Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions

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.

General guidelines

Attempts to divert transactions or buyers:

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:

• The use of email intended to divert customers away from the Amazon sales process.
• The inclusion of hyperlinks, URLs or web addresses within any seller generated confirmation email messages or any product/listing description fields that are intended to divert customers away from the Amazon sales process.

Unauthorised and improper business names:

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.

Unauthorised and improper invoicing:

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.

Inappropriate email communications:

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.

Appropriate treatment of customer phone numbers:

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.

• Proper treatment of customer phone numbers:
  • Print on labels to comply with carrier requirements.
  • Dispose of any customer phone number data that you retain after you have processed the customers' orders.
  • Monitor who in your organisation has access to customer phone numbers—protecting this data is your responsibility.

• Improper treatment of customer phone numbers:
  • Never contact a customer using their phone number. To contact a customer about their order, only use Buyer-Seller Messaging. Please see our Buyer-Seller Messaging FAQ for more information.
  • Never share customer phone information with an external party.
  • Never pass along customer information of any kind, including phone numbers, outside of Buyer-Seller Messaging.

Direct email addresses:

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.

Filing Infringement Notices as an Agent or Brand Protection Agency

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.

Misuse of the Amazon selling service:

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.

Misuse of ratings, feedback or reviews:

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.

• Ratings and feedback: The rating and feedback features allow buyers to evaluate the overall performance of a seller, helping sellers to develop a reputation within the Amazon Marketplace. You may not post abusive or inappropriate feedback or include personal information about a transaction partner. Please note that this also includes posting ratings or feedback to your own account. You may request feedback from the buyer. However, you may not pay or offer any incentive to the buyer for either providing or removing the feedback.
• Product reviews: Reviews are important to the Amazon Marketplace, providing a forum for feedback about product and service details, and reviewers' experiences with products and services - positive or negative. You may not write reviews for products or services that you have a financial interest in, including reviews for products or services that you or your competitors sell. Additionally, you may not provide compensation (including free or discounted products) for a review. Review solicitations that ask for only positive reviews or that offer compensation are prohibited. You may not ask buyers to modify or remove reviews.

Misuse of sales rank:

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.

Post-transaction price manipulation and excessive shipping fees:

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:

• Shipping charges can't exceed the selling price of an item
• Category wise shipping charge limit is as below.

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.

Accurate descriptions of product information:

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.

Misuse of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee:

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.

Misuse of Search and Browse:

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:

• Artificially simulating customer traffic (through Internet bots, paying for clicks on organic search results etc.).
• Providing misleading or irrelevant catalogue information (title, bullet points, description, variations, keywords etc.).
• Adding product identifiers (brand names, product names, ASINs and so on), even if they are your own, to hidden keyword attributes.

For more context and guidelines, see Optimise listings for Search and Browse.

Branded packaging materials

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 duplicate product detail pages:

Creating a product detail page for a product already in the Amazon catalogue is prohibited.

Creating separate listings:

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.

Pre-sells of BMVD Products:

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.