Sellers are being cheated! They follow others but their accounts are blocked by Amazon

Being copied by others has always been a headache for Amazon sellers. The listings that they have worked hard to operate are copied by others, and the fruits of their labor are directly stolen. The store traffic and sales are also taken away, which is simply unbearable.

In order to protect the fruits of their labor, many sellers choose various methods to follow suit and sell, but they don’t realize that their stores will be directly closed.

The seller’s store was blocked due to copycat sales, and it was difficult to appeal!

Recently, some sellers reported in an industry forum that their stores were closed due to copycat sales, and they even encountered problems with fund appeals.

The seller said that his store was a global account, but because the US site was blocked for copycat sales, the European site with the same set of information was also closed.

Now, 90 days have passed and the seller encountered problems when he wanted to appeal the funds that were frozen on the European site.

Amazon officially replied in an email that it requires verification of relevant information about the deactivation of the seller’s account, which may include identity or supply chain issues related to the matter, and the seller needs to complete a virtual verification through a video interview.

Once video verification is required, it becomes much more difficult to unblock the account.

Some sellers have reported that during the video verification, Amazon reviewers will ask quite a lot of specific questions, such as store registration information, product sales data, supplier information, and the specific sector that the legal person is responsible for in the company.

Amazon's reviewers will even retrieve the seller's store information from the background to conduct review questions, requiring the seller to answer accurately.

At the same time, Amazon's reviewers will carefully observe the changes in the legal person's expression throughout the process to determine the authenticity of the legal person's identity, and will also observe whether there is someone nearby assisting in cheating.

Video verification is a big challenge for sellers , so sellers must be cautious when trying to follow up on sales.

The king of follow-selling in the circle, following 140 sellers in one go!

Previously, a seller complained on a forum that he had discovered a follow-up king, who actually followed more than 100 products and 140 sellers in one go. In the past, follow-ups generally followed one or two products, but this follow-up king simply refreshed the three views of people in the industry. The key is that this seller is a new store located in Nanning.

In response to this, some sellers commented that they were also followed by this seller. This store should be one of the dozens or hundreds of follow-selling stores . The business license of the store may have been purchased and not operated by the real operator. The reason why there are so many sellers and products to follow is probably that the software automatically follows the sales .

A seller who was copied tried many methods but failed.

1. Report a violation ( tried trademark and copyright, but failed )    

2. Report Infringement Entrance

3. Open a case and ask the performance team to handle it
4. After placing the order, I complained, but it was unsuccessful.

Amazon platform responded that since the order number provided by the seller was invalid, it was unable to process the seller’s report and asked the seller to confirm that the order had been successfully completed.

A seller in the industry said that this "King of Follow-Selling" is a professional follow-selling person. The rules are completely reasonable and they all have TM marks. Even if sellers complain, there are professionals to deal with the appeals , so there is basically no way to prevent this situation.
 

Another seller suggested that brand registration and a transparent plan should be done well so that others will not be able to copy your sales.

Rampant follow-selling! Big seller furiously issues 500,000 yuan reward

Some time ago, a Guangdong seller with annual sales of over ten billion yuan offered a reward of 500,000 yuan to find the malicious sellers who followed the sellers after being attacked by the sellers using American zombie accounts .

It is understood that the seller is a big seller in the category on Amazon. Last year, the brand's omni-channel sales reached more than ten billion. This year, the performance has soared, and the sales may reach about 2 billion.

The seller maliciously uses the cannon fodder account to sell at a low price, hoping to bring down the price of the best-selling product, thereby affecting the best-selling flash sale price. In the end, the cannon fodder account will be closed, but it may also cause the best-selling product to miss the flash sale and lose tens of millions.  

The seller said that this behavior is a deliberate prank on peers and is really infuriating.

However, the seller does not dare to directly drive away the copycat sales, because there have been many cases of brand abuse recently. If he drives away the copycat sales, it will be easy to be judged as brand abuse and have the brand removed, which will result in greater losses.

The phenomenon of follow-selling continues despite repeated bans, and some more brazen follow-selling companies even dare to blackmail the original sellers .

Some time ago, a seller reported that he received an email from a follow-selling seller, which said: Give me $1,000. If you don’t give me, I will continue to follow you and the selling price will be very low.

According to the seller, he had already registered his brand with Amazon and didn’t know why this happened. Since he discovered that his product was copied last week, the seller has contacted Amazon no less than 20 times, but the issue has not been resolved.

What should sellers do when they encounter follow-up sales?

Some sellers who are followed by others will choose to find a service provider to stop following their sales after trying various methods without success .

However, service providers generally use two methods to catch up with copycat sales, both of which have certain risks.

The first one is that the service provider uses brands that have participated in the Zero Plan and embeds brand words into the seller’s links to delete the follow-up sales in seconds. This is risky and Amazon is likely to settle the score later.

The second method is that the service provider uses his own buyer account to place a large number of pending orders to the follow-selling, locking the follow-selling inventory. This operation also has hidden dangers. The service provider's buying out and driving out the follow-selling operation is also a violation of the policy and will be judged by Amazon to infringe on the rights of other sellers. After the platform detects a large number of pending but unpaid orders, it will impose penalties, ranging from warnings to account suspension.

Since there are risks in service providers chasing copycats, what effective measures should sellers take when they are copied by others ?

A seller shared his successful method of getting rid of follow-selling. He believes that the best way at this stage is to participate in the transparency program .

If the seller does not have an R mark , you can negotiate with the other party by sending an email and try to get the R mark as soon as possible , because the prerequisite for participating in the transparency plan is to have an R mark .

If the seller has an R mark , he/she still needs to send an email to negotiate with the other party, tell the other party that he/she has an R mark , and then add his/her ASIN to the Transparency Program. He/ she needs to find a Transparency Program manager .

There is another situation. If the seller is temporarily unable to participate in the Transparency Program, has an R mark , and the brand registration category and product are consistent, and the trademark status is normal, he can find a qualified service provider to help file a TRO lawsuit , which can drive away the copycats.

In general, as Black Friday approaches, domestic sellers must also be careful to protect themselves and avoid being copied and affecting their accounts and brands.

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