Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement:-

We understand how much devastation can Amazon Seller Account Suspension do to your business. For many of you, this (Amazon) marketplace can be your only source of income. Fortunately, Amazon gives a chance to appeal their decision. Whether you do not adhere to Section 3 of Amazon’s Business Agreement or you did not follow Amazon Condition Guidelines or you were accused of selling counterfeit items or your late shipment rate was too high, you have still got a chance to have your Amazon account reinstated. Well-written appeal letters can do magic here.

What’s the difference?

• Suspension means you still have a chance to appeal. You’ll need to work on a plan of action.
• Denied means your appeal was rejected but you still have a chance to submit a revised plan of action.
• Banned is the worst scenario of the three. Basically, you’re out of there. Your appeal has failed more than once, and Amazon will no longer read your emails.

The various reason for the suspension of the account are:-

• Order Defect Rate
• Late Shipment/dispatch rate
• Pre-fulfillment cancellation rate
• Valid Tracking Rate
• Intellectual Property Rights Complaints
• Counterfeit Complaints
• Product Authenticity Complaints
• Product Condition Complaints
• Restricted Products Complaints
• Expired Products Complaints
• Listing Policy Violation
• Review Manipulation
• Related Account

Order Defect Rate:-

The Order Defect Rate (ODR) is a key measure of your ability to provide a good customer experience. It’s all orders with a defect (defined below) as a percentage of total orders during a given 60-day time period.

An order has a defect if it results in negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim that is not denied, or a credit card chargeback.

Our policy is that sellers maintain an ODR under 1% in order to sell on Amazon. An ODR above 1% may result in account deactivation.

Defect Type	Percentage of Orders with a Defect	Count of Orders with a Defect
Negative Feedback	N/A	(0)
A-to-z Guarantee claims	N/A	(0)
Chargeback claims	N/A	(0)

Late Dispatch Rate:-

The Late Shipment Rate (LSR) is all orders with a ship confirmation that is completed after the expected ship date as a percentage of total orders over both a 10-day or 30-day period. Late Shipment Rate only applies to seller-fulfilled orders. It’s important to confirm the shipment of orders by the expected ship date so that customers can see the status of their shipped orders online. Orders that are shipped confirmed late may lead to increased claims, negative feedback, and/or customer contacts and negatively impact customer experience. For orders shipped through Amazon Easy Ship, ship confirmation happens automatically when Amazon picks up the orders. The Amazon policy is that sellers maintain the Late Shipment Rate under 4% in order to sell on Amazon. The Late Shipment Rate above 4% may result in account deactivation.

The reason for Late Shipment Rate can be various reasons which can be the seller’s fault and also due to unavoidable circumstances. The sellers have to be prepared for any challenges that led to a high Late Shipment Rate. The Plan of Action(POA) should contain a detailed analysis that led to the delay in the order and also an assurance that how these mistakes are avoided in the future.

Pre-fulfillment cancel rate:-

The Cancellation Rate (CR) is all you canceled orders as a percentage of total orders during a given 7-day time period. The cancellation rate only applies to seller-fulfilled orders. This metric includes all order cancellations initiated by the seller, or when an order is canceled automatically by Amazon because you have not shipped and ship-confirmed the order within 24 hours of the Estimated Ship Date, with the exception of those that are requested by the customer using the order-cancellation options in their Amazon account. Pending orders that are canceled by the customer directly on Amazon are not included. Amazon policy is that sellers maintain a Cancellation Rate under 2.5% in order to sell on Amazon. A Cancellation Rate above 2.5% may result in account deactivation.

The reason for Cancellation Rate can be various reasons which can be the seller’s fault and also due to unavoidable circumstances. The sellers have to be prepared for any challenges that led to a high Cancellation Rate. The Plan of Action should contain a detailed analysis that led to the delay in the order and also an assurance that how these mistakes are avoided in the future.

