Many sellers’ accounts have been blocked, and Amazon continues to crack down!

Clean up illegal activities, the platform continues to crack down ...

I believe that the majority of Amazon sellers are aware that the platform will launch multiple rectification measures every year. Several waves of cleanups have been carried out since the beginning of this year. Among them, the "rectification of merged variants" is the current hot topic of discussion. Many sellers said that they received warnings as soon as they added variants, and the variants were forcibly split. There was even a wave of seller accounts that were blocked as a result.

"The platform seems to focus on the violations of the seller 's existing accounts based on the number of times the seller's accounts have been shut down before , and the probability of such accounts being blocked is also higher, " said a person familiar with the matter.

A large number of sellers have been hit! Amazon is cracking down on violations of merge variants

As we all know, variation , also known as parent/child relationship, is a group of products that are related to each other based on attributes such as size, color, flavor, etc. Non-compliant merging of variations is definitely not allowed. Since this year, the platform has stepped up its crackdown efforts. As early as February, it began to rectify variation violations on a large scale . Until now, this wave of crackdowns has not stopped, and waves of sellers have been hit:

After adding the new variant , I received a warning immediately and the variant was forcibly split .

We have received it too, and have received 4 warnings recently .

Not only were the most recently created variants split up, but previous mergers of similar categories were also checked.

The reason is Inconsistent Child Variation. I did not receive any warning when doing this before.
Out-of-stock ASINs with merged reviews in the same category were directly deleted by Amazon.
Normally merge variants, comments are merged and removed one by one, mainly vine comments.

…

A seller reported that in the past half month, all three of his stores received performance notifications for variant violations, which disrupted new product promotion plans and caused a sharp drop in store traffic.

Another seller also said that he was warned that a link in the store had been out of stock for a long time, and a new link was created after the product arrived. Considering that the previous link had comments, the existing link was merged with the previous one. The variant was split within a few days after the merger was successful.

"Some variants were merged illegally. It is normal for the platform to split them, but the variants that seemed to be merged normally were also split." Xiao Li said that variants of the same product with different specifications were dropped every time they were merged, and the ones that dropped were basically vines.

Amazon sent an email to sellers, which showed that, usually, the reason why variant reviews cannot be shared is that the classification attributes (classification/node/product type) between the sub-ASINs in the variant are inconsistent. After unifying the classification attributes, customer service will refresh the reviews for the seller, which is the solution to this problem. However, after unifying the variant classification attributes, the system will prompt two results after refreshing the reviews:

1. The classification attributes have been unified, and the comments have been refreshed. The system prompts that the comments have been successfully shared and displayed.

⒉ The classification attributes have been unified and the comments have been refreshed. The system prompts that the sharing of comments has been restricted and cannot be shared. If the platform finds that a certain product has abnormal comment behavior, it may set restrictions on the comments or sharing of comments on related products. The purpose of setting restrictions on comments is to ensure the credibility of buyers' comments.

That is to say, many sellers’ variants are now split, not only because there are problems with the variant merger itself, but also because the platform found “abnormal behavior in product reviews.” Now, while the platform is cracking down on illegal mergers, it is also cracking down on false reviews.

A wave of sellers' accounts were blocked! How to merge variants correctly

After being caught violating the variant regulations, sellers will undoubtedly face many negative impacts, such as a sharp drop in traffic, or a significant drop in store ratings, or even worse, their accounts may be blocked. A few days ago, a wave of sellers were swept and their stores blocked by the platform.

Judging from the appeal feedback, the success rate of appeals for variant violations was not low in the past , but now it feels difficult to turn things around, and many people said that their appeals were rejected immediately . From this point of view, Amazon sellers are advised to avoid risks and merge variants correctly.

The platform said that misuse of parent ASIN or variations in parent-child relationships may result in the suspension or permanent revocation of ASIN creation permissions or sales permissions. The following behaviors need to be avoided:

1. Changing the product detail page (parent or child) so that it is completely different from the originally published product;

2. Changing the detail page of the parent product so that it does not match the child product;

3. Adding incorrect child product variants that are not true variants of the parent product. This includes but is not limited to: adding products that are completely different from the parent ASIN, adding product images/names that are completely different from the parent ASIN, and adding new versions or new models of products that belong to the parent ASIN ;

4. Add multi-pack variations to an existing parent product that were not created by the manufacturer.

( 1) If you create information for a multi-pack that is not sold directly by the manufacturer, you must match the product information to a detail page for an identical multi-pack. If there is no identical multi-pack detail page, you must create a new product detail page using the product's unique UPC.

( 2) Add a multi-pack by bundling two or more products from the same manufacturer together, such as bundling two three-packs to create a six-pack. Multi-packs must be packaged by the manufacturer. If a buyer wishes to purchase two or more of the same product, they can select the quantity they wish to purchase.

The platform stated that compliant variant mergers need to meet the following six requirements: there is no difference between the old and new versions ; the product information is accurate ; the products are basically the same ; they share the same name ; the category supports variant themes and there must be a variation option when uploading listings ; there are only differences in variant theme attributes , such as the variant theme is color, and products with different materials/sizes cannot create variants based on this theme .

Platform big data review! Stores that have violated regulations in the past will affect existing stores

Regarding variant violations, why are some sellers temporarily fine while others are constantly warned until their accounts are blocked ?

Industry insiders believe that this has a lot to do with the store's past record of violations . The platform conducts sweeps almost every once in a while, and the illegal stores caught by the platform will become "key monitoring targets", which means that if this store violates the rules again in the future, it will be more likely to be discovered than other stores, and thus receive a warning letter or be blocked.

According to feedback, a new type of account scanning behavior has emerged. Specifically, it is to use some big data review to calculate the number of accounts that sellers have shut down before, determine whether some current accounts are high-risk accounts, and then focus on high-risk accounts. The targeted stores will basically be discovered as soon as they violate the rules. The platform will accumulate violation records for high-risk stores, and once they exceed the platform's specified standards, the account will be blocked.

Generally speaking, the ban email will show " unfair behavior or abuse of Amazon features or services ", and the reasons for the violation are basically abuse of merge variants, refurbishment, abuse of brand, fake orders , etc.

"You can't rely on luck when doing business on Amazon. Any violations you commit now will definitely be punished in the end," said the seller.