Seller account deactivated even with Account Health Assurance need help!
Hello,
first of all, my company is selling on amazon since 12 years, account health was always in good standing and the account was never deactivated before. We sell a high volume and have multiple employees for product management, customer service and logistics.
Last week my account got deactivated. My account was enrolled in Account Health Assurance but got deactivated 3 days after account health rating fell below 250. I even received an email 2 hours before the deactivation saying the account health rating dropped below 250 3 days ago and I have 7 days to work this out with amazon.
2 issues happend to drop the score from originally 370 to 186. We got multiple policy violations of inauthentic because we had FBA inventory on multiple ASIN and they got enrolled to transparency over night without announcement. Every ASIN we had inventory got an inauthentic policy violation. This happened beginning of October and since then we tried to get the violations removed with providing invoices, POA, FBA inventory reports. But nothing was accepted. We use the same suppliers since more than 10 years and so far the invoices were always accepted by amazon before.
The second issue was we got some item not as described violations. Here we also provided our invoices and POAs and worked with SAS and the escalation team but again, nothing we provided got acepted. We only got back "we cannot verify your supplier". Again, amazon always accepted these invoices from the same suppliers in the past.
After calling Account Health Support I was told to send different invoices, but obviously I cannot provide other invoices than the ones I have.
I did submit a POA and all the invoices I provided before already but my POA was not accepted.
I called Account Health Support again to find out what is missing and was told to address these 2 violations more in detail:
-Not acting fairly or misusing Amazon features or services.
-Attempting to damage or abuse another seller, their listings, or their ratings.
I have absolutely no idea where we were not acting fairly or were misusing amazon features or services. And nobody can explain to me what is meant with that or what we are actually accused of doing.
Attempting to damage or abuse another seller, their listings, or their ratings, we never ordered from a compentitioner and have left a feedback or ordered large quantities to block them. We use the account also to purchase business supplies or sometimes buy personal items. But have never intentionally bought anything from a seller we compete with to damage or abuse the seller.
I honestly don't know what we are accused of and it's very hard to defend yourself if you don't know what the accusations are. If we have done something wrong unintentionally, of course I would personally make sure it will stop immediately and that it will never happen again.
I'll post the deactivation notice we received and my POA on the bottom. Any help also from the forum mods would be highly appreciated.
I'm about to lose my business I've built for more than 10 years and all my employees will lose their jobs.
@Danika_Amazon
@Sandy_Amazon
@Blake_Amazon
@Michelle_Amazon
@Tatiana_Amazon
Your Amazon seller account has been deactivated in accordance with section 3 of the Amazon Business Solutions Agreement. Your listings have been removed. Please continue to ship open orders and respond to customer inquiries to avoid further impact to your account. Funds will not be transferred to you but will stay in your account while we work with you to address this issue in accordance with our Funds Withholding policy:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/9RA9LYBJ3QP27M6
You are no longer enrolled in Account Health Assurance.
Why did this happen?
We have information that this account has been used to engage in abusive activity. We took this measure due to this selling account:
-- Providing inaccurate information to Amazon or our customers.
-- Not acting fairly or misusing Amazon features or services.
-- Attempting to damage or abuse another seller, their listings, or their ratings.
This is a violation of the Amazon Seller Policies and Seller Code of Conduct:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/G1801
Submit this information by clicking “Reactivate your account” on the banner at the top of your "Account Health" page and following the instructions provided:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard?reftag=ah_em_rp
Has your account been deactivated in error?
If you believe there has been an error, submit an explanation by clicking “Reactivate your account” on the banner at the top of your "Account Health" page. Your explanation should include the following information:
-- Evidence or examples that demonstrate your account complies with our Seller Code of Conduct policy.
We’re here to help.
If you have questions about this policy, contact us:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/cu/contact-us
You can view your account performance:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard?reftag=ah_em_rp
Or select Account Health on the home screen of the Amazon Seller app on your iOS or Android device. The Account Health page shows how well your account is performing against the performance metrics and policies required to sell on Amazon.
