user profile
Sign in
user profile

INFORM Consumers Act Verification FAQs

by Cooper_Amazon

We understand that there is confusion and concern amongst some selling partners who have received banners and emails requesting verification for certain information related to their Selling on Amazon accounts. While we are still working to get answers to all questions and resolve any existing issues, we are sharing the information that is currently available and will provide answers to additional questions as soon as possible.

The banners and emails you may have received relate to a new US federal law, the INFORM Consumers Act, which takes effect on June 27, 2023. To learn more about the INFORM Consumers Act, go to About the INFORM Consumers Act.

Please review content below and use this thread as the main post for anything re-verification related.

Banners & Alerts

If you have already verified - If you received an email confirming that you passed verification, please note that this email is accurate. Since updates to your Account Health page can take up to 24 hours, we advise you to check your Account Health periodically. If the update still has not appeared after 24 hours, then please reach out to Seller Support to let us know. Also note that verification pass emails relate to a specific type of information, such as seller identity or bank account, so you may receive requests to verify additional information after receiving a specific verification pass email.

If you have not yet verified but saw a banner/alert - To comply with INFORM, Amazon needs to verify multiple pieces of information about your business: (1) identity, (2) bank account, (3) phone number; (4) business address; and (5) tax identification number. While we may have already verified some of your information during registration, we may need to collect additional information for verification.

Go to your Account Health page or your Account Information page to see which pieces of information Amazon has verified and which pieces are still outstanding. We recommend that you submit the requested information and documents as soon as you can to ensure your information can be verified before the law takes effect and avoid disruptions to your Selling on Amazon privileges.

FAQs

Who is covered by the INFORM Consumers Act?

The law covers third-party sellers online stores like Amazon.com who, in any continuous 12-month period during the previous 24 months, have sold 200 or more new or unused consumer products and have had $5,000 or more in gross revenues.

What information about my business is Amazon required to collect and verify under the INFORM Consumers Act?

Online stores, including Amazon, must collect and verify all of the following pieces of information:

  1. Identity: (a) For individual sellers, the name of the individual legally authorized to act on the sellers’ behalf. (b) For business sellers: the business name and name of a business point-of-contact
  2. Bank account information;
  3. A working business phone number;
  4. Business address;
  5. Tax identification number; and
  6. A working email address.

How will I know if I need to submit information for verification?

If there is any information that you are required to provide, we may have already or will email you with specific instructions. In addition, you can go to your Account Health page, Account Information page, and Seller Central for updates.

In most cases, if we have already completed verification for the required information, you won’t be required to resubmit this information, as long as this information hasn’t changed.

What will happen if I do not provide the information within the timelines Amazon requests?

If you do not provide the information, documents, or certifications requested by Amazon for verification by the dates requested, we may temporarily deactivate your selling account as required by the new law. We may also hold your disbursements as permitted by Section 3 of your Business Solutions Agreement.

Amazon already has verification processes. What is changing because of the INFORM Consumers Act?

To ensure a trusted store for both customers and sellers, Amazon already maintains and continues to innovate on our robust processes for collecting and verifying sellers’ business information during and after registration. While many of our processes are more sophisticated and effective than the basic requirements of the INFORM Consumers Act, this new law requires us to take certain additional steps to verify information related to high-volume sellers.

What else should I do to prepare?

We encourage you to visit your Account information page or Account Health page in Seller Central to see which pieces of information Amazon has verified and which pieces of information still need to be provided for verification. Please also confirm that your existing information in Seller Central is accurate.

What can I expect in the future?

We are continuing to improve our verification processes for all sellers to protect our store, so we may notify you that you are required to complete additional verification steps even if you are not currently covered by the INFORM Consumers Act. We may also contact you to complete verification when your information changes, and annually to certify that your information is current.

How does Amazon protect my information?

Amazon takes your data privacy and security very seriously. We employ strict security measures to protect your confidential information to avoid any unauthorized access. We handle your personal information in accordance with the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.

Where can I learn more about Amazon’s seller verification processes?

For more detailed information about our processes, go to Global seller identity verification. We have also updated the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement for consistency with the new law. To learn more about those changes, go to Changes to the Amazon Services Business Solutions.

The Account Health page says that I am at risk of account deactivation due to the INFORM Act even though I received a separate notification stating that I have passed verification. What is accurate?

If you received an email confirming that you passed verification for a specific piece of information, this email is accurate. Since updates to your Account Health page can take up to 24 hours, we advise you to check your Account Health periodically. If the update still has not appeared after 24 hours, then please reach out to Seller Support for assistance.

What if I haven’t received emails to verify my information?

