Have you ever had to face down an Account Health listing violation, but weren’t sure how to appeal it? You’re not alone. Today we’re going to walk through three tips for writing an Account Health appeal (formally called a plan of action).

But first, some background

The Account Health Dashboard (AHD) helps sellers like you monitor the status of your selling account, based on the adherence to Amazon’s selling policies.

The AHD displays an Account Health rating, a color-coded score that ranges from 0 to 1,000 and provides near real-time status of your account’s health, letting you know if your selling account in a particular store is at risk of deactivation. We recommend you check your AHD daily to stay on top of complaints and violations.

How do you know if you have an Account Health violation?

Luckily, the AHD makes this pretty easy to see. Any Account Health violations will be noted with a red exclamation point, and will denote how many violations you have. Click View All to see all violations, including what was impacted and level of severity. Then use the Account Health Rating Impact filter to show the highest priority ones. See the screenshots below for details.

How do you know if your violation requires an appeal?

Once you’ve identified a listing violation, the next step is to identify if yours requires an appeal. While these lists are subject to change, they can serve as general guidance for when an appeal is necessary:

Appeals are required for:

• Customer Product Reviews Policy Violations
• Product Detail Page Rules Violations
• Product Condition Customer Complaints
• Product Review Abuse
• Certain Listing Policy Violations (for example, Inaccurate keywords or categorization, PDP tampering)
• Restricted Product Policy Violations

Appeals are not required for:

• Violations of Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy
• High negative customer experience (NCX) rate
• Received Intellectual Property Complaints
• Product Authenticity Customer Complaints
• Food & Product Safety Issues
• Suspected Intellectual Property Violations

You can submit an appeal directly from your AHD by clicking into the violation you’d like to address and then clicking “Submit appeal.” You’ll then see the “Address your listing violation“ screen, where you submit your appeal.

How to submit an appeal

We know it can be daunting to face a blank submission box. While your response will be different depending on violation type, these steps provide guidance that should apply across most categories that require an appeal.

Step 1: Explain the root cause

Good news—Amazon provides this info for you via Performance notifications. View the list of notifications received, and click the one that aligns with the issue you’re looking to resolve from your dashboard. Tip: if you have many notifications, look for the date of the violation, which should match with the date of the performance notification.

Once you find it, read the “Why is this happening?” section. Here Amazon is telling you the what of the violation. Your job is to determine how the violation occurred, and then use this information to write the appeal. Feel free to elaborate with your side of the story to explain the violation and how it happened.

Step 2: Describe your corrective measures

Corrective steps are considered the band-aid of the issue, not the actual cure. We want to know step-by-step details for how you will rectify the situation at hand. Your response should be specific about the ASINs affected, what product/brand/vendor was impacted, and the time frame to resolve the immediate situation (not the root cause, which comes in step three).

Step 3: Describe your preventive measures

Finally, outline any solutions, procedures, or systemic changes you’ve implemented (or plan to implement) to address the root cause, to ensure this situation won’t occur again. Your response should provide time frames and dates for implementations and should help us “connect the dots” about how these new measures will resolve the overall issue. Please be specific, as vague or generic replies aren’t likely to be accept, as the appeals team wants to understand how new measures and polices will resolve the particular violation issue.

Once you submit your appeal, you must wait for a decision to be made. If the submission is accepted, the deactivation associated with the appeal will be resolved and no further action is required. If the submission is rejected, you’ll need to address the reasons for rejection and resubmit. This process repeats until Amazon accepts the appeal.

Of course we can’t guarantee that following these steps will ensure a positive outcome. But by taking the time to outline your case from root cause to resolution, it will be easier for our Account Health team to understand the issue and the response your business made to address it.

One final tip: if you’re working on an appeal and need a bit of support, you can use the Call me now button from your Account Health Dashboard to speak directly with an Account Health specialist for further assistance.

Have you written an appeal to address an Account Health listing violation? We’d welcome any pointers you have to share.

Additional Account Health resources:

• Account Health FAQ
• Account Health Rating program policy
• Create an Effective Plan of Action