A new type of "account blocking behavior"? A group of sellers were caught

Troubled times! Every peak season will see a large number of account bans ...

Recently, cross-border sellers have clearly felt that Amazon has been blocking their accounts more frequently. Recently, another seller said that his account was blocked, and the trigger was a familiar operation : refurbishment.

In addition to the account suspension caused by this behavior, fake orders, illegal mergers and variants, infringements, etc. are also being severely cracked down by the platform! In fact, many behaviors of sellers today are not allowed by the Amazon platform. Sellers also need to be wary of the platform's later settlement, otherwise they will suffer a big loss if they are not careful.

A new type of "account blocking behavior"? Another batch of Amazon sellers have been hit

Renovation has always been one of the important ways for many Amazon sellers to "solve problems". For example: the old link has poor sales and the listing performance is very poor. The seller's renovation operation can turn the old link into a new link, thereby obtaining traffic support from the platform; the old link has too many negative reviews and the sales are bleak, and the negative reviews can be removed after renovation; the link is removed due to various violations such as infringement, and you want to save the cost of relocation and relabeling? Renovation can also achieve the goal...

Renovation sounds good, but it is definitely risky. Recently, many sellers who have done renovations have received account suspension notices from the platform! The following is part of the email ↓↓↓

Your Amazon seller account has been deactivated and your listings have been removed because we found you to have violated our policies. Funds will not be transferred to you during this time, but will remain in your account . We took this action because we found that you or someone acting on your behalf requested to change an ASIN to a different ASIN that does not match the product corresponding to the current ASIN.

Many sellers are trembling with fear and are also a little confused about this phenomenon: Will refurbished stores also be shut down? Is this a new type of account suspension behavior?

One of the sellers said: I always thought that renovation was feasible, and the service provider also said that it was no problem and the platform would not block the account, so I carried out renovations many times. Now I dare not do it again. At the same time, I am very worried that the store has been targeted by the platform and will be shut down next ...

In fact, many things that generally require service providers are not compliant on the Amazon platform. Refurbishment is a kind of illegal behavior of "taking advantage of loopholes". Many service providers will say that refurbishment is a safe operation. When problems arise in the seller's store, they will either find an excuse that this is a new rule of the platform, or simply ignore people.

Is it difficult to file a complaint after registration for renovation?! The effect of renovation is getting smaller and smaller

The statement that "refurbishment is a new type of account suspension behavior" is actually not accurate. The phenomenon of refurbishment suspension has always existed, but it is particularly common this year. Yi Enjun learned that refurbishment and branding are likely to be scanned by the platform ; after refurbishing a listing that has already gone bad , the chance of being banned by the platform will be even greater.

Is it difficult to appeal after a refurbishment registration? Sellers have different feedback. It is understood that some people successfully appealed and registered again within a few days. Some people also succeeded in their appeals directly. Industry insiders said that the difficulty of appealing should be closely related to the degree of violation of the seller and the content of the appeal.

It is understood that with the strict enforcement of the platform, the effect of renovation is actually getting worse and worse, and most of the time it is actually useless work.

"The effect of refurbishment is not great. The refurbished ASINs are not necessarily easier to promote than the previous ASINs. Many of them have even seen a decline in traffic after refurbishment. In addition, the platform is now strictly enforcing the rules, so refurbishment is actually not worth the cost." The seller Xiao Zhang (pseudonym) said that the original intention of the refurbishment was to obtain traffic support for new products and thus increase sales. After the refurbishment, sales were actually much lower than before the refurbishment, and even spending a lot of money on advertising could not boost them.

Want to take advantage of the VINE Project? Beware of the consequences

With the recent implementation of Amazon VINE’s new policy, a new type of violation is expected to spread.

It is understood that starting from October 19, Amazon Vine program added two new tiered prices of $0 and $75. The registration fee is determined by the number of registered products for each parent ASIN. In detail:

$0 – Up to 2 items per parent ASIN can be registered for free in the Vine program and up to 2 reviews can be obtained for free;

$75 – Up to 10 Vine reviews when 3-10 items are registered for one parent ASIN.

In response to this, many sellers have come up with various ways to take advantage of the platform, such as splitting up the listings of new products with multiple variations to get more reviews, and then merging them together; or first choosing a $0 offer for a listing, and after getting two reviews, they think it is good, and then want to increase the offer to $75 or $200 for the listing...

However, these behaviors are not allowed by the platform, so sellers should still operate with caution.

The platform cracks down on various violations

It can be found that Amazon's efforts to crack down on violations this year are beyond imagination, especially during the peak season. Stores that have committed violations such as brushing orders, merging zombie listings , refurbishing listings , and selling infringing products have been directly frozen by Amazon . Not only can the funds not be transferred out, but the inventory has also been locked and cannot be moved .

For example, illegal merging behavior, I believe that all categories are full of this kind of black technology. Even now, when the peak season is approaching, there are still people who ignore the platform's strict inspection and merge tens of thousands of comments at once. After being repeatedly split, they continue to merge them the next day ! However, this behavior is bound to be punished by the platform, with a slight demotion or even delisting.

One of the sellers who was affected said that he had received a performance notification some time ago stating that the variants had been split illegally, and the sales volume of the products had plummeted after the split; another seller's store had just been suspended for illegally merging variants, all links had been removed, and there was nearly 100,000 RMB worth of inventory. The chance of filing a complaint was almost zero, and even the service provider was of no help.

As for fake orders, the latest news shows that Amazon will closely monitor low-price reviews from FB . Once a large number of high-discount orders from FB are found, the link will be demoted, and in serious cases, a warning or even account suspension will be issued. In particular, it is necessary to avoid influencers who are blacklisted by Amazon .

When it comes to fake orders, Amazon's crackdown is quite strong. Recently, Amazon officially announced the establishment of a new alliance . Members will jointly manage online review hosting and share methods for detecting fake reviews, aiming to eliminate the problem of fake reviews at the source.  

In the view of sellers who insist on white hat operations, various non-compliant operations such as so-called refurbished listings , illegal mergers, and fake orders will undoubtedly pose hidden dangers to the operation of sellers' stores. Although it is unclear when the thunder will burst, Amazon will definitely settle the accounts later. Sellers should do things within the rules allowed by Amazon and first ensure the security of the store and links. This is the right way.

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