If you haven’t received emails asking you to verify your account information, we may have already conducted all necessary verifications for your account. You can check your Account Health page to see what items are outstanding, if any. Items with a green check mark next to them have already been successfully verified.

We have to verify your identity first. Once your identity is verified, you may receive additional requests to provide information for verification.

Why am I being asked to verify my account information more than once?

To comply with the INFORM Consumers Act, Amazon needs to verify multiple pieces of information about your business: (1) identity, (2) bank account, (3) phone number; (4) email address; (5) business address; and (6) tax information. We have verified some of your information during registration, but we may need to collect additional information for verification.

Go to your Account Health page or your Account Information page to see which pieces of information Amazon has verified and which pieces are still outstanding.

Every year, we will ask you to electronically certify that these six pieces of information are still accurate. If any of your information changes, you will need to upload the new information to your seller account and that information will need to be verified by Amazon.

I’m a US-based seller trying to fill out the INFORM Act Questionnaire (tax verification link provided in the email request) and I am asked to provide a country in the drop down menu but the United States is not an option. What do I do?
We know that sellers have been experiencing issues with the Tax Questionnaire, and we apologize for the confusion this has caused. An error occurred where US sellers were asked to submit a new Tax Questionnaire as part of requirements for the INFORM Act. If your business is registered in the US, we have already verified your Tax information and we do not need you to fill this questionnaire out again. We will update your Account Health page and Account Information page to reflect this in the coming days.

Is the business type toggle issue fixed?
Yes, the issue has been fixed. Please note that your business type can’t be changed once you move to another page, so please ensure that your business type is accurate and corresponds to all documentation provided about this business.

Are Chinese and Hong Kong sellers now able to edit their business type?
China and Hong Kong sellers are now able to select the ‘Individual’ type from the dropdown menu. Please note that your business type can’t be changed once you move to another page, so please ensure that your business type is accurate and corresponds to all documentation provided about this business.

How should I interpret the symbols on the INFORM experience of the Account Health Page?

  • A green check mark means the information has been verified. No action is needed from you. However, if you change the information, the law required us to verify the updated information.
  • A circle with a link next to it means that either: 1. we are waiting for you to provide information for verification or 2. you provided information and we are working to verify this information. To check if you need to provide information, please click on the link next to the circle.
  • A circle with text that is greyed out means that no action is needed from you at this time for this specific piece of information (you will not be able to click or take any action). Some information, such as your identity, may need to verified prior to beginning other verification processes. However, this may change, so please continue to watch the the status of this item regularly to see if previously greyed circles turn color, indicating a need for your to provide information to Amazon for verification.

Some sellers say they made to a stage where Amazon will send them a postcard to verify their address - should all sellers expect to have to do that?
If we are unable to verify your address automatically, we may have you verify your address via postcard. All Sellers will not be required to do this. If address verification is required this will be displayed in your Account Health page.

Does the INFORM Act impact my chances of becoming the featured offer?
No. Seeing a banner that requires you to submit information for the INFORM Act currently has no impact on your eligibility for the featured offer. The INFORM Act requires that Amazon collect and verify information about your business. You received the account deactivation warning in your Account Health dashboard because, if you do not provide the information Amazon requests within the required timelines, your selling account may be suspended, as required by the law.

What do I do if I am seeing a ‘Forbidden. You do not have the rights to perform this action’ error when I try to provide my bank account information for INFORM?
Sellers who have an active loan via Amazon Lending with a third party lending institution may not be able to access the relevant pages within Seller Central necessary to take the actions we requested for the INFORM Act. We are aware of this problem and will not hold your disbursements because of this. Please note, however, that you should still submit all other information requested by Amazon for verification, to avoid interruption to your selling account.

We are working on addressing this issue so that you will be able to submit your bank account information before the US INFORM Consumers Act takes effect on June 27. We will contact you next week with more details on how to submit your bank account information.

Some sellers have bank deposits at Credit Unions. Their Credit Union does not put the last 4 digits of the sellers account on their bank statements and the sellers continue to get rejected for bank reverification. What action should sellers do next?
“If your bank statement does not include the last 4 digits of your account number, please request a bank letter from your credit union that shows the specific bank account is under your name, and contains all required information for bank reverification.”

What happens if the information I provided doesn’t pass verification between now and when the law goes into effect?
If you submit information that we are unable to verify, we will communicate and work with you to obtain the information required.

If, however, after resubmission attempts, we are not able to verify your information, then the law requires us to deactivate your account until we can verify the information it requires. We encourage you to provide information early so that we can work with you to verify your information before the law takes effect.

