year, the platform has been strictly checking internal messages, and a large number of sellers have been targeted by the platform for internal message violations. There are even more cases of sellers illegally collecting performance in internal messages than those illegally collecting performance in fake orders. Performing performance once is considered a first-time fake order, and performing performance again later due to ranking manipulation is considered a second-time fake order, and the account will be blocked and there is no hope. "Moreover, Amazon now monitors internal messages with robots + AI + manual review, and violating regulations in internal messages is tantamount to playing with fire and getting burned."

Amazon's logic for determining violations is: after consumers give bad reviews, sellers contact consumers to delete and modify the bad reviews. In addition, if sellers continue to send messages multiple times when consumers do not reply to messages, it is also considered a violation; pretending to be a single mother or unemployed youth to ask for good reviews will also be targeted by the platform.

Judging from feedback from multiple parties, it is undeniable that the platform has indeed strengthened its efforts to investigate violations of in-site messages. Amazon sellers still need to act with caution and operate in compliance to ensure a smooth peak season.

Instructions for using internal messages: Do not include the following content

According to Amazon's in-site letter policy, in-site letters must strictly comply with regulations and must not contain the following content:

1. Ask customers to remove /edit existing product reviews, or ask buyers to review a product only if they have a good experience with the product.

2. Repeatedly request product reviews or buyer feedback.

3. Use incentives and compensation to guide users to leave only positive reviews, including monetary incentives, gift cards, free or discounted items, refunds, rebates or compensation, discounts, etc.

4. Marketing or promotional information, including coupons.

5. External links, except for secure links ( https instead of http) or Amazon links that are necessary to complete an order .

6. Include or display a logo that links to your website.

7. Personal contact information, such as personal /business phone or email address, but excluding phone numbers related to warranty, delivery providers, and manufacturers.

Which sensitive words cannot appear in in-site messages?

According to an informed source, review, evaluation, comment, feedback, rating, star   positive, negative, critical, bad, level, appraise   Words such as amend, change, modify, alter, withdraw, retract, edit, remove, delete, update, revise, erase, cancel, wipe out, etc. may be detected by the platform, which may result in the email being blocked or even triggering account risks. In particular, words such as review, feedback, and rating are directly related to product reviews, so the platform will conduct extra strict inspections.

Amazon strictly investigates fake orders, and the success rate of second-time complaints is almost zero

In addition to the issue of in-site messages, there have been more and more cases of accounts being blocked due to fake orders in recent times:

Amazon is issuing warnings about fake orders again, and many of its peers have been affected.

The store was closed due to double-checking . Is there any chance to save it?

After registering for the second time, I appealed 5 times but all failed.

…

An Amazon seller said that his store had just been suspended for violating "ratings, feedback and reviews". He submitted all the information, but the platform always replied that there was insufficient information and the store could not be saved.

Another seller also said that his store was closed due to the double-brush problem and he had no way to appeal. No matter how complete the information he submitted was, he could not reactivate the store.

It can be found that it is very difficult to appeal for a second brush. According to many insiders, the platform has severely cracked down on brushing orders, and there is almost no success rate for second brushing appeals. It is worth noting that it is not that the seller’s one brushing behavior is considered a brush, but that the seller is considered a brush after receiving a warning after multiple violations. The first time being caught may be just a warning . The platform is willing to give the seller a chance to "reform". If the seller continues to commit related violations after receiving a warning, being caught again will result in the account being blocked, and the account cannot be saved. In another case, the platform system will determine whether it is a first brush or a second brush based on the severity of the seller’s violation. In detail, the platform will detect the number of brushing orders on different sites of the seller , or the number of brushing orders on a single site. If the seller’s brushing behavior has a very large impact on the store, because too many human manipulations of comments have caused the store to have too many orders per day, then the seller may be directly judged by the platform as a second brush, and the store will be directly blocked.

" Sellers hire third-party service providers to encourage buyers to buy their products or competitors' products and write reviews by offering financial rewards, discounts, free products or other forms of compensation " and other behaviors have been repeatedly banned, and the platform's strict inspection efforts have become increasingly strict. In the current environment, the space for black hat operations is getting smaller and smaller.

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