Valid Tracking Rate:-

Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) measures how often you use valid tracking numbers on your orders. Amazon customers depend on tracking numbers to find out where their orders are and when they can expect to receive them. The Valid Tracking Rate is a performance metric that reflects those expectations. Below are the requirements for a Valid Tracking Rate:

Sellers must maintain a Valid Tracking Rate greater than or equal to 95%. A Valid Tracking Rate below 95% in a product category can result in restrictions on your ability to sell non-FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) items within that category. This can also affect your eligibility to participate in Premium Shipping and guaranteed delivery.
Valid Tracking Rate includes all shipments with a valid tracking number, represented as a percentage of total shipments over a 30-day period.
VTR only applies to seller-fulfilled orders.
Note: Performance targets for Premium Shipping orders vary from the above.
Calculating Valid Tracking Rate-
To calculate this metric, we take the number of packages you ship with a valid tracking number and divide it by the total number of packages you have shipped and confirmed. Valid Tracking Rate is expressed as a percentage.

For example, if you confirmed shipment for 200 packages, and 190 of those packages had a valid tracking number, your Valid Tracking Rate would be 95% (190 ÷ 200 = .95 or 95%).

We use promised delivery date to determine which orders are included in the performance metric. Your Valid Tracking Rate has a two-week latency period, which allows the data enough time to be statistically relevant.

The following items are not included in the VTR calculation:-

Freight items:- Domestic items shipped by freight with a carrier not integrated with Amazon.
Small/Flat items:- Domestic items (such as screen protectors and greeting cards) that cost less than $10 (including shipping charges) and are shipped in Standard Mail envelopes or First Class Mail envelopes.
International shipments (excluding China-based sellers): Items ordered on Amazon but shipped to a delivery address outside the country where the seller is based.

-Valid Tracking Rate FAQ:-
Valid Tracking Rate is a performance metric that measures how often you use valid tracking numbers on orders. This metric reflects Amazon customers’ expectations that they should be able to find out where their orders are and when they will receive them.

What are the benefits of providing tracking information?

Providing valid tracking numbers with all your shipments has a number of benefits:

Fewer buyer contacts:- Providing tracking numbers can help reduce the amount of time you spend answering shipping-related questions.
Decreased order defects: The Order Defect Rate for untracked shipments is 1.7 times greater than the rate for tracked shipments.
Improved seller feedback ratings: Buyers tell us that being able to track their packages is one of the main reasons to leave positive feedback.
Reduced lost shipment costs: Tracking can significantly reduce the costs associated with a lost shipment. If a package is lost in transit, you can use tracking to find out where it was lost and then determine responsibility.

Intellectual property for Rights Owner:-

Amazon is dedicated to ensuring that products on its marketplaces do not violate or infringe a Rights Owner’s intellectual property (IP)
rights. Rights Owners can report infringing content they find on Amazon and share answers to frequently asked questions on how Amazon handles infringement complaints. A Rights Owner includes any person (such as a brand, a seller, a customer or any third party) who legitimately owns intellectual property rights for the product in question.

To learn more about intellectual property rights, please visit your local intellectual property office. Additionally, this page will review examples of trademark, copyright, and patents.

If you are a Rights Owner with a registered trademark, you may be eligible to enroll your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry. Amazon Brand Registry provides access to powerful tools including proprietary text and image search, predictive automation based on your reports of suspected intellectual property rights violations, and increased authority over product listings with your brand name.
Reporting Infringement
To submit a notice of IP infringement, you must be the Rights Owner who owns the IP being reported or an agent with permission from the Rights Owner to submit notices on his or her behalf. Do not forget to provide your contact details (name, address, phone number, email address, secondary contact details) when you report infringement.

If your brand is enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, you can submit a report via the Report a Violation (RAV) tool or through our Report Infringement form. Rights Owners who do not have a brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry can submit via the Report Infringement form. In addition, it is a requirement that a notice submitter is logged into an Amazon account in order to use the Report Infringement form or Brand Registry’s RAV tool. For the India marketplace, the Grievance Officer can also be contacted via email to report infringement.

You can submit a trademark, copyright, patent, or another IP claim.

You should include the following information in your report:

Specific identification of the IP you believe is infringed: trademark, copyright, or patent registration number; the written description of or link to copyrighted work; etc. Identifying the specific ASIN/listing which is the subject matter of violation would be very useful.
Nature of infringement (whether infringement occurs on the physical product, physical product packaging, the image on the product detail page, or text on the product detail page).

