June 27, 2019, Kev’s team got Adam’s account back. If you do not know who Adam is, he is a seasoned seller and has been around for many, many months. He is full-time on Amazon, and he was suspended at the weekend.
Unfortunately, Adam received an email on the weekend asking for a plan of action, and there was a suspected restricted product in his account, and he needed to put a plan of action in.
Due to a sequence of events, his account was suspended – some critical errors were made. This is where we learn. Adam has learned so much, and here at Systemise Fulfilment, we have learned so much as well.
In this blog post, I will give you as many tips as possible to help prevent Amazon suspensions.
Don’t Do Anything Out Of Emotion
If anything occurs in your account, anything like a plan of action, suspension, anything serious, any type of claims, or anything to do with your performance notification, always pause and don’t do anything out of emotion. I know that this is easier said than done, but please have a clear mind before you intentionally act on something.
If you do something incorrectly, Amazon will suspend you.
Amazon Expect You and I, Amazon Sellers to be Proactive to Stay Informed
It is our responsibility to ensure that you know Amazon’s policies and the marketplace’s laws. The sections in your Amazon account, the help sections, the help pages, where you go into the policies, please do what you can, and check those pages out.
If you are interested in a case study giving you a checklist of all the things you can do to protect yourself from being suspended, you can check Suspension Defence.
Amazon policies and marketplace laws are very important. You need to make sure that you keep up-to-date with this.
Do Whatever You Can to be Proactive
Do everything you possibly can to be proactive before any type of suspected restricted product goes into your account. By this I mean, putting as many automated systems as possible to prevent any type of potential restricted product from going into the account.
So, we know there are some very obvious restricted products, and you’re not able to sell anything obvious like alcohol, drugs, dangerous products, unlicensed medicines, etc.
Additionally, your pricing approach may also benefit from an automated system. By using an AI repricer, you can avoid infractions to Amazon’s fair pricing policies that could also lead to account suspension.
Have Extra Layers of Protection
If you have multiple layers of protection in your business, for example, sourcing assistants, reviewing assistants, senior assistants, this can give you extra protection. If you then have a warehouse team or a prep service, then this then gives you three layers.
If you have a prep service right now, we will talk to your prep service partners and inform them of any concern detrimental to your business. We can perform this task on your behalf because it is one of the things we do at Systemise Fulfilment. We have the experience and a highly competent team to deal with it.
This is super important. If you are in a prep service right now, have a conversation with them about potential restricted products.
If you have got performance notifications in your account, if you go to account health, it starts to tell you your IP claims, restricted policy notification – Amazon states in the email which you get that you have 48 hours to action, but it is actually 24 hours.
At this point, go into your account across all marketplaces, whether that is the EU or UK, go in and search for the ASIN, search your activity, and delete. Delete it from your account completely.
Create Automated Email Sequence
If you get some very important Amazon emails, for example, Amazon product compliance email addresses, or any type of performance notification alerts, whatever it is, you can create what we call automated email sequences.
If you get any email in your business whatsoever which is really important, you can set up a zapier to go into your Slack account, and it will notify your entire team.
Have a Restricted Products List
A part of our master spreadsheet, we developed this back in 2017. We have automated formulas across all of our spreadsheets, from our purchasing, from our sourcing, and pre-purchase. We have product lists.
If there is anything that is a potential blackflag, where it has been restricted before, it will flag up black immediately. So it highlights to everyone that it is a big blackflag.
Make Sure That You Are Using Reputable Suppliers
Make sure that you have all the documentation in place. Amazon can ask you for documentation. They can ask you for your invoices, so make sure that you have a system to get your invoices. Store your documents correctly so that if Amazon does request them, you have them ready to send.
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About The Author:
Systemise Fulfilment is an eCommerce, Amazon FBA, 3PL partner that passionately help eCommerce businesses and brands achieve life changing goals by creating an empowering ecosystem for massive success.