Account Suspension and Appeal to restore

#1

Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 8:29 AM

We have removed your selling privileges, canceled your listings, and placed a temporary hold on any funds in your seller account.

We took these actions because you have listed items that are not permitted on Amazon.com.

Items sold on Amazon.com must adhere to all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Amazon reserves the right to remove any listing we determine to be illegal or inappropriate for our site.

To learn more about this policy, search “Restricted Products” in Seller Central Help.

We encourage you to resolve any pending orders. Note that any amounts paid as a result of A-to-z Guarantee claims and chargebacks may be deducted from your seller account.

After 90 days, the hold will be removed and any remaining funds will be available per your settlement schedule. In addition, balance and settlement information will be available in the Payments section of your seller account. If you have questions about these funds, please write to payments-funds@amazon.com.

If you would like to appeal this decision, please visit the Notifications page in the Performance section of your account, find this message in the list of notifications, and click the Appeal button (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/customer-experience/perf-notifications.html). For information on creating an appeal, search “Appeal the Removal of Selling Privileges” in Seller Central Help.

Regards,

Seller Performance Team


If anyone can help me improve my appeal letter in hopes of getting back my selling account reinstated I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks !

My response------------------

Dear Amazon’s Seller Performance Team,

I have been a professional seller on amazon since June 2009 and I have never had a issue with the selling of products that do not conform with Restricted Products policies until recently. We have been proactively removing products from our inventory that does not comply with the policy of amazon and in the process we have removed almost 70,000 items from our inventory which clearly articulates our commitment to adhere to amazon’s policy.
Dates on which number of item were removed from amazon’s inventory.
On 5/22/2014 we deleted 10,536 items
On 5/26/2014 we deleted 3,527 items
On 5/28/2014 we deleted 48,904 items
On 6/1/2014 we deleted 11,635 items
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to appeal my selling suspension from Amazon.com. I would like to again have the opportunity to sell on Amazon. After searching and reading amazon’s policy, I now have a better understanding with “Restricted Products” policies. I have been and I will only list permitted products that comply with all Amazon’s policies and agreements, and state laws. I realize I’ve made this mistake in the recent past unintentionally, and I have identified the reason of my suspension. I have developed a plan of action to ensure these do not reoccur.
Our Plan Of Action is as follows:

  1. We have deleted all listings and remove products from our inventory that doesn’t complies with Amazon Prohibited Content and certainly will not relist them in the future.

  2. Inventory has been reviewed for accuracy in line with Amazon’s seller policy’s in order to ensure that all products adhere with Amazon content guidelines.

  3. In case if we are unsure if any item is prohibited for sale on Amazon.com, we will contact Amazon seller support for confirmation before listing it for sale.

  4. We will constantly monitor Amazon’s content guidelines for any changes to make sure that all items in our inventory don’t violate Amazon’s content guidelines.

We fully understand that we must learn from this incident and prevent it from ever happening in the future. We pledge to only list products that comply with all Amazon’s policies and guidelines, and applicable federal and state laws and regulations.

Edited by: USA Wholesaler on Jun 1, 2014 3:47 PM

#2

Try to remove every single product from my inventory that can cause an issye.

#3

You’ve said what you can. but if I were reviewing your appeal I’d be wary of reinstating any seller who has had in excess of 70,000 listings for prohibited items.

#4

I understand that, but I’m not sure you should be telling Amazon how many you removed in the appeal.

#5

Based on your appeal, are you saying that you didn’t have a problem selling prohibited items in the past and knowingly were selling them? Then, are you saying you knowingly had 70,000 prohibited items listed? What were the prohibited items you were selling?

Your answer to the last question will determine how well your appeal will work.

#6

Well i am removing 70,000 assuming that they have fallen the category of Restricted products.
Before adding them to inventory i was not sure whether they would fall the category of restricted products or not.
To be on safe side i have taken this extreme measure of removing 70,000 products from my inventory.

#7

How in the world could you possibly list 70,000 items and be “unsure” if they were prohibited/restricted or not. I mean, seriously? If there was ANY ambiguity about it, why wouldn’t you have checked with Amazon first? If you have been here since 2009 then you’ve been around the block a few times here. I’m not sure why you are bothering to delete them, Amazon can look at see what was there historically.

I can see you have sold both T-Shirts and Earrings. Were you approved in Clothing and Jewelry, or were you listing them all in EE? I can tell you right now, if it was fine jewelry, you have a near zero shot at appeal.

Also – you had 70000 items listed and only have 500 fb since 2009? Something doesn’t add up there. That’s almost a statistical impossibility unless the bulk of your items were in EE (since EE doesn’t index in search, no one can find things there all that easily).

#8

I’m guessing yes.

#9

No it was not fine jewelry and i did not add it under Everything else either.

They were some medical products which i did not realize initially that it is prohibited but when i did i removed it from my inventory.

#10

Good Point

#11

What kind of items were these? Were you listing all restricted categories under Everything Else or something?

Barb

#12

Good luck getting reinstated with all the listings you have. Maybe go through all your listings and look and see what category they are listed in before adding them back into your inventory.

:slight_smile:

#13

We i had more than 500,000 items on my store with vast majority of them in Home and Sports category. Out of which i suspected 70,000 of them are in gray area and i received notifications of restricted products removal pertaining to those particular items. So for example if i received a notification for two products i removed all the products related to that particular brand from my inventory.

#14

As i stated earlier they were in the category of Health. And most of them are pills and different medicines for different things.

#15

So you listed 70,000 medical products that were prohibited products? You need to be clear on exactly what you were selling and listing if you want help.

Removing 70,000 listings does not show you know what you did wrong. You need to clearly show them how you will not violate policy. Removing all your listings does not show that.

Are you saying that you had more than 70,000 listings? What else were you selling? What category were your products listed in?

#16

So what exactly were some of those 70,000 items? You are wasting your time and everyone else’s by withholding this information.

If you want to be secretive, you are better off not appealing and moving on with your life.

#17

Well total products that were in gray area were probably not more than 5,000 however to be on the safe side i have taken the extreme step of removing 70,000 items.

#18

The way the appeal is written, I would not reinstate your account.
It indicates that for five years you knew that you have many items that where in the grey area and possible listing violations. Possible 70,000 violations that where not addressed until you where suspended.
If you went though most accounts with a fine tooth comb, you could probably find some minor listing violation. The rules can be vague or contradict themselves, but to the point of 70,000 product or about 14% of all your listings, takes it to a new level.

Just the large number, makes someone take a second and pause. There is a good chance the rep who reviews your account will not know that for five years, nearly 15% of your products might have been violating the rules. I might not to highlight that huge number.

Good Luck

#19

Don’t know what’s going on but to really convince Amazon to reinstate you, you should pledge not to list any medicines etc…

Being vague in your appeal tells Amazon that you will be ‘vague’ in actually doing anything at all!

Skip the whole introduction and get straight to the point. Okay, you can say you’ve been selling from 2009 and would love to continue selling on this platform. Be humble, appreciative and then get to the plan of action.

Then, be very specific in your plan of action by naming your problematic listings and outlining specific ways how you will not cause Amazon a problem in the future.

Providing more info will help us help you some more.

You might want to tell Amazon that from now on you will only buy health products directly from manufacturers. Maybe this will work for you, but again, I am not sure what the issue is.

Good luck!

#20

Oh, and don’t get scared off buy the “prosecution”.

Most of the “Aces” have got a lot of good advice to offer; they are just tired of real trouble makers so everybody is suspect.