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Loss of Selling Privileges
When a seller infringes upon one of the tenets agreed upon within the Participation Agreement, Amazon reserves the right to remove or suspend licenses that were previously given, otherwise known as the loss of selling privileges. This suspension can be temporary or permanent; this is solely up to the discretion of Amazon.
Why Selling Privileges Might be Removed
The loss of selling privileges can occur for a variety of reasons. Some of these include:
- A low customer service score: Amazon uses various metrics to gauge how a seller is operating within the Amazon Marketplace, from the Order Defect Rate to the Late Shipment Rate. These cumulative grades are known as the Customer Performance Metric. A poor rating will have an adverse effect on the seller’s standings and may result in the loss of selling privileges.
- Listing an item that appears on the restricted products list, or violating one of the rules regulating the sale of these items: See the restricted products page for a complete list of products that are not allowed as well as policies pertaining to permitted items that require special permissions or procedures in order to have them listed within the seller’s account.
- Abusing or disregarding one of the Amazon Selling Policies: These range from standard community rules to specific account policies that are recommended for best customer performance ratings.
- Misrepresentation: In general, any misrepresentation of an item can result in the loss of selling privileges.
How to Remove a Suspension on Selling Privileges
In order to reinstate an account once a seller has received a notice of the loss of selling privileges, he must take steps to correct the specific incursion that brought about the suspension of the selling privileges. The following steps should be taken in an effort to improve the seller’s standings:
- Study the email that has been sent by Amazon informing the seller of the loss of selling privileges. Within this correspondence, there will be information explaining why these licenses have been removed.
- In the event that this suspension was caused by poor performance metrics, the seller should make every effort to improve his practices for the future. This means carefully scrutinizing businesses practices, customer correspondence, policies and general behavior between the seller and the buyers.
- Once the seller has honed in on specific issues, concrete steps should be mapped out to achieve a higher performance rating.
- This plan should be sent directly to Amazon by sending a notice of appeal to the department. Simply click on Appeal from within the original email that was sent out notifying the seller of the loss of selling privileges.
- If the selling privileges were suspended because of a listing issue, the problem should be corrected promptly, and Amazon should be notified of the changes. For example, if an item has been inaccurately described (and is considered to be a misrepresentation of the product), the product description should immediately be changed to more accurately describe the actual item being sold.
- Wait for a response from Amazon, but put these new policies into practice immediately to help increase the customer performance metrics for the future.
