Risks About Being Sole Seller
Risks About Being Sole Seller
Dirty tricks take out more and more sellers every day. Don't be one of them.
Dirty tricks take out more and more sellers every day. Don't be one of them.
Risks About Being Sole Seller
Risks About Being Sole Seller
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© 2019 Life Magnitude Inc. | All rights reserved. | PS - You rock
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“You have manipulated product reviews on our site. This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site.”
Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange. The scope would normally get a single review a day, and many of these referred to a different scope, as if they’d been cut and pasted from elsewhere. “I didn’t know what was going on, whether it was a glitch or whether somebody was trying to mess with us,” Plansky says.
As a precaution, he reported the reviews to Amazon. Most of them vanished days later — problem solved — and Plansky reimmersed himself in the work of running a six-employee, multimillion-dollar weapons accessory business on Amazon. Then, two weeks later, the trap sprang. “You have manipulated product reviews on our site,” an email from Amazon read. “This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site.”
“You have manipulated product reviews on our site. This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site.”
Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange. The scope would normally get a single review a day, and many of these referred to a different scope, as if they’d been cut and pasted from elsewhere. “I didn’t know what was going on, whether it was a glitch or whether somebody was trying to mess with us,” Plansky says.
As a precaution, he reported the reviews to Amazon. Most of them vanished days later — problem solved — and Plansky reimmersed himself in the work of running a six-employee, multimillion-dollar weapons accessory business on Amazon. Then, two weeks later, the trap sprang. “You have manipulated product reviews on our site,” an email from Amazon read. “This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site.”
How are Sellers Vulnerable?
As has been described here, the number of dirty tricks available to bad actors on the Amazon platform – and their use of them – has steadily increased over the last year.
Just because your brand hasn’t yet been the victim of these tactics is no reason to believe that that will not change in the future.
Here are just a few ways that sellers are vulnerable:
A seller buys his competitors’ items over and over and continually reports the item to Amazon as defective or counterfeit. Eventually, Amazon places restrictions on the sellers account and demands supplier invoices. Amazon takes a long time to verify the invoices (or they can’t verify them at all) and the seller is out of commission for weeks.
A seller hires a company to leave a huge volume of positive reviews on their competitors’ listings. Amazon then goes after the innocent competitor for fraudulent reviews.
A brand has a competitor literally copy their products, take over their own listings for themselves (hijacking), and then claim to Amazon that THEY have the real, legitimate listing. Some have gone as far as to register another company’s trademark as their own in Brand Registry and then do takedowns of the true rights owner.
An electronic product seller has a competitor that buys a product from them and then claims to Amazon that it caught on fire. Some of them have astonishing pictures of the product burning as if it was lit with gasoline. Amazon is very quick to kill listings for safety concerns. The innocent seller then has to show proof of certification from independent third-party testing labs to get reinstated – an expensive and time-consuming proposition.
A bad actor with a Vendor Central account changes a competitor’s listing to create bad buyer experiences. Sometimes they change the dimensions or weight of the product so suddenly the seller is paying oversize fees on a small box and losing all of their margin on a product. Other times they change the product picture or description so that the buyer is unhappy when they get their purchase. When a change is made through Vendor Central, Amazon considers it a “retail contribution” and it is really hard to get them to fix the listing.
A recent client had a bad actor that was uploading obscene and vulgar pictures to all of his listings over and over again. He’d get it fixed with Amazon and within a few hours the horrible pictures were back. These were all through normal flat file uploads to the Amazon platform. Amazon couldn’t catch the bad actor because these were all stealth accounts and the bad actor used a different stealth account every time they uploaded. There was no point in blocking a seller account in other words. Buyers were literally screaming at the brand (IN ALL CAPS!!!) in the product reviews. The brand’s listings plummeted in the organic search results. Do you think Amazon will remove these bad reviews when the problem is fixed? Of course not. They never remove product reviews if they are from legitimate buyers. The damage is done and will keep on killing those listings.
How are Sellers Vulnerable?
As has been described here, the number of dirty tricks available to bad actors on the Amazon platform – and their use of them – has steadily increased over the last year.
Just because your brand hasn’t yet been the victim of these tactics is no reason to believe that that will not change in the future.
Here are just a few ways that sellers are vulnerable:
A seller buys his competitors’ items over and over and continually reports the item to Amazon as defective or counterfeit. Eventually, Amazon places restrictions on the sellers account and demands supplier invoices. Amazon takes a long time to verify the invoices (or they can’t verify them at all) and the seller is out of commission for weeks.
A seller hires a company to leave a huge volume of positive reviews on their competitors’ listings. Amazon then goes after the innocent competitor for fraudulent reviews.
A brand has a competitor literally copy their products, take over their own listings for themselves (hijacking), and then claim to Amazon that THEY have the real, legitimate listing. Some have gone as far as to register another company’s trademark as their own in Brand Registry and then do takedowns of the true rights owner.
An electronic product seller has a competitor that buys a product from them and then claims to Amazon that it caught on fire. Some of them have astonishing pictures of the product burning as if it was lit with gasoline. Amazon is very quick to kill listings for safety concerns. The innocent seller then has to show proof of certification from independent third-party testing labs to get reinstated – an expensive and time-consuming proposition.
