Six Tips for Dealing with Unauthorized Sellers on Amazon

When it comes to selling on Amazon, the bigger and more successful your brand and business are, the more likely you are to encounter unauthorized sellers. Left unchecked, these bad actors can destroy your brand reputation and majorly cut into your profit margins — not just through sales, but in terms of advertising, unfair discounting, and even getting products suspended or removed.

If you are looking for information on how to deal with unauthorized sellers on Amazon and all the unwanted issues that come with them, this article will provide you with some much-needed guidance. Let's get started.

What’s an Unauthorized Seller?

As of 2021, there are close to six million sellers on Amazon with 1.6 million active sellers and hundreds of thousands more joining each year. With so much business and so many people wanting a piece of that third-party pie, unauthorized sellers have been a long-term problem on the Amazon marketplace.

Any third-party reseller or distributor selling products from a brand without the brand’s permission is an unauthorized seller. This may be a seller buying wholesale from a legitimate distributor and competing with you, or a seller manufacturing counterfeit products and selling them as legitimate ones on your Amazon detail page.

Six Tips for Managing Unauthorized Sellers on Amazon

While Amazon used to be a bit of the wild west when it came to retail arbitrage, counterfeits, and illegitimacy, there are now some tactics brands can use to fight back. Keep reading for tips on how to deal with unauthorized sellers on Amazon.

1) Join the Amazon Brand Registry

The best tools and methods all stem from the Brand Registry. The Amazon Brand Registry is for brand owners, and you must register and be approved with a trademark for your brand. Do this immediately when you join Seller Central or Vendor Central and link up your accounts. Be sure you register with the same email address and information that you used for Seller Central.

This tool allows you to access a dedicated team at Amazon. Support is available 24/7 for more immediate help than usual Seller Central tickets. You can self-report violations, IP infringements, and inaccurate information. You can also respond to a host of common issues more accurately and efficiently.

Use the Brand Dashboard and the Brand Catalog Manager tool to keep an eye on who is selling your products. If you monitor these details, you can oftentimes directly contact the sellers in question from their storefront.

You can also covertly test order a product from a suspect seller to yourself as the customer. Once it is delivered, you can evaluate the product. If it’s not delivered properly or is a counterfeit, simply file a claim with Amazon with evidence of the issue to remove the rogue seller.

The Brand Registry also offers a range of brand-building benefits. A registered brand’s content will take precedence over erroneous third-party content. This can be extremely helpful if you have an unauthorized seller putting incorrect content (for example, in bullets or titles) on your ASINs.

2) Use the Transparency Program

Once your account is set up with the Brand Registry, you can also utilize the Amazon Transparency program. This takes your manufacturer’s protection to the next level with a serialization service to ensure only authentic, authorized products end up being shipped to consumers.

Transparency puts an individual code on each product, whether FBA or fulfilled by selling partners. The nice thing is if you’re only having issues with some products, you can pick and choose which to enroll in, saving you potential time if your whole catalog isn’t at risk.

3) Police Distributors and Get Signed Distribution Agreements

The best way to stop unauthorized sellers is to prevent them in the first place. As a manufacturer, you must put distribution agreements in place with every single distributor you sell to. This is important because the most common issues are with wholesalers who are, indeed, authorized to sell your product. Problems occur when this distributor goes rogue and tries to sell your products cheaper than you are selling them, or is reselling your products to another third party.

Be specific in your agreements with distributors and be sure to monitor and check in with them. If they know you will cut off supply as soon as they behave badly, they are much more likely to play by your rules. Ensuring agreements are in place that clearly outline pricing and distribution policies before you distribute them is very helpful. Be ready with a plan and clear agreements from day one.

4) Take Legal Action

If you have MAP and distribution policies in place and have your copyrights and intellectual property protections prepared, you can take legal action against distributors who are violating your policies. You may want to have your legal counsel create a cease and desist letter which you can send out as needed to any bad actors.

Free Download: Cease and Desist Letter Template

5) Try to Get Your Brand Listed as a Restricted Brand

Some brands are so large or have so many counterfeit issues, the marketplace will allow them to be restricted on Amazon. This means certain brands, especially in certain categories like cell phone accessories, handbags, or luxury beauty, can receive even greater protections, with sellers having to seek approval before they sell them.

For the average brand, this is a long shot. But as your brand grows, it may be an option. Keep documentation of counterfeit and other issues should you need it for Amazon’s process. You can find more information on restrictions and category gating in Seller Central.

6) Enlist Professional Help

Monitoring your brand, filing tickets, contacting support, dealing with counterfeits and legal info — all of this can be a massive drain on resources. If you find unauthorized sellers are too difficult to handle yourself, you can always enlist professionals to manage your account or help with specific problems.

eCommerce Nurse handles a range of issues and services for accounts large and small, all over the globe. With our experienced team of ex-Amazon experts, we can help you make the most of your brand and business. Ready for more help? Contact us today.