List of infringing products (either Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) or URLs for the product detail page of the specified product). If you believe that only a subset of sellers are infringing, and you are not accusing the entire product detail page, click the checkbox next to the name of each seller you are reporting in the Report Infringement form or RAV.
Any additional information that will help Amazon in processing your complaint (such as order IDs for any test buys on the products you are reporting).
Your contact details (name, address, phone number, email address, and secondary contact details that we can share with affected sellers. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Counterfeit Complaints:-

Your intellectual property is important, so if you’ve found a seller on Amazon who copies your branding, steals your patented designs, or sells counterfeits of your product online, then it’s time to act and Red Points is here to help.

As one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world, it’s logical that Amazon suffers a counterfeiting problem caused by third-party sellers. This makes removing counterfeits from Amazon a big headache for any brand protection employee. Even with clear anti-counterfeiting policies, tools such as the new Amazon Project Zero, and its claims of fighting against the fake sellers, thousands of counterfeited products are still sold on Amazon each day.

If you found a counterfeit of any of your products or any other form of IP infringement on Amazon we invite you to follow this simple step by step guide, we hope it will prove helpful for you to report IP infringements on Amazon and have your products’ counterfeits removed from the platform.

How to remove a counterfeit from Amazon

Step 1 – Identify what intellectual property is being infringed on Amazon
Your first step will be to identify exactly what intellectual property (IP) is being infringed. In this section, you’ll find a quick distinction between copyright, trademark and counterfeit, and patents. For a more detailed explanation, Amazon has provided a more detailed clarification of legal descriptions.

Copyrights
Copyright protects original, artistic work. This may include artwork like paintings, books and other written material, videos or movies, songs or musicals, video games, and so on.

Trademarks and counterfeiting
A trademark is used by a company to identify the goods and services it provides. It exists as a word, a symbol or design, or a combination of these.

Counterfeiting is a form of trademark infringement, in which products are created as illegal copies of registered trademarks, intended to deceive customers. This does not, however, include replicas or look-alike products, in which the registered trademark is omitted from the product or the packaging.

Patents
Utility patents protect inventions, like new machines or processes. Design patents are for the aesthetic, ornamental aspects of creation.

This information is required to prepare your account and documentation for the infringement report.

Amazon product authenticity complaints:-

Ensuring product authenticity and quality
Customers trust that they can always buy with confidence on Amazon. As a seller, it’s important to understand Amazon’s guidelines on product quality and authenticity.

Reviewing and complying with the guidelines below will help you keep your account in good health. For more information, see:

Products and Listings
Condition Guidelines
Preventing product condition issues
Please take a moment to learn about what constitutes intellectual property law and review our guidelines below.

Types of violations
Amazon enforces sellers who violate our selling policies. Violations related to product authenticity are categorized as intellectual property violations. Issues with the overall product quality, including products that do not match their descriptions, can be categorized as product condition violations.

Intellectual property violation

Amazon respects the intellectual property rights of others. As a seller, you are responsible for ensuring that the products you sell on Amazon comply with all applicable laws and regulations are authorized for sale or re-sale and that they do not violate intellectual property rights such as copyrights, patents, trademarks, and rights of publicity.

One must also ensure that products being sold in the marketplace have legitimate and verifiable invoices unless the seller is the brand owner or a manufacturer.

Examples of intellectual property violations:

Selling your own product that looks identical to a trademarked product without the authorization of the trademark owner (also known as “counterfeiting”)
Using another party’s copyrighted content on the packaging of your product or on the product detail page without the copyright owner’s authorization
Listing another brand’s product under your own brand name without authorization documents to prove it
To learn more about intellectual property violations, see Amazon’s Intellectual Property Policy.

