Amazon Seller Rules are established to maintain a selling service that is safe for buyers and fair for sellers. Failure to comply with the terms of the Seller Rules can result in cancellation of listings, suspension from use of Amazon tools and reports or the removal of selling privileges.
Any attempt to circumvent the established Amazon sales process or to divert Amazon users to another website or sales process is prohibited. Specifically, any advertisements, marketing messages (special offers) or "calls to action" that lead, prompt or encourage Amazon users to leave the Amazon website are prohibited. Prohibited activities include the following:
Your business name (identifying your business entity on Amazon) must be a name that: accurately identifies you; is not misleading; and that you have the right to use (that is, the name cannot include the trademark of, or otherwise infringe on, any trademark or other intellectual property right of any person). Furthermore, you can't use a business name that contains an email suffix such as .com, .net, .biz and so on.
Sellers must ensure that the tax invoice is raised in the name of the end customer who has placed an order with them through the Amazon marketplace. The tax invoice should not mention Amazon as either a seller or a customer or buyer. Please note that all products listed on Amazon are sold by the respective sellers to the end customers and Amazon is neither a buyer nor a seller in the transaction. Sellers need to include the VAT/CST registration number of the shipping state in the invoice. Sellers who do not have a VAT/CST registration number and are dealing exclusively in exempted goods like Books or Fabrics/Textiles (unstitched) are exempted from including VAT and CST registration numbers in their invoice.
All seller email communications with buyers must be courteous, relevant and appropriate. Unsolicited email communications with Amazon users, email communications other than as necessary for order fulfilment and related customer service and emails containing marketing communications of any kind (including within otherwise permitted communications) are prohibited.
Amazon provides Professional sellers who fulfil their own orders access to customer phone numbers so that they can comply with carrier label requirements. If you receive this customer information, you are required to adhere to Amazon's customer personal information policy, which can be found in our Seller Agreement.
Please review the policy there and the guidance below to make sure that you are using customers' phone numbers correctly.
Buyers and sellers may communicate with one another via the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service, which assigns unique Amazon-generated email addresses to both parties. Sellers are prohibited from providing or soliciting direct, non-Amazon-generated email addresses on the Amazon website or in correspondence through the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service.
Amazon understands that many brands may choose to have brand protection agencies or agents report intellectual property infringement on their behalf, and accepts submissions from authorised agents. However, Amazon does not permit individuals with active selling accounts to file infringement notices as an agent of a brand when the filing of those notices could benefit their own selling account (through removing competing listings, for example). Any person filing notices as an agent that benefit their own status as a seller may have their selling account terminated.
All sellers are able to access and use the Amazon selling service. If a seller uploads excessive amounts of data repeatedly, or otherwise uses the service in an excessive or unreasonable way, it can create a disproportional load and impair the ability of other sellers to easily access and use the service. If a seller is misusing or making excessive or unreasonable use of the Amazon selling service, Amazon may, in its sole discretion, restrict or block the seller's access to product feeds or any other functions that are being misused until you no longer misuse them.
Sellers cannot submit abusive or inappropriate feedback entries, coerce or threaten buyers into submitting feedback, submit transaction feedback regarding themselves or include personal information about a transaction partner within a feedback entry. Furthermore, any attempt to manipulate ratings of any seller is prohibited. Any attempt to manipulate ratings, feedback or product reviews is prohibited.
The best seller rank feature allows buyers to evaluate the popularity of a product. Any attempt to manipulate sales rank is prohibited. You may not solicit or knowingly accept fake or fraudulent orders, including placing orders for your own products. You may not provide compensation to buyers for purchasing your products or provide claim codes to buyers for the purpose of inflating sales rank. In addition, you may not make claims regarding a product's best seller rank in the product detail page information, including the title and description.
Any attempt to increase the selling price of an item after a transaction has been completed is prohibited. Additionally, sellers cannot set excessive order fulfilment and shipping costs. Although we allow shipping charges to be flexible, below are the shipping charge limits for different categories:
Category | Shipping charge limit (INR) |
---|---|
Watch | 80 |
Music, DVD, Software, Jewellery | 100 |
Beauty, HPC, Grocery, CE/PC (except oversize and bulky items like TVs, projectors, printers/scanners, monitors, desktops, etc.) | 150 |
Apparel | Smallest of INR 150 and 20% of item selling price |
Books (price <= INR 1000) | 200 |
Books (price > INR 1000) | 300 |
Shoes | Smallest of INR 230 and 20% of item selling price |
PCA, Home & Kitchen | 300 |
Baby, Category Luggage, Toys, Sports, Office Products, Pets, Video Games | 400 |
CE/PC oversize and bulky items like TVs, projectors, printers/scanners, monitors, desktops, etc. | 400 |
All the items can have shipping charges up to INR 120 for apparel and up to INR 80 for other categories irrespective of item selling price.
When listing items for sale using an existing product detail page, the product being offered must be listed on a product detail page that accurately describes the product in all respects, including with respect to the following attributes: manufacturer, edition, binding, version, format or player compatibility. Sellers may not match their item to a detail page with a different ISBN, UPC/EAN or other external identifier. * Exception: Club editions of audio CDs should be listed against the detail page for the standard edition of the CD, even if the UPCs of the two editions are different, if the following criteria are met: 1) the content on both editions is identical and 2) a page with the UPC for the club edition does not already exist in our catalogue. Use the listing comments to indicate that the item is a club edition. Format of the products (CD) must be identical.
Any misuse of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee claims process is prohibited. Sellers who have an excessive number or monetary amount of A-to-z Guarantee claims are subject to termination. In cases where a buyer is dissatisfied with a product or service, they can contact the seller to make arrangements for a refund, return or exchange, as appropriate. Amazon reserves the right to seek reimbursement from the seller if we reimburse a buyer under the terms of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee.
When customers use Amazon's search engine and browse structure, they expect to see relevant and accurate results. Any attempt to manipulate the Search and Browse experience is therefore prohibited. Prohibited behaviours include, but are not limited to:
For more context and guidelines, see Optimise listings for Search and Browse.
Do not use packaging material which contains branding of any other online marketplace or e-commerce company. Do not re-use printed packaging material. You can use packaging material with your own brand.
Creating a product detail page for a product already in the Amazon catalogue is prohibited.
Sellers may not create separate listings for identical copies of the same item. Individually listing the same item several times is confusing for buyers and frustrating for other sellers. Sellers must use the quantity field to offer multiple copies of the same item, and only list separately if offering the same item in different conditions.
Sellers should not list or match against Books, Music, Video or DVD products that Amazon designates as pre-orderable. It is also important to maintain accurate inventory records, as instances of "stock-outs" could be reflected in your seller feedback rating. If an item you are offering will not be available for immediate shipping upon order, either cancel the order or alert the buyer, and initiate a refund if necessary. Amazon will immediately cancel any seller listing for Books, Music, Video or DVD items that Amazon designates as pre-orderable.