Amazon provides unprecedented opportunities for people who want to sell products online. However, when you sell on Amazon, you must abide by their rules. There are countless different scenarios when your behavior (or lack of behavior) could result in the suspension of your seller account.

In this article, we will cover some common reasons why your Amazon seller account may be suspended, and how you can get it back if it is suspended. We'll also look at how to avoid suspension in the first place.

1. Reasons Your Account May Be Suspended

Let’s first review the different actions Amazon can take against your seller account. If Amazon takes action against you, you may face three account statuses:

Account Suspension: After suspension, you will receive an email stating "Amazon Account Suspension." The listing will be temporarily inactive and you will not receive sales. Using this status, you can still regain access (more on this later).

Denyed: This status means that your appeal to have your account reinstated has been denied. If you receive this text notification, you can still regain access by appealing again.

Banned: This is the last status you want to see. This means your account will be permanently closed. Once deactivated, Amazon will remove your products and you will not be able to sell them again.

Now that you understand the different account statuses, let’s look at why your account may have been suspended. Three main reasons why you may face account suspension:

1. Poor seller performance

One of the most common reasons why your account may be suspended is poor performance. Amazon has specific performance requirements that all sellers need to meet. They monitor this performance by tracking several key metrics. This includes:

Order defect rate: the percentage of orders that contain one of these poor customer service factors; negative feedback, A-to-Z claims (returns), and credit card chargebacks.

Pre-delivery cancellation rate: The percentage of orders you cancel before they are shipped. Amazon wants a tax rate of 2.5% or less.

Late shipment rate: Orders shipped after the estimated ship date. Amazon measures this every 10 and 30 days.

Amazon uses these metrics because they directly lead to a better customer experience. By removing sellers that perform poorly in these areas, they help protect customers from low-quality products, thereby limiting the number of returns and customer complaints.

You can view these metrics yourself in the Performance section of your Seller Central account. There you can see if there are any complaints and common issues that need to be addressed.

2. Policy Violations

Policy violations are another common reason for Amazon account suspension. Amazon has a long list of rules you need to follow. We won’t go into all of them, but there are two important policies to point out. These are Amazon’s positions regarding product reviews and intellectual property rights.

Review Operations

Amazon has strict policies regarding product reviews. Customer feedback is crucial in helping shoppers find the best products, so they want to make sure everything is honest and accurate. If Amazon suspects unusual or suspicious activity on your reviews, you may receive a warning and then take action against your account.

Specifically, Amazon does not allow you to create false, misleading, or untrue reviews of your products. You also may not offer monetary or other incentives in exchange for positive reviews. This problem is easy to avoid, but many sellers want to beat the competition and try it anyway.

Infringement of Intellectual Property

As an Amazon seller, you are required to comply with all laws regarding trademark and copyright. Trademark infringement refers to the unauthorized use of another company's trademark when selling goods. It also includes using a similar trademark in a deceptive manner to confuse customers or make them believe that you have a specific brand of product.

Copyright infringement occurs when you display or distribute another company's copyrighted work. For example, if you use another seller's image, description, or other text in your listing, this would be considered copyright infringement.

Amazon will proactively guard against intellectual property infringement as insurance against complaints and legal issues from affected parties. If they find you violating this policy, your account will be at risk.

3. Selling Restricted Products

Although Amazon has countless products, there are some products that it does not allow you to sell on its marketplace. For example, items such as alcohol, cigarettes, personal trainer sessions and animals cannot be sold on the market.

Also, you can sell some products, but you will need to obtain additional verification to do so. If you try to circumvent these rules to list and sell these items, you may see your account suspended.

2. What to do if your account is suspended

If your account is suspended, there are steps you can take to reactivate it. How long the process takes depends on the nature of the suspension and the responsiveness of Amazon seller support staff.

To reinstate your account, you will need to develop a plan of action, essentially an appeal. This addresses why you were suspended and how you plan to resolve it by adjusting your business practices.

First, open the message Amazon sent about your account suspension to learn why you were suspended.

If there is a problem with your product, please check your inventory to see which item is the problem. Depending on the issue, you may need to remove items from inventory and lists. In some cases, Amazon will specifically mention the product in question.

If the problem is too many disputed transactions, the solution is a little more complicated. You need to figure out why so many customers are disputing their orders.

Performance issues are easier to analyze and fix. You can go to your Account Health Dashboard to see where you're faltering. You can then come up with a new set of processes to ensure the problem doesn't persist

Once you've identified the problem and come up with a solution, you can write up your appeal and send it to Amazon. Here are some suggestions to follow when writing an appeal:

Take responsibility and admit that you understand the negative impact of the issue on the customer.

Do not question or complain about the suspension process.

State your action plan clearly, but don’t get too hung up on the details. A concise and thoughtful response will lead to faster reactivation.

3. How to Prevent Amazon Account Suspension

By following these steps, you can significantly reduce the likelihood of your account being suspended:

1. Sell quality products

Even if you do your best to comply with all of Amazon's policies, your account may still be suspended if you continue to receive negative reviews and complaints from customers. The best way to solve this potential problem is to sell only top-notch products.

By conducting extensive product research, you can ensure you always have a high-quality product. This will give you insights into the products that are in demand so that you can always sell products that satisfy your customers.

Yimaisuo provides professional cross-border product selection research work, and you can provide your current products. Emax provides you with extensive data on countless products on the market. You can see how many sales they have, how competitive they are, what customers are saying about them, and more. When reviewing potential niches, pay close attention to average ratings. This will let you know if customers are critical of the projects. If a niche has a lower average rating, it may indicate that shoppers in that market are harder to please. In this case, you may be open to more negative feedback.

2. Use Amazon FBA

Another way to avoid the many performance-related reasons for account closure is to use Amazon’s FBA fulfillment service. The reason for this is simple. If Amazon stores and ships your products, you don't need to worry about delayed shipments. There will also be no circumstances under which you will need to cancel your order before it has been delivered.

3. Comply with all Amazon policies

If you want to keep your account active without interruption, be sure to carefully review Amazon's policies, especially those regarding product reviews. Don't abuse your ability to ask for reviews by offering payment or simply encouraging positive feedback.

4. Don’t sell counterfeit or unauthorized products

This may sound simple, but it shouldn’t be ignored. If you choose to sell fake and counterfeit products, you are asking for trouble. You may be able to get away from it for a short time without problems, but eventually it will catch up with you.

IV. Conclusion

I hope you never suspend your Amazon account.

Hope this can help you