A new round of cleanup: A large number of brands on Amazon suddenly shut down

Will the brand chain crisis happen again in 2021?

There was a major earthquake in the vacuum cleaner category on Amazon. Many brands in this category suddenly could not be displayed. It was suspected that the brands were implicated, which caused concerns among many sellers in the industry. The incident happened after Amazon's large-scale account sweep on March 20, which seemed similar to Amazon's account and brand ban operations in 2021. For a while, some sellers became increasingly nervous.

Multiple brands in the vacuum cleaner category cannot be displayed

Yesterday afternoon, multiple brands in Amazon's vacuum cleaner category suddenly stopped displaying. Several popular brands disappeared from the best-selling product rankings of stick vacuum cleaners and electric vacuum cleaners. According to sellers in the industry, searches were banned.

Later, some sellers reported that Amazon seemed to have taken action against vacuum cleaner brands. The backend links of many brands were directly deleted , but the stores were fine. The affected brands did not receive any performance notifications from the platform, so they were hung up for unknown reasons.

According to people familiar with the matter, more than a dozen vacuum cleaner brands were affected , including HO*****, DE****, Be****, PO*****, etc. When a brand goes down, Amazon doesn't even leave money for the seller. In addition to vacuum cleaners, the brands that have problems may also involve headphones, espresso machines and other categories.

On Amazon, a brand may involve tens of millions of assets, and the cost to the seller is not small if something goes wrong with the brand. It is even more troublesome to file a complaint.

It is worth noting that the brand involved in this incident may have been implicated, and a "whistleblower" issued a warning: this time the brand's collective responsibility will be the same as the situation in 2021.

In 2021, Amazon's account ban wave broke out on a large scale. Many top-selling brands were banned. The brands were further implicated and their funds were frozen and unable to be withdrawn. As a result, the performance of many listed top-selling companies changed rapidly, and they have not been able to get out of the shadow of losses for several years. Some small and medium-sized sellers who were unable to protect themselves were cleared out in the crisis.

When someone linked this vacuum cleaner brand incident to the 2021 brand chain crisis, many sellers panicked. This brand incident still happened after Amazon's large-scale account sweep.

March 20th was called "Black Wednesday" by sellers. A new round of account sweeps broke out on Amazon. Feedback from all parties showed that the impact was very wide. Many old accounts were blocked inexplicably. Some sellers saw dozens of accounts being blocked. Among these swept accounts, some pure white hat accounts and newly registered accounts with the same brand were not spared.

After a large number of accounts were blocked, some brands began to be blocked and implicated . It is no wonder that some sellers associate it with the account blocking wave in 2021. However, from the perspective of the scope of impact, the current account scanning and brand sudden inability to display are far from what happened in 2021, so sellers do not need to panic. Moreover, according to the latest feedback, some brands in the vacuum cleaner category have been restored.

Scanning number continues to explode, and a new type of scanning number physical examination report is here

However, those accounts that have been blocked since March 20 are not so lucky. A large number of accounts are still locked in the small dark room, waiting to be rescued.

At present, we have not received any news about the unblocking of the account from the seller and the service provider, which shows that the appeal of the account that was scanned is not smooth. And Amazon's account scanning operation is still ongoing, and some people are still being affected today. A seller reported: "I woke up this morning and found that my account was also scanned, the same situation." This continuous action of the platform has also accelerated the anxiety of sellers, and some sellers who have not been affected have also begun to panic.

Amazon did not give a specific reason for the account closure this time, only mentioning in the email that these accounts were subject to abuse. This made the sellers very anxious, and there was no way to appeal if they could not find the reason.

Yesterday, a relevant service provider issued a notice stating that Amazon’s new scanning email is intended to require sellers to self-check for violations . According to internal sources, if a complaint is to be filed, sellers must first self-check to see if any of the following problems exist.

1. A store that has not been operating for a long time is being swept away when it wants to resume operation ;

2. Newly registered stores will be scanned directly ;

3. Old stores that are operating normally may be swept because of problems such as past performance infringements ;

4. Find service providers to catch and follow sales and other gray operations ;

5. Brand registration is rejected multiple times (brand joint responsibility) ;

6. The account has had variant violations (binding zombie variants, following and selling zombie accounts) ;

7. There are problems such as counterfeiting and intellectual property infringement (trademark, copyright, patent, etc.).

Some relevant service providers also said that the new scanning number has obtained a medical examination report, because it is related to the previous dead number and is judged as fraud by the platform. This statement has also been confirmed by some sellers. One seller said that he did not do anything illegal, but the email said it was fraud and violated the third-party agreement, and supply chain verification was required, but this verification is hell-level difficult.

Nowadays, the reasons and logic of some Amazon account scanning are becoming more and more difficult to understand, and even some white hat sellers are not immune to being caught. Sellers who have been involved in illegal operations are likely to be pulled out by the platform for retribution. Even if a violation occurred a long time ago, it may be linked to future accounts, which once again rings the alarm bell for sellers to operate cautiously and in compliance with regulations.

Brands that violate regulations are likely to be scrapped

Not only have the accounts that were swept up this time not been restored, but some brands that have been shut down are also in trouble, which may cause great losses to the affected sellers. And brands involved in associations and illegal operations are likely to be scrapped.

One of the common cases of brand violations is brand abuse, which is also relatively scary. In September last year, Amazon's brand abuse problem suddenly broke out, and both new and old brands were not immune. There were even sellers whose multiple accounts were successively convicted of brand abuse and the brands were removed.

What is scary is that brand abuse can also lead to collective punishment. There are two situations in which collective punishment occurs: first, if store A under a brand goes down, the brand-authorized stores B and C will also go down; second, if store A under a brand goes down, another brand under store A will be implicated. Moreover, if a store goes down and the brand is transferred to another account, brand association will also be created. Brand association can only be avoided if the downed store is unblocked.

If the vacuum cleaner brand is really implicated, it will be troublesome. Under Amazon's crackdown, many sellers agree that the safest way to avoid brand failure is to have one store and one brand.

From scanning accounts to blocking brands, this round of Amazon's actions has once again made sellers nervous. The platform has never been ambiguous in cracking down on illegal operations, and the mechanism of settling accounts after the event has also increased the cost of making mistakes. After all, accounts and brands are the foundation of sellers on Amazon. From now on, everyone can only rely on pure white hat gameplay to conquer the world.

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