1 reply
Seller_yRdrlGNDHrNjF
POA:
Dear seller performance team,
I want to appeal your decision to deactivate our selling account and provide this POA to reinstate our selling privileges. Root cause of the issue:
- I understand we received authenticity violations on multiple ASIN because inventory in amazon FCs was not labeled with transparency codes on the day the ASINs got enrolled in the transparency program. We already provided invoices through the account health website, but you were not able to verify our supplier.
- Furthermore, we received complaints about items not as described and being an international version on a listing for US version. Items received by customers did not match the description on the product details on the website. We always trusted the information we found on our supplier’s website that they are authorized distributors or wholesalers.We also provided our suppliers invoices for these complaints but also you were not able to verify our suppliers.
- We do use our seller account also to purchase supplies or other business equipment. We never intentionally bought anything from another seller and left negative feedback or ordered large quantities to block their inventory. The account was also used to purchase personal items and we also allowed our employees and family to use the account to do personal purchases since our account has prime and on many items business pricing.
Actions we have taken to solve the problem
-We already removed all FBA inventory for all ASINs in question, removal order YYYYY and YYYYY to make sure no incorrect listed or not transparency labeled items will be still in amazon FC and could be shipped to a customer.We also went through our entire inventory in our local warehouse to identify any item that is enrolled in the transparency program and doesn’t have the transparency label and removed it from our sellable amazon inventory.
-We also checked our entire local inventory that is listed on amazon to ensure the country version we have in stock matches the country version on the listing and detail page. Any inventory that doesn’t match the product description exactly was removed from our sellable amazon inventory and got marked with a sticker “not for amazon” to make sure none of this inventory can get shipped to amazon FBA or any amazon customer. And we moved this inventory in a separated area in our warehouse to avoid any mix ups.
I’ve attached some pictures of the units we have in our warehouse that show these are US versions and do match the product description. We did not check every single unit in the past, but starting today, every single unit we receive in our warehouse will be checked and if we receive an international version, it will be marked as such and separated from any US versions.
- As of today, we do not allow any personal orders on our business account anymore. Also, any supplies or business-related offer will need manager approval from now on.
Actions we have taken that will prevent this happening in the future
-We updated our work instructions for our warehouse to check every ASIN if it is transparency enable before sending units to FBA. If the ASIN is transparency enabled the warehouse associate who is packing the items must scan the transparency codes before packing the units and sending them to FBA. If we get a notification that a new ASIN gets enrolled in the transparency program, we will immediately remove any remaining FBA inventory to ensure no not transparency labelled item is still at amazon FBA. For seller fulfilled orders the transparency code must get scanned in the shipping process. If the item doesn’t have a transparency code, it cannot be shipped.
-For the not as described issue, we have implemented an additional step in the shipping process. When items are packed to get shipped to amazon FBA every item’s UPC/EAN code must get scanned and match the UPC/EAN of the listing. If there is a unit where the UPC/EAN doesn’t match the listing, the unit will get marked with a red sticker and set aside and not shipped to amazon FBA or an amazon customer.From now on before we sell any items we receive from a supplier; we will verify the supplier is an authorized distributor for the specific brand. We will ask for a Letter of Authorization or verify with the brand owner if the supplier is authorized. We made our product management fully aware that international versions can generally only be listed as such and sold as international versions. We can guarantee that with these actions taken no customer will receive an international version when the listing is for a US version item.
Finally, since you were unable to verify our suppliers we provided the invoices, we will not use these suppliers anymore for amazon. Any inventory we receive from any of the suppliers we provided invoices, will be marked with a sticker “not for amazon” when we receive inventory at our warehouse and will be kept strictly separate from our amazon sellable inventory.
-Since we do not allow personal purchases of employees and family on this account anymore and require manager approval for any business-related purchases, we can assure no order will be placed from any competing seller. Before manager approves any order, he will make sure there is no item for order from a seller we are competing with. This will ensure there can’t be any attempt to damage any other seller.