Product condition violations:

The product you list and ship must exactly match the description, pictures, and all other information on the product detail page. Items must be delivered to the buyer in the condition described on the product detail page without any damage or defects.
Enforcement
Based on the severity of a policy violation, Amazon may take the following actions:

Remove your listings
Limit, suspend, or block your ability to list and sell
Remove or dispose of your FBA inventory
Withhold your payments as per applicable laws
Additionally, we have implemented listing restrictions for certain brands, ASINs, and categories. Approval is required to list under brands, ASINs or categories with listing restrictions. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Product Condition Complaints:-

Amazon Account Reinstatement Against Conditions Complaints
A customer complains about the condition of the product you sell saying it’s either damaged or old product is sold as new.

You were working fine for years and now suddenly your Amazon account is suspended due to consecutive conditions complaint. What do you do now? That’s where Amazon Helpline comes into play.
The number one reason for Amazon account suspensions and de-activations are product condition complaints or inauthenticity complaints by buyers.

The reason could be as innocent as the buyers weren’t satisfied with the quality of the product or received a damaged piece to something sinister like competitor merchants fake complaining about your products.

Whatever be the reason for these product complaints, the solution for revoking your Amazon account suspension is singular. Get Amazon Helpline at your side and fight your case in front of Amazon.

Once you hire our services, we go into research mode at the same hour and find out the exact cause for the complaints. What Amazon needs from you is a solid Plan of Action (PoA) from you, and we will provide exactly that. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Restricted Products Complaints:-

Introduction:-
As a seller on Amazon, you acknowledge and agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations and with Amazon policies.

We provide this material for informational purposes only and it is not intended as legal advice in any manner whatsoever. We encourage you to consult with your legal counsel if you have questions about the laws and regulations concerning your products.

You should carefully review the “Examples of Prohibited Product Listing” sections in each product category shown below before listing your products on www. amazon.in (“Website”). In addition, there are restrictions on the import and export of many products.

Consequences for Violations:-
Listing of products in violation of Amazon’s policies or violation of applicable laws and regulations may result in actions, such as:

1.Cancellation of listing
2.Limits on listing privileges
3.Suspension of listing privileges
4.Removal of your listing privileges
5.Termination of your agreement and such other arrangement with Amazon.
6.Informing the relevant governmental, legal, and regulatory authorities for necessary action Amazon reserves the right to make judgments in its sole discretion about whether or not a listing is appropriate and whether the same is in contravention of Amazon’s policy. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

AMAZON EXPIRED ITEMS SUSPENSION:-

While sellers usually take time to update their stock levels, most Amazon sellers fail to “review current Amazon rules for expired products, to verify compliance properly, evaluate condition, monitor the expiration date, and check current Amazon Safety Guidelines.” This lack of attention can result in a multitude of problems, and result in an account suspension.

Why Should You Care?

When an Amazon seller sends expired inventory to customers, Amazon sees that as a behavior right up there with endangering buyers’ safety by selling items with expiration dates and is no longer usable. It is trash and Amazon want better for its customers, so chances are you’re breaking the rules and putting your account in jeopardy, and your listing may be shut down,

Your product certainly has obtained complaints concerning the alleged Amazon protection policy violation. Here are the possible violations to look out for:

• Passed / too close to the expiration date
• Stale taste
• Texture, coloration, and different product characteristic feature indicates old age

Tips Which Will Help Reduce the Chance For Expired Item Suspension:

Besides brushing up and performing a safety risk assessment on your Amazon seller account, you should still and act quickly to do the following:

• Track your expiration dates by inbound shipment. And ensure that old items are sold out before new products are sent into the warehouse.
• Sticker every individual piece with an expiry date. Amazon asks for a large type because it is machine-readable and inline can dramatically improve the chances that old, expired inventory will not be sold to a customer.
• When your items are within days of expiration, pull them from the warehouse; and immediately discard all items that are past the expiration date (NB: make sure your limits for shelf life match Amazon’s) (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)
• Check that boxes for perishable items are in perfect condition and discard anything that looks suspicious.
• Check the storage conditions (temperature, humidity, light, etc.) to ensure proper service life and shelf life.
  Performing a normal test of your stock and matching it against your inventory available for sale.
  Your Listing Has Been Removed. Now What?

If you have been suspended for Expired item complaints, you need to prepare a proper Amazon plan of action and come up with tangible, long-term solutions to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
Successful appeal and plan of action if an expired item suspension occurred.

