There is an Amazon coach in my BNI Chapter and through my conversations with him, it’s come to my attention that entrepreneurs selling on Amazon.com run a risk of robots flagging something in their account and suspending it. In a sense, Amazon will suspend accounts and “ask questions later.” I regularly order goods from Amazon (pretty sure my postman thinks I’m cray!) so I find this disturbing.
For those of you who are curious, I like Cynthia G. Stine’s “anatomy of a suspension” found on page 4 of her e-Book,
- The Amazon robots find metrics they don’t like (e.g., in Seller Rating)
- Amazon puts the seller account under review (the seller may not know about this)
- Seller account is suspended and you get a performance notification.
- Seller is offered a chance to appeal. The seller does this by writing a detailed Plan of Action (i.e., a proactive plan to explain why the problem happened and how it can be prevented).
- Amazon may accept the appeal, ask questions, deny the appeal or ban the seller account. (And “banned” means banned for life – yikes!!!
- If the Seller is denied or banned, the Seller may attempt to revise the Plan of Action; however, it’s significantly harder at this point (in Cynthia’s words, the “Plan is put at the bottom of the pile or discarded”) – double yikes!
Rincker Law, PLLC can help food entrepreneurs and e-commerce business owners submit a detailed Plan of Action to Amazon to appeal a suspension.