Account sweep! US accounts hit in large numbers

Domestic accounts in the United States also exploded on a large scale!

A new round of account suspension has arrived. Recently, a large number of Amazon sellers have said that their US accounts have been scanned and need to undergo fraud video verification. According to industry insiders, purchased information is the hardest hit by account scanning. Affected by the US tax season, more Amazon sellers will suffer in the future.

Another batch of sellers are about to withdraw.

Large-scale explosion of domestic accounts in the United States

Recently, the issue of Amazon video verification has once again become a hot topic. Sellers have successively received video verification emails from the platform. Those new accounts that have just been operated have become the focus of verification by the platform. For a time, sellers kept crying out in pain.

In addition, even US domestic accounts, which are considered by sellers to have a high safety factor, were also widely affected. From the overall feedback, it can be seen that the video verification was basically triggered by domestic companies , rather than accounts of foreign companies .

One of the sellers said in detail that within one day, nearly 10 US accounts encountered video verification . Some accounts have been used for 4-5 years. During the operation period, they have passed the consumer law . The operation performance also showed normal. Even so, they were still caught. And this video verification was not an ordinary video verification, but a fraudulent video verification. The email sent by Amazon stated ↓↓↓

In accordance with Section 3 of the Business Solutions Agreement , your Amazon selling account will be deactivated on January 27, 2024. While we work with you to resolve this issue, the funds will not be transferred to you but will remain in your account.

We believe that your account has been or may be used for deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity in accordance with Section 3 of the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement . To protect our customers, we verify the identity of sellers through virtual identity verification via video interviews.

Industry insiders analyzed that the problem mainly focuses on purchased accounts, that is, if the seller's US local account is not registered by himself, but is purchased from other channels to set up information stores (such as personal information of US consumers), it will be particularly concerned. It is also worth noting that January to April each year is the US tax filing season. After some Americans find that they have inexplicably added tax problems on platforms such as Amazon, they are likely to report tax issues casually, and those sellers with problematic information will inevitably suffer.

People who have experienced it have reported that when local stores in the United States encounter video verification, they do not necessarily have to speak English in terms of language. They can also arrange for Chinese video verification. The problems and procedures in the verification process are actually not much different from usual. If the seller's information is normal, there is no need to worry too much.

It is understood that many sellers now believe that local U.S. stores have more advantages and want to open stores with U.S. information, but they do not have a complete set of U.S. information including credit cards, mobile phone numbers, etc., so they achieve their goals by purchasing information. In fact, after the account is finally registered, there is not much difference from opening a store by a domestic company. On the contrary, it will lay hidden dangers for future operations and cause the inability to provide audit information.

Sellers’ order volume is declining. Should we stop doing business with Amazon in 2024?

In addition to issues such as video verification, many Amazon sellers have recently discovered that the number of orders has dropped too seriously:

Sales were good in the first two months, but they started to decline from January, dropping by about 1/4.
It's not that the sales of a single product have shrunk, but that the sales of all products have declined.

I get a headache when I see the number of orders. I want to go home early to celebrate the New Year.

…

Yienjun learned that, overall, the number of orders on various sites, including the US site and the European site, is almost declining, and the sellers' advertising continues to burn money, but it cannot save the traffic.

The recent account-scanning controversy and traffic decline seem to have become an important "driving force" for dissuading a number of sellers. Many sellers have the idea of ​​"not doing Amazon in 2024".

Amazon is becoming more and more difficult to do business. The view of a freight forwarder has been recognized by many people in the industry. It is understood that as early as 2018, it started to deal with Amazon e-commerce warehouse goods, with channels such as Mason Haipai, Haika, and express delivery to Amazon. Because there are many direct customers, they are relatively familiar with Amazon. From 2018 to 2020, most sellers made money, and freight forwarders also made a little money. From 2021, it is obvious that the sellers' shipments have decreased. In 2022, many sellers could not hold on. In 2023, freight forwarders could not hold on and transformed into consolidation and transportation warehouses.

The freight forwarder believes that the following factors make it difficult for Amazon sellers to survive: too many sellers entering the market, resulting in fierce competition; Americans’ consumption is downgrading, resulting in insufficient demand; Temu, SHEIN, and TikTok’s low-priced direct orders are launching a dimensional attack; factories are forced to become sellers due to few orders, and their competitors have changed from peers to upstream source factories.

"With the rise of Temu, SHEIN, TikTok and others, the advantages of sellers on traditional cross-border e-commerce platforms are no longer obvious, especially Amazon sellers." Many Amazon sellers said that in 2024, they will stick to existing platforms while deploying new platforms.

Chinese e-commerce platforms "besiege" Amazon! Amazon's active users are still far ahead

The past year of 2023 was a year of continued explosive growth for China's e-commerce platforms.

Data shows that in 2023, the export declaration volume of Temu, SHEIN, and TikTok at Shanghai Airport Port increased by more than 10 times year-on-year. The declared export volume has accounted for more than 30% of the total cross-border e-commerce export declaration volume at Shanghai Airport Port, ushering in explosive growth.

Among the global shopping apps in 2023, SHEIN once again won the download championship after 2022. Temu and Aliexpress ranked second and ninth in the download volume of shopping apps in 2023 respectively. In addition, SHEIN's active users and penetration rate rankings both rose to fourth place.

As of December 2023, Temu's number of unique visitors reached 467 million, on par with Aliexpress and ranked second in the world after Amazon.

Judging from factors such as download volume alone, the data of Chinese e-commerce platforms is amazing. Compared with established e-commerce platforms, it is understandable that new platforms such as Temu have higher download volumes due to the platform's vigorous promotion and consumer curiosity. Objectively speaking, the number of visits actually tests the platform's position in the minds of consumers.

Data shows that Amazon's global number of independent visitors reached 2.659 billion, far ahead of the second-place Temu's 467 million. In addition, judging from the global shopping app penetration rate and active user rankings in 2023, Amazon firmly occupies the first place.

Chinese e-commerce platforms have formed a group to "besiege" Amazon, and Amazon's e-commerce platform's status in the arena has not been shaken for the time being. However, cross-border e-commerce changes are irreversible, and sellers must always do a good job of compliance, keep up with the development of the times, and actively embrace new changes. Otherwise, no matter which platform they are on, they may eventually become runners-up.

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