What to Do If your Amazon Seller Account has been Suspended?

Common Tips to Make a Plan of Action (POA) to Reinstate Your Account

Ending up with a suspended Amazon seller account is one of the greatest worries for sellers. Getting an email from the Amazon Seller Performance Team informing you that your account has been suspended can be very intimidating. Unluckily, the reality is that Amazon owns its platform and “politely” allows us access to its buyers—so we have to play by the company’s rules.

In reality, Amazon can temporarily or permanently suspend your selling privileges at any time for any planned or unintentional violation of Amazon’ terms of Service (TOS).

On the other hand, all is not lost on a suspended Amazon seller account. You CAN do a few things about it.

Possible Performance Pitfalls

Additionally, sticking to Amazon’s TOS and general guidelines, sellers should operate within the company’s tightly monitored performance metrics that address the following:

• High order defect rates.
• Late Shipments.
• Pre-fulfillment cancellations
• Delays in responding to various customer inquiries
• Providing valid tracking numbers to buyers

Moreover, the actual quality of your products also gets measured under the Amazon microscope regarding product security complaints, trademark infringements, product expiration dates as well as allegations of selling inauthentic or counterfeit products.

It’s clear that the numbers of problems sellers should clear to sell on the world’s major e-commerce platform are many and varied.

If your account gets suspended, the mere method you can get it re-instated is by completing a Plan of Action (POA) document. Within the POA, you must recognize and resolve the particular issue(s) Amazon alleges that led to your suspended Amazon seller account. Additionally, you should also clarify the concrete actions you will take to avoid similar situations in the future.

Recognize Your Audience at Amazon

Before we talk about POA particulars, it’s vital to know the context of Amazon’s Seller Support and Performance Team resources.

Amazon persists to apply artificial intelligence and machine-learning software to automate as much interaction as probable with us sellers. More and more of our connections with Amazon are with programming bots and software interfaces rather than actual humans.

If you doubt that fact, go forward and submit a request to eradicate recent negative customer feedback posting about your seller account. You’ll notice that the instant responses you obtain are automatically rejected or approved by software.

Furthermore, it’s been my experience that in more than a dozen dealings with Amazon’s Seller Performance Team, almost all of those interactions have been with individuals based in India.

Thus, within that context, here are a few things to keep in mind when preparing your POA:

• Be Clear: You are trying to convince someone to reinstate your account. Write unmistakably in an outline format with bullets and paragraph breaks to increase readability and clarity.
• Prevent ambiguous references: Don’t comprise US-specific examples of regional news events, organizations (i.e., the NBA, ACLU, AFL-CIO,) or personalities that might puzzle the reviewer.
• Use brief Language:  Write short, easy declarative sentences that are simple to know and read. Avoid needless clauses, punctuation, and complexity in your description.

Making a Plan of Action

Beyond those contextual suggestions, here are some basics to think when completing a POA submission for restoring your suspended Amazon seller account:

• Carefully review the email from Amazon that illustrates the alleged conduct attributed to your account to know accurately why your privileges were revoked fully.
• Review your current inventory management, fulfillment protocols, and customer service practices to recognize where the breakdown occurred.
• If there isn’t a clear breakdown, then recognize best practices that you can implement since Amazon expects you to take liability for the issue. Search the Amazon Seller Forum for alike instances to help give you some ideas in this regard.

Once the issue and solution are recognized, your POA requires to include the following components:

• An apology where you recognize the privilege of selling on Amazon and admit full liability for the issue in question and its resolution.
• A clarification of how the initial negative incident occurred.
• The actions you took on behalf of the customer or particular policy violation to fix that primary incident.

Most significantly, your future steps going forward to avoid a repeat of the issue.

Within the body of the suspension email, you obtained there will be a “Submit Appeal” button that will connect you to the POA form where you can enter your reinstatement request based on the assistance mentioned above.

There is no assurance once you submit the appeal that your suspended Amazon seller account will be reinitiated. Be tolerant & wait a couple of weeks. If you don’t listen to anything by then, think to open a case with seller support to try and jumpstart the review. You can also be in touch with an Expert who specializes in Amazon Account reinstatement to look for a resolution with Amazon.

Learn From the Experience

Amazon understands that its success counts on great sellers so they won’t keep you suspended if your Plan of Action is persuasive and shows them that you won’t make similar mistakes. That said, there is no assurance here — Amazon has permanently banned sellers before, to enhance your chances of suspension removal by taking the time to make the best appeal you can submit.

If your appeal is accepted and your selling privileges are reinstated, take measures to prevent suspension in the future. Amazon sets up their seller standards to guarantee the satisfaction of buyers, so following their rules won’t just let you keep selling— it will also help you make positive customer experiences, which in turn prompt your company’s growth.

Amazon is a flourishing, but the strict marketplace. Maintain a logical understanding of their policies, and you’ll be able to steer clear of suspension by constantly checking whether you’re following the rules.