Writing an Amazon Account Health appeal
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:
Seller_zV9SP18zY69Uf
Take help from Amazon support
Seller_NvLkA7xtTZuTC
Danika_Amazon
Hi Danika
I need help understanding a policy violation can you please help?
Seller_Xu6SCMFzvUorn
My experience has been that YOU ARE GUILTY and amazon does not care, you loose 99% of appeals and it is not worth the time and effort to play amazons game. You will just get a copy and paste reply that never addresses the specific issue you write and they do not read it anyways. Amazon does not care about you as a seller, the seller is always wrong and the seller can not be trusted. amazon is god and you are a sinner.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
"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."
That's not true. When we used Call Us button from the Account Health Dashboard, a regular Seller Support personnel answers. They have nothing to do with Account Health Specialists Team and they are unable to forward the call there. They are also unable to do anything about addressing the violation, except for providing standard templates/answers that the affected seller needs to go to the AH page and appeal there.
See Case ID 10830440331, for example and listen to the conversation there, if you have access to that.
Also, other comments here are correct: there is rarely a point in appealing the violation. We had a sec 3 violation about a year ago without providing any specifics of the violation and we had to play a guessing game, trying to prove that we didn't violate that section point by point. At last, a MOD here got involved and the violation quickly disappeared. We also received a phone call from the Account Health team member, apologizing for the issue and admitting that the violation was generated by an error.
Seller_J46Ruz3VzvWCV
(Quotes not working again ... sorry)
@Danika_Amazon, overall this is a helpful post. I do have a few issues with some comments though.
I know there have been some recent changes, but this is not totally consistent with what I'm seeing for suspended sellers that I'm working with.
Appeals are not required for:
- Violations of Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy BUT you will get a phone call sometimes telling you to address it if you don't price as Amazon wants.
- High negative customer experience (NCX) rate I don't see this very much so I can't comment
- Received Intellectual Property Complaints ONLY if you have valid invoices and approval from the rights owner. Otherwise you end up appealing
- Product Authenticity Customer Complaints ONLY if you have valid invoices and approval. Otherwise you end up appealing
- Suspected Intellectual Property Violations If you delete the listing within 24-48 hrs I see this drop off. Not sure what you see currently after that amount of time
- Food & Product Safety Issues Not quite true. You do have to answer a questionnaire based on the appeal format and if Amazon doesn't like you have to appeal
Here's a current Food & Product Safety issue on "Expired" where the buyer can't get that "MFG" means Manufactured, not "Expiration."
Amazon's response to the questionnaire answers ....
"We received your submission but do not have enough information to reactivate your listing at this time.
You need to send us an updated appeal that provides:
-- Greater detail on the root causes of the expired complaint listed below.
-- Greater detail on the steps you have taken to prevent expired complaint going forward."
Next ......
"Step 1: Explain the root cause
Good news—Amazon provides this info for you via Performance notifications."
Nope. Notices tell you what the issue is, but not the root cause. You even say so later - "Your job is to determine how the violation occurred"
About "Feel free to elaborate with your side of the story..."
- I would never elaborate
- Be concise and to the point
"Step 3: Describe your preventive measures
... If the submission is rejected, you’ll need to address the reasons for rejection and resubmit."
Except that Amazon won't tell you what those are. You have to figure that out yourself.
"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."
This is often helpful ... when it works.
- Regularly it doesn't work
- Some sellers in other countries (listed in help) are not eligible for phone calls)
What I'm seeing over many different issues is an inconsistency, with no clear reason as to why on some.
- It does seems existing issues still go by the old "appeal" instead of "radio buttons" format
- The "radio buttons" alone only work sporadically
- Any time invoices are required and not accepted you either stay suspended indefinitely, or if you persist long enough you can get into sending an appeal to explain why you don't have acceptable invoices
JMO
Seller_CVaskj9MGJRwo
THIS DOES NOT HELP YOU HAVE TO TALK TO A REAL PERSON IF YOU CAN GET ONE TO CALL YOU BACK
Seller_24FzucbyGtgZS
Hello Danika,
Did you see the link at the bottom of your post? Its to "Create an Effective PLAN OF ACTION" which apparently you claim has been superseded by an "Account Health Appeal"? Which is it?
Of course it would be better if Amazon bots did not automatically put violations on you just because a customer used a "trigger" word in a message, return, feedback or rating. Actual complaints should come from brand owners where they can be properly addressed professionally.
Seller_1HdWgLPycDjSy
thank you for sharing
Seller_eOUpuOkuFFZbv
My account got deactivated for review manipulation about month and a half ago. Appealed more than 12 times already. Each time with detailed plan of action and supporting documents and pictures. Removed all my inventory from FBA. And each time Amazon gives me the same generic response. We have a small family business and the customers love our product and customer service. We have explained everything in the plan of action including detailed preventative measures we took, yet Amazon seems to not read any of it. Please help us out.
Danika_Amazon
Thanks to all of you who've replied--I really appreciate your insights and questions. I'm researching some of your questions internally and will get with responses as soon as I'm able. Thanks again!