A bad actor with a Vendor Central account changes a competitor’s listing to create bad buyer experiences. Sometimes they change the dimensions or weight of the product so suddenly the seller is paying oversize fees on a small box and losing all of their margin on a product. Other times they change the product picture or description so that the buyer is unhappy when they get their purchase. When a change is made through Vendor Central, Amazon considers it a “retail contribution” and it is really hard to get them to fix the listing.
A recent client had a bad actor that was uploading obscene and vulgar pictures to all of his listings over and over again. He’d get it fixed with Amazon and within a few hours the horrible pictures were back. These were all through normal flat file uploads to the Amazon platform. Amazon couldn’t catch the bad actor because these were all stealth accounts and the bad actor used a different stealth account every time they uploaded. There was no point in blocking a seller account in other words. Buyers were literally screaming at the brand (IN ALL CAPS!!!) in the product reviews. The brand’s listings plummeted in the organic search results. Do you think Amazon will remove these bad reviews when the problem is fixed? Of course not. They never remove product reviews if they are from legitimate buyers. The damage is done and will keep on killing those listings.
About Life Magnitude Partner
Life Magnitude Partner is a digital retail agency with significant expertise in the Amazon marketplace and other major sales platforms. Unlike typical marketing agencies who will charge you thousands of dollars in fees, we earn our income by purchasing your products wholesale and then reselling them - thereby ensuring that our interests are 100% aligned with yours.
About Life Magnitude Partner
Life Magnitude Partner is a digital retail agency with significant expertise in the Amazon marketplace and other major sales platforms. Unlike typical marketing agencies who will charge you thousands of dollars in fees, we earn our income by purchasing your products wholesale and then reselling them - thereby ensuring that our interests are 100% aligned with yours.
A quick search online and on any Amazon seller forum will reveal countless stories of Amazon account suspensions. Amazon Terms of Service are long and not always intuitive, and reasons for suspension range from the obvious (e.g., horrible customer service, multiple products sold that don’t match the Amazon listings) to the obscure.
For instance, consider the story of the seller – let’s call him Chris – who had excellent seller metrics but ended up hiring a longtime friend to help with his flourishing Amazon business. This friend had previously had her own seller account, but thought she had closed it 2 or 3 years back. However, as soon as Chris granted his friend access to his seller account (using her personal email address that apparently was still linked to her old seller account), Amazon suspended both accounts.
Chris was able to appeal Amazon’s decision, and eventually able to reopen his seller account… 40 days later.
40 days. That’s a long time to be without what for most eCommerce brands is a significant portion of their revenue.
What would it mean to you to be without your Amazon sales for 40 days?
How much revenue would you lose over the 40 days?
Chris was a smaller seller, but big enough to work his business full time and pay himself from the profits. And account suspensions aren’t limited to smaller sellers – in 2017, one of the top 10 third-party sellers in the US had to deal with account suspension.
The downsides of having one seller on your product(s) aren’t limited to the loss of revenue due to a potential account suspension.
A quick search online and on any Amazon seller forum will reveal countless stories of Amazon account suspensions. Amazon Terms of Service are long and not always intuitive, and reasons for suspension range from the obvious (e.g., horrible customer service, multiple products sold that don’t match the Amazon listings) to the obscure.
For instance, consider the story of the seller – let’s call him Chris – who had excellent seller metrics but ended up hiring a longtime friend to help with his flourishing Amazon business. This friend had previously had her own seller account, but thought she had closed it 2 or 3 years back. However, as soon as Chris granted his friend access to his seller account (using her personal email address that apparently was still linked to her old seller account), Amazon suspended both accounts.
Chris was able to appeal Amazon’s decision, and eventually able to reopen his seller account… 40 days later.
40 days. That’s a long time to be without what for most eCommerce brands is a significant portion of their revenue.
What would it mean to you to be without your Amazon sales for 40 days?
How much revenue would you lose over the 40 days?
Chris was a smaller seller, but big enough to work his business full time and pay himself from the profits. And account suspensions aren’t limited to smaller sellers – in 2017, one of the top 10 third-party sellers in the US had to deal with account suspension.
The downsides of having one seller on your product(s) aren’t limited to the loss of revenue due to a potential account suspension.
SOURCE: Prime and Punishment
"A rival had framed Plansky for buying five-star reviews, a high crime in the world of Amazon. The funds in his account were immediately frozen, and his listings were shut down. Getting his store back would take him on a surreal weeks-long journey through Amazon’s bureaucracy, one that began with the click of a button at the bottom of his suspension message that read “appeal decision.”
SOURCE: Prime and Punishment
"A rival had framed Plansky for buying five-star reviews, a high crime in the world of Amazon. The funds in his account were immediately frozen, and his listings were shut down. Getting his store back would take him on a surreal weeks-long journey through Amazon’s bureaucracy, one that began with the click of a button at the bottom of his suspension message that read “appeal decision.”
| KEY FINDINGS
| KEY FINDINGS