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Has your Amazon seller account been suspended? It is natural to get worried, with a lot of questions running through your mind. The good part is that it is suspended and not banned. Every day Amazon suspends, denies, and bans seller accounts to maintain its quality index of sellers. Being the most visited eCommerce site in India, it has stuck to its strict policies to maintain a fair and quality marketplace.
Read on to know how you can get your Amazon seller account up and running again.
Identify Why Your Seller Account Was Suspended
The first and most crucial step is to understand and identify why your Amazon seller account was suspended. It could be for any of the following reasons:
1. Poor performance: If your performance is not up to the mark, Amazon will be in a position to suspend your account to maintain a healthy, competitive market environment. Customer satisfaction is of utmost importance to Amazon. If quite a few of your customers are not satisfied with any of the quality parameters, it will lead to suspension of your account.
2. Poor product quality: If your product is not up to the mark and is backed by bad product reviews, Amazon will suspend or ban your account. Since paid reviews have low credibility and are quite misleading, one cannot bank upon these. Genuine and unbiased reviews are the way to go.
3. Duplicate or banned products: If your seller account has a banned or restricted product, then it is very likely it can get suspended.
4. Violating Amazon’s seller policy: Ensure that you read and abide by all of Amazon’s policies. If you violate one of them, they usually send you a warning. If the warning is ignored, your account can be subjected to suspension or cancellation.
5. Order defect rate and pre-fulfillment cancel rate: The order defect rate or ODR needs to be under 1%. The ODR takes into account the percentage of orders that have bad customer reviews, refunds, and credit card purchase issues.
PCR or pre-fulfillment cancel rate refers to those instances when the consumer cancels the product before it has been fulfilled. The seller is held responsible for these incidents; this rate should not be more than 2.5%
6. Delayed shipments: If your goods are not dispatched on time and reach the customer late, your late shipment rate (LSR) will go up. The LSR should ideally not be higher than 4%.
How Can the Suspension be Fixed?
Immediate Steps: Write a Formal Appeal to Amazon
Since your Amazon seller account has been suspended, you cannot sell on the site. After identifying the issue, write to Amazon with a well-formulated plan of action. Once your Amazon seller account has been suspended, you have 17 days to send an appeal. This is to be submitted through the link provided in the suspension email.
How to Write Your Appeal?
While writing your appeal, you need to go in-depth into the root cause of your suspension, identify key action points that will fix the issue, and present a long-term plan for avoiding the recurrence of the mistake.
1. Summary / Introductory Paragraph
Analyze the overall situation and briefly summarize it in your introductory paragraph. This should outline what went wrong, how you can solve the issue, and what are the necessary steps that you would take to avoid the recurrence of the mishap in the future.
2. Detailed Analysis of the Issue
The following paragraph should have everything that went wrong, and you should go into the root cause of the problem. Specify product details and customer comments or reviews. You need not state every ASIN but 1 or 2 examples for reference.
3. Steps Needed to Fix the Issue
This paragraph needs to be about the necessary steps for damage control. Be specific. Avoid paragraphs; instead, stick to bullet points. Explain each pointer in brief, offering a solid long-term solution.
4. Use Timelines
Giving specific timelines in your POA would make your credibility meter tick up, as Amazon would understand that you’re working on the issue and not taking it lightly.
5. Do not be vague
Being vague and beating around the bush will only make it worse. Keep your appeal crisp, specific, and simple. Keep the length of your POA 1-2 pages and not more than that.
Absolute No-Nos When Writing an Appeal
Do not send multiple emails.
Do not write a lengthy appeal; keep it short.
Do not write an essay. It needs to be well-structured. Use bullet points.
Do not play the blame game. Take onus of the situation.
Do not write a heated, defensive email to Amazon; this will only make it worse.
Your POA needs to be crisp, tackling every issue due to which your account was suspended in the first place.
Never blame your staff or your team members as it would only reflect badly on your part.
Do not take too much time to respond. You have 17 days at hand. Do not overthink; simply send the email as it would reflect on your promptness and sincerity to solve the matter.
Conclusion
Now that you have a step-by-step guide to reinstate your Amazon seller account, start executing it right away if you’re facing an account suspension. The most important thing to remember about your Amazon business journey is that every obstacle will teach you something along the way. Keep a close tab on each and every metric so that the same mistake isn’t repeated. As they say, precaution is definitely better than cure.
We understand that a suspension of an Amazon seller account can be daunting and also take up some of your precious time that you could utilise elsewhere. If you need professional help to guide you through this process, Powerhouse91 is the go-to place with 30 years of cumulative experience in the varied fields of eCommerce, Technology, Marketing and Chain Management in India.
We understand the importance of brand sustenance and growth and how to achieve both.