Sorry for this long explaining, this is the best way to put it I need help, It feels like my requests have been responded with Canned automated responses by Amazon support. I have been a 15-year seller on Amazon, with my own listing. Recently, I ran across a competitive seller hijacking listing and brand. I'm not sure If I'm allowed or should be listing the entire ASIN and name of this seller, but I'm first writing it without this information.
I was on a call with an Amazon support staff last week (She called my phone directly, at first I actually thought it was some kind of scam going on, until I logged into amazon seller central and saw the huge red marks on account health), and I was supposed to receive a call back as I had to produce from Japan, Hong Kong, China both a letter and invoice to show that it was authentic purchasing from an authorized distributor. For the last 15 years, I've been selling by getting products from authorized distributors and also speaking from time to time directly with the manufacturers for items that were specially made to different colors or unavailable in limited quantity.
I was told by the Amazon support staff that before we could do that, she recommended that I acknowledge the 20 or so listings so my account would stay in good health. She told me it would be the best course of action as of now.
I had originally declined and said that I can easily get the signed letter as well as my invoices to them to verify, it would only take few days as they are all overseas. I told her clearly that I feel acknowledging is admitting that I was wrong, which I did not want to do. However, she persuaded me to click acknowledge and that she would make sure to put a detailed note on it.
The same day, I contacted the manufacturer of the product, and they were confused, saying they had the brand registered but NEVER made any complaints to any seller. A day later, I got a call back from the Amazon rep again, and this time, I managed to get more details. I found that a seller has registered a similar name with a trademark with the same exact name, but on trademark information, Goods and Services indicate very different products and services. And even as of recently, that same registry year, this seller has attempted similar registration with a different brand manufacturing a similar line of products as well. Item is a very niche market, and there are only few sellers. This seller is located in China, according to the seller's Amazon profile, and more information can be found when looking deeper. Worst of all, they registered an attorney email address for trademark and IP; the site feels not legitimate, and they cannot get a hold of anyone from the "CONTACT US" page of the "legal team" that the seller used. Looking closer into the site, it links to 2 other sites related to IP law and different people/groups of attorneys. It's very convoluted trying to navigate through the site. The way I was able to dig into to find the seller is they listed this lega team email address into "alternate" email as their contacts in some trademarks I dug out.
So far, as of today, I have the letters and invoice from my distributor, which I had attempted to re-open the original Account Health case to no avail. I also have copies of my email communication to and from the Manufacturer, that they do not practice blocking any seller (understandably so, due to the nature of the product, it's better to have competition). However, trying to contact Amazon Support to reopen my case, I'm getting a "This is a restricted product" message, also tried asking to reinstate our listings, but i still the Trademark hijacker seller on these items. Who would I contact directly to hear back from a person in Amazon? I believe this deserves a detailed look into by Amazon. Having this kind of Trademark takeover to get rid of competition is a great example shown to the Amazon team that could be very important for future seller support and market fairness on the Amazon platform.
Also, additional information, since about 2-3 years ago, My original listings from 2010 have all been merged with this Hijackers' listing. I did not think much of it, as I understood it as just a re-organization from Amazon for better since it's the same product clearly written with listing, but this seller listing also replaced a "letter" in the listing with a symbol instead of letter "a" using an "@", I feel this was a red-flag, it feels that entire merging it was done in bad faith, something I should have reported back when I found out about it.
I hope someone from Amazon or a similar experience can give me advice about approaching this situation.
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