Successful appeal and plan of action if an expired item suspension occurred.
It’s not unusual for buyers to complain about products being past their expiry date; Irrespective of your sub-reason type, it is highly advisable to be more positive in your approach by stating the root causes first. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Listing Policy Violation:-

Amazon encourages sellers to report seller violations of Amazon’s policies or applicable law. To report a violation:

1. Go to Report a violation
2. Select Report a violation and then provide all the relevant information so that we can conduct an investigation. To facilitate an investigation, be sure to include the following information in your complaint, as applicable:-
   -The ASIN/ISBN of the item’s detail page and the product title
   -The store or business name of the seller you are reporting
   -Your order ID
   -A concise explanation of the violationReport listing abuseIf you believe that a seller has violated Amazon’s product detail page rules or ASIN creation policy you can report this.
3. Go to contact us.
4. Select Report listing abuse and provide the ASIN.(s) you are reporting along with all relevant information, so we can conduct an investigation.
   All reports are thoroughly investigated by our team. For privacy reasons, the results of our investigations can not be disclosed, but we will take any disciplinary actions we find appropriate.Report a buyer violationIf you are having trouble with a buyer or a buyer’s order, you can report it:
   Go to contact us.
   2.Select Other.
   3.Select Report a violation.
   4.Enter the appropriate information.

To sum it up, Amazon selling privileges are removed for three reasons:–

1. Amazon feels your performance is taking a dive through the metrics. They want to operate a competitive marketplace that values good customer service.
2. You have violated Amazon’s policies. Remember its Amazon’s marketplace and each and every seller have to abide by their rules.
3. Amazon connects your account with another suspended account that was used to sell in Amazon.

How to Reinstate Amazon Seller Account?

When you get suspended, you can’t reach out to Amazon suspension help. One of the things that you have to understand is that Amazon has suspended your account for a reason. It’s guaranteed that you will have to deal with all of this on your own.

Understand the main cause of your suspension.

The first thing that you have to do is to understand why your account was suspended in the first place. If you’re not able to do this, you’ll have trouble moving forward. If you truly want to succeed in creating your plan of action, you have to make sure that you get the first step right.

Read Amazon’s suspension notice.

When Amazon suspends your seller account, they will indicate a reason as to why your account was suspended. Don’t worry, your account won’t just be suspended for no reason. This means that you’re guaranteed that Amazon has really taken into consideration the reason why your account was flagged. You can also check the possible reasons stated here to double-check.

Review your seller information.

It’s not enough that you rely on Amazon’s suspension notice when you’re trying to learn about the cause of your suspension. You also have to review your seller information and see if there is something wrong with your listings, products, or customer reviews. You can view this information in the “Customer Metrics” section of your seller account.

Create a plan of action.

You can’t reinstate your Amazon seller account without a suspension appeal letter. This letter will be the backbone of the reinstatement process. After an investigation and data gathering, you now have to move forward with creating your plan of action.

Plan of Action: What Does This Mean and Include?

A plan of action (POA) is what you include in your suspension letters. It’s a way for you to reinstate your Amazon seller account. According to Amazon’s guidelines, your POA should address the following:

• The root cause that led to the issue.
• The actions you will take to resolve the issue.
• The steps that you will take to prevent the same issue from happening.

How to write a plan of action?

When writing your plan of action, you have to make sure that you’re following the guidelines set by Amazon. After all, you’re trying to appeal, so you must consider that they have the upper hand. You must put a lot of effort into what your plan of action will be. Here are the things that you have to consider when writing your plan of action. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Clarity and conciseness:-

It’s perfectly understandable to want to say a lot in your appeal letter. However, it’s best that you make sure that you keep it short and clear. Amazon receives thousands of appeal letters every day. The last thing that Amazon would like to read is a lengthy explanation and unnecessary rants.

With that, it’s best that you keep the content very clear and concise. State just what is asked of you, particularly the root cause, actions you’ll take to resolve the issue, and the steps you’re going to take to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Be professional:-

For most sellers, Amazon has become their monthly source of income. They might even have staff that they need to pay. You might be one of these sellers who rely on your Amazon online business for your monthly income. With that, it’s very much understandable for you to be emotional about the suspension. However, it’s not exactly a very good idea to include a lot of emotion in your letter.

