High Anxiety! Amazon Account Suspensions, From A Different Angle

Mel Brooks’ 1970s film about his anxiety may make you laugh, but anxiety over the fate of your Amazon account produces few laughs in Amazon’s current policy climate.

All year long, I’ve studied the spike in merchant account suspensions by policy teams. I’ve found that the Product Quality team creates anxiety on all sides of the equation. Amazon’s anxiety stems from the need to protect the buyer marketplace experience at all costs by policing third-party sellers. If Amazon receives buyer complaints about the quality of items in an order, it must spring into action. In theory, an investigation into an account only yields a suspension if investigators identify consistent differences between product detail pages and the products sent to buyers.

Even after over a decade of marketplace sales, buyers still feel anxiety when they are buying from third-party sellers. They fear getting poor-quality product, whether it’s a condition problem or an authenticity issue. The buyer then has to notify the seller, and possibly return it, then perhaps has to maintain an email thread explaining the return reason, and so forth. It may require additional time to complain to Amazon about the problem, too. Buyers at least know Amazon will almost always take care of them in the end.

Let’s turn to sellers themselves. Merchants now feel the heat so often that their anxiety never really goes away. Selling in the marketplace and coping with a repetition of policy warnings based on buyer complaints about orders has become the new normal of selling on Amazon.

Seller anxiety in the Age of Product-Quality Suspension is omnipresent. Seller performance metrics show you what targets to hit. Missing those might mean a suspension, even if the account is within the confines of fairly straightforward performance goals. Make sure you don't have more than 5% negative feedback from buyers. Make sure your pre-fulfillment cancel rate stays under 2.5% of your orders. Keep your order defect rate under 1%.

In terms of policy teams, what do we really know about them or how they operate?

Amazon’s Anxiety

As a company, this is two-fold. Amazon itches to protect its reputation and keep its name out of the press in relation to any public relations fiascos covering “bad product” sold on the site. Amazon needs to reduce legal liability as well for any internal team failure to take appropriate action when outside parties report inauthentic or misleading items. Counterfeit items sold by one third-party seller or unsafe, untested items sold by another create a culture of mistrust among prized customers. Liability represents a major potential marketplace problem. For example, once a copyright, trademark, or intellectual property owner reports illegitimate versions of their products to Amazon, the company must act to remove the items. If Amazon policy teams fail to do so for whatever reason, Amazon faces potential legal repercussions.

Stories about buyers who picked up a dangerous item on Amazon from a third-party seller attract social media eyeballs and change policies. Bad press undermines buyer faith in the marketplace, a faith that took years to build up. The powers that be at Amazon opted to permit Product Quality to take any necessary steps to push all questionable product from the site. In other words, throw the widest net possible to catch as many rule-breaking sellers as possible. If compliant sellers get caught up in the process, they must appeal the action and prove themselves.

Seller Anxiety  

Sellers all know this type of Amazon account anxiety well. As this is the peak season for sales, now would be the worst time to face a suspension. Make sure you know how to survive Amazon’s holiday peak.

In short: Keep a cool head, determine how you might have attracted scrutiny by Product Quality, try to think like their investigators and write a good Plan of Action.

Amazon may tell you it reviewed everything you sent and decided not to reinstate. Send more and better information in a subsequent appeal! Policy teams must discourage a certain number of appeals these days given the backlogs in their queues, but don’t let that deter you. Your Plan of Action must demand as much of their time as another seller’s plan. Don’t be the seller who fades away upon request. Clarify what additional documents, details, or operational changes are necessary to approve your reinstatement and persevere until that reinstatement occurs.

Investigator Anxiety

Investigators similarly face anxieties regarding their work for Product Quality teams. Amazon tasks them with identifying risky sellers and restricting their accounts if an investigation warrants such a move. Current processes push them to err on the side of suspending versus passing accounts to make sure they do not let a bad character sell. If they miss suspending a seller who causes problems later, they receive a demerit in an investigations audit. It will always be in their interest to suspend first and ask questions later.

An investigator may also exhibit symptoms of anxiety if they fail to reinstate a properly configured Plan of Action to Product Quality teams. It only happens if a seller legitimately appeals to Jeff B's teams for a fresh review of their account and in the course of the new investigation, a Lead investigator identifies oversights and errors. That failure to reinstate could result in a mark against a Product Quality team member’s performance metrics. The desire to avoid reversals of their appeal decisions strongly motivates those measured on their investigation performance.

Understand how policy teams think, and tailor your responses and reactions accordingly.