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Appealing the Removal of Selling Privileges
All sellers who use the Amazon site to market and sell their products also depend on Amazon to maintain their selling privileges. If Amazon suspends or denies a seller’s right to list and sell merchandise through the seller’s account, then the seller may opt to appeal the removal of the selling privileges.
Removing the Privileges from a Seller Account
If any of the following weaknesses on the part of the seller are evident, then the seller may lose privileges:
- If a seller demonstrates inferior performance, as per the measurements described in the Seller Performance Measurement page.
- If a seller breaches any of Amazon’s policies, including those regarding inappropriate or restricted listings.
Common Areas of Deficiency
After receiving a suspension of rights, sellers should be particularly careful with regard to the following areas:
- Accuracy of Listings: Listings should be updated and the product descriptions should be carefully worded.
- Shipping Policies: Orders are determined to have shipped expeditiously and properly, and the seller is determined to not (should not) be receiving complaints about late shipments, damaged goods, or items that were never received.
- Seller-Buyer Communications: Given that Amazon regards the customer as always being right, sellers should be concerned if buyers seem frustrated, whether for slow response (or lack thereof) or unprofessional, impolite communication. Sellers are responsible for the buyers’ positive experience with Amazon.
- Inventory and Cancellations: Sellers who find that their items are consistently out of stock are at risk of a negative review by Amazon. Amazon regards a seller who is out of stock regularly as unprofessional.
Note: Any one breach in policy requires a thorough review of Amazon’s policies as well as the seller’s inventory to eliminate any violations.
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Reinstating Selling Rights
Removal of selling privileges is not permanent, and sellers may appeal the verdict. Any seller who wishes to regain selling rights should take action according to the following steps:
- Read Amazon’s official notification that removes the seller’s selling rights, as it will inform the seller why his or her selling privileges have been suspended.
- Analyze all of the seller’s own practices to prevent any interruption of services due to poor performance measurements. Sellers should improve those practices that can be improved, and do all they can to improve Amazon.com.
- Review Amazon’s policies to confirm that the seller protocols are being met and upheld.
- Create a detailed action plan to improve the current situation, including step-by-step changes to be made to improve the buyer’s experience.
- Send the detailed action plan to Amazon with the request to have seller privileges reinstated on the basis of the planned improvements. Sellers will find the ability to appeal the suspension under Performance in the seller’s account, and should submit both appeal and action plan to Amazon using the Submit Appeal button.
Note: Amazon responds to sellers’ appeals within a few days, but does not guarantee that selling rights will be reestablished.
An Effective Action Plan
Sellers should review both Amazon’s policies and their own procedures to determine where their performances are falling short of the Amazon standard. With that assessment, sellers are able to determine where action much be taken to improve their treatment of buyers. For example, if selling privileges were revoked because of a policy breach caused by inappropriate inventory, then the attempt to reinstate selling privileges should include the immediate removal of the inappropriate merchandise and a policy to inspect inventory thoroughly going forward.