Amazon seller account suspended

Last update November 12, 2023

Overview

Due to voluntary or inadvertent Amazon policy violations, sellers can stumble into Amazon account suspension.

For an Amazon seller, this isn’t the best scenario. Juggle the account reinstatement could be tough, especially if you aren’t aware of the reason why you have been suspended. In this article, we will analyze cases in which sellers can get a suspension and how to deal with that.

Let’s go through it together!

Amazon seller account suspension: reasons

Being a seller on Amazon might become your full-time job, as well as your major source of income. So, getting the notification of having your seller account suspended can become one of your worst nightmares ever.

First things first, Amazon’s main principle is “Customer Obsession”, which means that customers are the top priority. They certainly pay attention to the competition, but customers are on the top of the list.

This leads to a series of actions or steps that are taken in order to gain the total trust of their customers, such as:

• Rigorously understand and anticipate their needs
• Letting them know they matter therefore their feedback is priceless
• Creating a safe place where to buy

Amazon has strict selling policies that must be followed to the letter, and by following them you need to don’t get confused between an Amazon account suspension and a listing suppression, but we’ll get to that later.

Now, let’s focus on why your account has been suspended.

Suspensions can happen:

1) Violating of the selling policies, Conditions of Use, and Seller Code of Conduct

As we were saying before, Amazon has very strict selling policies and sometimes it’s easy to miss something, especially because they periodically update them.

As a seller, you’re required to regularly review their policies, otherwise, you most likely get suspended or your listings may be canceled.

Some of the unfair activities can be:

• Increasing the price of a product after the order is confirmed
• Buying Amazon Reviews or bribe buyers in order to have positive reviews
• Having multiple Selling Accounts for different businesses

2) Having poor selling performance

If you’re selling on Amazon, you should totally keep tabs on your Account Health. There are four important performance metrics that require your attention on a daily basis:

• ODR (Order Defect Rate): <1%
• PCR (Pre-Fulfilment Cancel Rate): <2/2.5
• LSR (Late Shipment Rate): <4%
• VTR (Valid Tracking Rate): >95%

Having a poor selling performance doesn’t necessarily mean that your account will automatically get suspended, but it is important to keep an eye on the metrics because they’ll weigh on the decision of getting banned if you violate the rules.

3) Selling restricted products

According to its policy, Amazon must protect its customers so they can buy safely on Amazon. If you decide to sell goods on this site, you should consider reading carefully the Restricted Products Help pages, in order to avoid any kind of trouble.

Some of the restricted products are:

• Alcohol
• Animal and Animal-Related Products
• Drugs and drug paraphernalia
• Weapons
• Food and Beverage
• Tobacco and Tobacco-Related Products

Keep in mind that some categories require you to have some sort of approval before listing.

For instance, in order to sell fidget spinners, you must submit to child-safety@amazon.com. your personal information, as well as a list of Fidget Spinner ASINs you are applying to sell and other documentation.

Amazon suppressed listing

When you’re listing on Amazon, you must meet certain standards, otherwise, it won’t be shown up in search results and customers won’t be able to see and buy your products.

If some listings are incomplete, they can also be suppressed. For example, some of the child listings in shoes or jewelry that lack Department value, size, etc. A common mistake could be associate with your product with the wrong Node ID or trying to sell items with an invalid GTIN.

Discover if you are eligible to sell as GTIN exempted

The good news is that suppressed listings can be fixed more easily and it takes less time than having your account reinstated. If one of your listings has been suppressed, you should check this page and you’ll have all the information you need to have it visible again.

How to reactivate a suspended Amazon Seller account

By this step, you should have figured out what you did wrong. If not, we recommend you check out the email that Amazon sent to you. Chances are they’ll indicate to you exactly why your account is being suspended. If not, it’s advised to read all the policies and have a self-judgment.

After that, you must know that you can submit a PoA (Plan of Action) and write an appeal letter. But keep in mind, you only have 17 days to submit your first appeal. In order to write a good PoA, you should remember to:

• Be professional – no one wants to hear your excuses full of emotions.
• Don’t blame customers – this can be a “shooting yourself in the foot” situation. Remember that Amazon holds dear customers.
• Don’t write a long letter – keep it short, and try to include as much pertinent information as possible.
• Make sure you reread what you wrote – this might help you to identify possible grammatical errors.

How long does the reinstatement take?

The department that deals with account suspensions and reinstatements is Seller Performance. Try to understand that they are inundated with thousands of appeals on a daily basis so it’s not guaranteed that they’ll reply the same day you sent the letter.

Usually, it takes about 48 hours to get a response, but in the same cases it might take up to 60 days. Just be patient and stay calm, even though it’s pretty upsetting.

Remember that contacting Seller support won’t get you anywhere. The only department that deals with these kinds of things is Seller Performance, and no, they do not have a phone number.

What to do after getting reinstated

While you’re waiting, don’t try to create a new seller account, even if it’s tempting. We highly encourage you to learn from the experience and wait for your main account to be reinstated, otherwise, your second account might get suspended as well.

In order to create another account, you have to be very sneaky and even if you succeed, it’s really hard to fool this multi-billionaire company. If your appeal is accepted and you’re back on track, just learn to avoid suspension in the future and don’t have additional listings removed.

If you continue being suspended, it can turn into a ban, which means you’re gone for good. In fact, it’s quite rare to hear about Amazon changing its mind on banned accounts. Once banned, you can start looking for another place to sell.

Remember that Amazon only wants the best for its customers, and it’s your job to improve your seller skills and learn from past failures and mistakes.

Rely on Nembol to bulk list on Amazon

Nembol is an easy app designed to help multichannel retailers to sell on multiple channels effortlessly, by bulk-listing their products keeping quantity synced across multiple channels.

In case of a suspension, Nembol can help you quickly populate your new account with a backup of products stored in your Nembol account.

And there’s no need to worry: Nembol uses the official channel APIs for Listing Software, so using Nembol to sell on Amazon is totally safe!