Warning: All funds of many Amazon sellers have been withheld

Funds in the accounts were withheld without reason, and many Amazon sellers were affected. The affected accounts had no violations, good reputation, and normal sales. Many sellers panicked, and some pointed out that this was a new way for Amazon to earn interest income. The problem ultimately points to Amazon account association, so everyone should be aware of it.

Funds in multiple Amazon seller accounts were withheld for no reason

Recently, a group of Amazon sellers’ stores had all their funds withheld by the platform for no reason without any performance issues. They repeatedly opened seller support calls but received no effective response, and the problem persisted for some of their peers for months.

Seller Peter has been selling on Amazon for 15 years. He is used to seeing various changes on the platform, but he is "stumped" by the issue of withholding funds.

Starting from July 11, Peter ’s store funds were withheld without reason , and he was forced to adjust his store to “vacation” mode. Because he could no longer sell and deliver goods, Amazon had to withhold the funds they used to purchase inventory . Peter ’s account was not a new account, and he had no violations. All of his accounts were valid and in good standing.

Peter received an email from Amazon stating that their account was healthy and in good working order and that they had access to funds , but in reality, they were not , with the account showing $0 available and thousands of dollars held in “reserve.”

Peter contacted Amazon Seller Support 16 times, and each time the platform created a new case and "transferred" the case. As a seller, Peter did not know to whom his case was transferred , and he suspected that his account was being manipulated. After 16 attempts at seller support, Peter's account funds could not be unblocked, and he could not resume normal business.

“ Can someone from Amazon look into this issue and find out why our funds are unavailable? ” Peter questioned helplessly.

Another seller , Sean , also had his funds withheld for no reason. Sean said his account was healthy, with a defect rate of only 0.17%. Currently, many of the cases he submitted have been transferred by Amazon, and no one told him the reason, and he was unable to contact the Amazon team by phone.

While all funds were on hold, Sean's last payment was also canceled, so he did not receive any payments for the entire month of July. When checking the payments, the message indicated that the account was now under review and there were still no irregularities.

As veteran sellers, Sean and Peter are no strangers to Amazon. After going through numerous battles and battling various policies of the platform, they were still stuck at the stage of having their funds withheld.

There are many sellers who have had the same experience. The amount of funds withheld varies from seller to seller. These funds are kept in the reserve fund. Some have thousands of dollars withheld, some have tens of thousands of dollars withheld. The largest case is that a seller had $600,000 withheld. The feedback from various sellers is as follows:

"——I've been through the same thing, more than 60 days, more than 600,000 in reserves, no emails or cases have been responded to. I think I will use other channels to continue the appeal;

- I have been dealing with this issue for weeks now, all funds are in account level reserve with no explanation as to why, and I missed my August 4th payment, made several requests, and have received no response;

- I have no money to invest now and my only options are to delete my account or go into vacation mode. My account is in good condition and I don't know why I can't make payments;

——Since July 11, I have been unable to pay my own bills. The account has no refund claims or other issues, and the rating is good;

- Amazon is withholding funds, I have now missed my 5th payment cycle, and thousands of dollars in revenue are being withheld for no apparent reason. During this time, I have not received any emails, fulfillment notices, warnings, or calls from Amazon explaining why such a large amount of funds is being withheld;

- I hope my funds will be available soon, but this has also seriously affected my business. "

In the eyes of many sellers, there are many suspicious points in this incident. The time the sellers’ funds are withheld also varies. Some can have their funds unfrozen in one month, while others have to go through several months of effort. Some sellers even fail to have their funds unfrozen in the end.

Beware of expired credit card associations

Among the many sellers who were affected, Kam's case seemed to show clues that Amazon was withholding sellers' funds.

Selling on Amazon.uk since 2017, currently also having funds deducted from his account, zero performance or email notifications. He has created 5 cases, and after persistent inquiries, Kam received an email. He was told that he has no reserves in his account since 2020.

According to Amazon, the platform typically retains sellers' sales proceeds until a certain number of days after the order delivery date to ensure that sellers have sufficient funds to satisfy any refund requests from buyers.

“The point is I have no claims or chargebacks…but my money has not been paid. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said this is a new way for Amazon to earn interest income on seller revenue , ” Kam said.

Another seller who received a call from Amazon said, "They told me that the reason they were holding my funds was that I had received five returns in the past 30 days and I should be able to pay within seven days. But Amazon did not explain why the funds were held or when they would be released."

Through communication with Amazon, the indicative answer to the withheld funds issue was apparently related to refunds, but it was actually a related issue.

It took about a month for Peter to get an answer, and his situation can be used as a reference for similar sellers. According to Peter, Amazon unilaterally added Brazil and Canada to his account some time ago, and he did not intend to sell products outside the United States. When he noticed that sites such as Brazil were added, he immediately called Amazon and asked them to delete it because they did not intend to sell products to Brazil.

Amazon said that there is no way to delete it, and it can only put these countries in "vacation" mode. However, there is a problem here - Amazon has not linked any credit cards to the new sites. If buyers from these sites return goods and there is no money in the seller's account, the platform can deduct the seller's credit card.

The problem did not arise until Peter renewed the credit card on the US platform after it expired. Before that, they were unaware that Amazon associated the expired credit card with the Brazilian and Canadian sites.

“When Amazon unilaterally adds or makes changes, they don’t know that this will have a chain reaction on individual seller accounts. Sadly, no one in Amazon’s seller or payment department thought of this, which shows that they are not well trained,” Peter said bluntly.

When sellers' funds are withheld, it greatly affects their business. It is recommended that peers who have encountered such situations check the credit cards that may be associated, even if these credit cards have not been used or have been used, to avoid association that may lead to funds being withheld.

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Funds Withholding