If you want to come up with an effective suspension appeal letter, you have to make sure that you have fully detached from your emotions when you’re writing. This makes everything more professional and fact-based, rather than something that’s driven by emotion. If you cannot fully dissociate from your emotions, you can hire an agency that’s had experience with writing suspension appeal letters. In this way, you’re sure that everything will be written in a professional manner.

Provide an explanation for everything:-

The moment that you receive your suspension notification, you’ll also know of the reasons why your account got suspended. Your appeal letter should address everything in that suspension letter if you want to reinstate your Amazon seller account.

You can be as in-depth as much as you want, but make sure that you’ll also be as concise and clear when making your point. Through your explanation, you’re showing Amazon that you’ve fully understood what has happened and will avoid the same thing from happening all over again.

It should be clear that there is a very thin line between providing your explanation and being defensive about the situation. The use of a professional tone in writing will definitely help in this process. So, structure your letter properly to make sure that you’re not getting very defensive about your situation.

Present facts:-

There will be some cases wherein you will certainly feel that you were wronged by Amazon, or you have a valid explanation as to why you got suspended. Just make sure that you have all the evidence, like correspondence, screenshots, and invoices that will justify your claims. You may also have to highlight these in your letter, so it will be a lot easier to see by the one who is going to analyze your appeals. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Things You Shouldn’t Do When You’re Waiting to Get Your Account Reinstated:-

Now that you’re familiar with how you can deal with your suspended account, you will also have to know about the things that you shouldn’t do. This way, you can significantly increase your chances of having your account reinstated. With that, here are the things you should avoid when you’re trying to get your account back.

Don’t rush into submitting your appeal.

While it’s understandable that you would want to get your Amazon account reinstated as soon as possible, you should wait for some time before submitting your appeal. The standard response time is 72 to 96 hours.

Don’t open a new account.

It may be tempting to open a new account right after yours gets suspended. But if you’re already in the process of submitting your appeal, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of creating a new account. This might just be the reason why you won’t get your account reinstated.

Don’t doubt Amazon’s ways as to how they can find out if you have a new account. The company goes through great lengths to make sure that a seller only has one seller account. They really look into the IP and physical addresses, as well as bank accounts listed just to make sure that these are not coming from the same person.

This also includes those accounts that are made by other household members or people living under the same roof. Since it’s most likely that you have the same IP address, Amazon tags this as the same seller. That’s how strict Amazon’s guidelines are when it comes to making sure that you won’t create a new seller account after getting yours suspended. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Don’t submit any inauthentic invoices.

One of the possible reasons why you can get your seller account suspended is getting negative reviews from your customers. These reviews may be from inauthentic products sold or those that weren’t delivered at all. Many sellers would fabricate/modify their invoices just to fit Amazon’s standards.

Submitting any falsified, altered, inauthentic, or fabricated invoices would merit the disapproval of your appeal. Amazon deals with thousands of sales invoices every day. They would immediately know if the invoices you have presented as proof are legitimate or not.

Don’t threaten Amazon with any legal action.

This is one of the most common things that sellers do when they receive suspension appeal letters. This usually stems from the initial burst of emotions regarding the suspension. You might be tempted to resort to threatening Amazon with legal action, especially if you think that you haven’t done anything wrong.

When lawyers get involved, it makes the process more complicated. Usually, the appeals are significantly delayed compared to when there are no lawyers involved. So even if you feel like you got wrongfully accused, just focus on making sure that your suspension appeal letter is properly written, and your thoughts are all conveyed clearly. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

Don’t contact any Amazon support branches.

When getting Amazon suspension help, know that you can only do this through “Seller Performance.” This is the dedicated department that deals with any suspended seller accounts. There are no direct contact numbers to get in touch with Seller Performance. Each correspondence, such as your appeal and follow-ups, should be done through email. You can always reach out to your Amazon AHS Team. (Section 3 of Amazon Business Agreement)

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