What do I need to do if my disbursements are withheld?
You will be notified via email that your disbursements have been held. Follow the instructions in that email to remediate

What do I do if my post card is being delivered after June 27th? Will my account still be deactivated?

If you have already submitted information that is shown as In Progress, then your account will not be deactivated on June 27. If we need further information from you after June 27, then we will notify you.

Who should I contact with questions?

For more information, contact Selling Partner Support.

Tags: Address, Bank account, Seller Central, Taxes, Verification
690
14K views
613 replies
Reply
613 replies
Quick filters
Sort by
user profile
Seller_JELEnXFOrnw4L
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

This issue (not confusion) is known to Amazon for a few weeks.

Why not do the simple thing and have a short banner on seller central just to inform sellers?

The way amazon handles it is inappropriate.

Reply
1130
user profile
Seller_5wlT1tpfNGYf9
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

In our case, we had to re-verify two times in the last 30 days but have yet to receive any new emails with missing document requests. Our health page shows items in grey that still need to be verified, but the Seller Account Information page doesn't have any links to submit new documents.

Yesterday I saw a link to the INFORM Consumers Act questionary but could not submit it because the United States was not on the countries list. Today that link is gone. Please advise on what should be done in our case.

Reply
480
user profile
Seller_KyAN6vRTi1XZH
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

The problem is that I have verified and receive the following message below, however I have not received an email confirmation and I still have the same "Account at Risk of Deactivation" and link to verify identity which I can do in an endless loop without any change in close to 24 hours now.

Edit: I should mention my original verification was done weeks ago and but I received no email confirmation even though the online message said my verification was complete at that time. This verification below is a repeat.

So if Amazon would just update the message on the account page to remove the "Account at Risk of Deactivation" message when verification is complete it would let us know that we don't need to do anything further rather than keep us in limbo as to whether we still need to do something.

I still get this even after the message above.

Reply
220
user profile
Seller_eGDaaCGk02AxG
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

Thank you for this effort to provide some insight to what's happening and to consolidate all the concerns and questions into one discussion. Some of the challenges lie with the verification process itself. Verifying an (800) business number in particular is challenging as most go to a phone system and not directly to a live person when called. Also, typically can't receive an SMS text message. There is also uncertainty about how to enter the phone number for verification as that seems to be creating issues. And you have only three tries and then what? It doesn't say what happens next if you fail a third time. Is your account deactivated because of your honest but failed attempts at phone verification? Some say they get a call but no information is presented when they pick up. Some never get the text despite requesting so a seller can quickly use up 2 of 3 without a clear path to succeed with the third and final attempt.

Reply
70
user profile
Seller_v4WLtqiDdsdSn
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

I saw a banner warning that my account was at risk of being suspended and requested bank verification. However, I followed the prompt to the deposit management method page without any further prompts or areas for verification. What should I do next? The attached picture is the last page I arrived at following the prompts

Reply
60
user profile
Seller_nSEvsjUYVrsyK
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post
This post has been deleted
Reply
260
user profile
Seller_4zBzdtgCyS9EI
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

well, how about if you get the "account is at risk" banner, but when you check, there is NOTHING requiring updates or further verification?

Reply
280
user profile
Seller_Ss4Z3VjSZpFx7
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post
This post has been deleted
Reply
00
user profile
Seller_EkbLZUYSpmJEy
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

@Cooper_Amazon

We got the re-verification email and completed successfully.

We saw others post about the Deposit Method re-verification so we checked ours and got it verified.

We got the banner on Seller Central Home page for possible deactivation and we checked the Account Health as instructed.

So we went to the Account Info as instructed but it was crashing. When it came up, we had this

Since we had verified the Deposit Method already, we thought we would look at the Tax Information. It looked fine but we thought about trying a re-interview which we also discovered the missing USA.

Our business address is the same as our address in Legal Entity which was already verified and the phone number listed is correct.

The instructions and execution of this project is a complete disaster. Please explain to us on how and where in the system we can clear the Phone, Bank Account, Business Address and Tax ID Number.

Please don't just point us to the Account Info page as everything we have entered in each of the noted sections is current and correct.

How do we clear or update to Amazon's satisfaction?

We had already read your post information from this page in Seller Help pages ...

Reply
510
user profile
Seller_rfYOqktay2JQl
In reply to: Cooper_Amazon's post

@Cooper_Amazon Hi Cooper, I never got any re-verification email, but saw the "your account at risk of deactivation" banner two days ago. Only available link is to "verify identity" so I entered all requested info. My issue is after I enter my information, and click at "send SMS code", I got the following error message "You do not have rights to perform this operation." each time. Case ID 12864794591. Please help. Thanks so much.

Reply
70
Go to original post

Similar Discussions