How Amazon Removed My Selling Privileges Unfairly & How To Appeal
Resources: Get your free Amazon Appeal Letter here.
All my life selling online I had never thought I would receive the dreaded ‘Your selling privileges have been removed’ notification.
The hopes of continuing my online selling business were shattered by Amazon. I recently received an email from Amazon that my seller account had been suspended and that I had to write an appeal if I wanted to be reinstated.
The reason in my opinion was very unfair. Apparently, one customer had given a bad review on my product and also went ahead to contact Amazon stating my products inauthentic.
Amazon told me that the decision was made after a careful assessment of my seller account and products I am selling. My items have all the relevant certifications to prove that they are 100% authentic and that I have all the paperwork to be selling them online.
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I had been selling on Amazon for over 5 years and got some good reviews, achieving an average of 4 out of 5 stars review on my products so the ban notification came as a shock to me.
I thought 5 years had been enough time to build trust with Amazon as a seller but I was very wrong. The Amazon selling conditions favour the buyers to a great extent which is not a bad thing because the sole purpose of any business is customer satisfaction but what about the sellers?
Sellers get their selling privileges removed for absurd reasons which make us sell products with fear yet Amazon doesn’t care. As long as they still have millions of other sellers then banning one account isn’t a problem for them. Now I have to write an appeal concerning a single review which could even be a competitor trying to wipe out competition and to make matters worse Amazon reserves the right to deny the reinstatement appeal and permanently ban my account. So the fate of my business is in the hands of the very people who banned m. This is really heartbreaking for me as a seller because I may have to watch the business I worked so hard to build go down the drains.
How to appeal an Amazon suspension
Step-1: Write To The Support
In this section, you are to write to the support acknowledging the suspension. The email should be short, precise and should not portray you as a victim. Also, it is important to mention you have uncovered the possible reason for the suspension.
EXAMPLE: To whom it may concern, I have been suspended on the grounds of reselling inauthentic goods to which I believe false. We value the integrity of our business and would not compromise it in any way possible, especially with the sale of products that do not meet our very high standards.
We have reviewed the allegations and challenge it on the grounds of incorrectly titling our products with a slightly misleading product description. We believe that our products we source carefully and resell to our valuable customers are 100% authentic.
We have established the cause of the problem and drafted a plan of action to help avoid having the same issue moving forward.
Step-2:
Problem In this section, you should go on and on stating the problem so support can understand you are well aware of whatever you are appealing against. Of course, you should try and paint a picture of a seller that committed the offence without their knowledge.
EXAMPLE
We have identified a problem of our product description labeled as original which we understand, can lead to customers thinking the product is of the highest tier of its range. Despite the price difference from the original product from other resellers, there is still a sense of confusion from the type of product expected to be delivered. This is a case of misunderstanding with the service we are expected to provide and the product we actually deliver.
Step 3: Plan of Action Considered the most important step, tell support what you intend to do to ensure the incident does not recur. Ensure your plans of action are feasible and practical enough.
EXAMPLE: We propose a plan of action by improving the product listing descriptions and titles, clearly specifying the product that is being sold. By including official replica’ to both the title and description will avoid any further confusion regarding the product on sale. We will also improve our descriptions to include clearer definitions and explain that this is the lower tier product on the original range accompanied with photo comparisons with the original products and explain the differences.
We hope that this removes us from the suspended list as we believe that our products comply with the rules, but can be improved with some improvements that are easily implemented.
We believe that clearer product titling and descriptions will avoid this from happening again in the future.
We take great pride in the service we provide to our valuable customers and we hope you can understand our plan of action moving forward.
If your selling privileges have been removed as well, leave a comment below and share your story with us.