Completing account registration does not mean that everything is fine. During operation, you still need to take precautions to prevent account association.
So, what is account association? What are the possible consequences of account association? What are the factors that are easily identified as account association by the Amazon system? How should we prevent and avoid account association? The following will explain them one by one.
1. What is account association?
According to Amazon’s official regulations, an entity can only own and operate one Amazon seller account without permission. Based on this regulation, the Amazon system will use technical means and monitoring and comparison of various transaction data to identify whether there is a connection between the various accounts selling goods on the Amazon platform.
As a rule of thumb, the first three months of an account’s operation are defaulted to the platform’s key assessment period. It is recommended that sellers try to control the number of product releases and sales growth rate during this period to avoid large fluctuations.
Account performance is poor and performance does not meet the target: Driven by the corporate philosophy of becoming “the world’s most user-centric company”, Amazon has a good reputation in serving users. At the same time, it has also formulated corresponding rules to regulate the behavior of sellers, involving three aspects: customer service performance, product policy compliance and delivery performance, including order defect rate, late delivery rate, pre-delivery cancellation rate, effective tracking rate, and buyer dissatisfaction rate of “buyer voice” and many other detailed indicators. Next, we will interpret the requirements of each indicator and the response strategy to prevent exceeding the target.
The core indicator of customer service performance is the order defect rate, which we often call ODR (Order Defective Rate). According to the requirements of the seller performance indicators, the order defect rate must be less than 1%. Exceeding it may result in account restrictions. The order defect rate includes three different indicators: negative feedback, Amazon Marketplace transaction guarantee claims (A-to-Z Guarantee Claims) and credit card chargeback claims (Charge Back Claims). The order defect rate is an account performance indicator that sellers need to focus on in their operations.
Negative feedback refers to the bad reviews received by the store. For each negative feedback, the seller must analyze it in detail and solve it in a targeted manner to reduce the adverse impact on the store.
Amazon Marketplace Transaction Guarantee Claim refers to the dispute initiated by the buyer to request the platform customer service to intervene and handle it because the buyer and the seller cannot reach an agreement after communication due to order issues. When facing A-to-Z disputes, sellers should carefully analyze if it is their own responsibility and take the initiative to assume and resolve it: if it is not their own responsibility, they can provide evidence and the platform will handle it. If it is determined to be an associated account, Amazon will deal with the relevant account according to the platform regulations and the actual operation status of the associated account.
2. Possible consequences of account association
Because Amazon accounts are distinguished by different sites, account association is also divided into two situations: same-site association and different-site association. Same-site association refers to the association between two (multiple) accounts on the same Amazon site, and different-site association refers to the association between two (multiple) accounts on different Amazon sites.
No matter what kind of association, once it is determined to be an associated account by the Amazon system, there will often be the following results. If it is a same-site association, when the Amazon system detects that these accounts cross-sell the same (similar) products, the system will send an email to remind the seller to delete the duplicate products on their own. If the seller does not adjust in time, the Amazon platform may forcibly close all associated accounts.
Whether it is a same-site association or a different-site association, if the products sold by each account are different from each other and each account performs well, the Amazon system may not notify the seller, and each account can operate normally, but the association will be recorded in the Amazon system.
Whether it is a same-site association or a different-site association, if an account is closed by the system due to violations or substandard performance, other accounts may be implicated and closed at any time.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that account association does not mean that the account will be processed immediately, and the Amazon platform will handle accounts of different statuses differently. But there is no doubt that there is a risk of account closure due to account association. Therefore, in the process of operation, we should try to avoid the association between multiple accounts to reduce the risk of account closure. Let’s take a look at the factors that lead to account association.
3. Factors used by Amazon to determine account association
Computer: Mainly refers to the computer’s hard disk information. Sellers are advised to use independent computers to operate independent accounts. Network: Mainly refers to the network’s IP address. Multiple accounts repeatedly logged in under the same IP address are often identified as associated by the Amazon system. Since most Chinese IP addresses are floating IP addresses, it is inevitable that different network IP addresses will be the same, so the overlap of IP addresses is only one of the factors for determining association.
Network card MAC address: Some sellers, based on cost considerations, format the computer 0 after an account is closed, reinstall the system and log in to a new account. If the computer network card is integrated, the network card is not disabled or replaced with a new one, it is easy to be determined as associated.
Router: The physical address in the router is easily recorded by the Amazon system and determined as account association.Browser fingerprint: such as plug-ins, cookies, system fonts, operating system version, typing method and habitual typing speed, etc.
Account information: registrant name, credit card holder name, payment account information, email address, address information filled in the account, phone number, etc. are all factors to determine whether or not the account is associated. Sellers should try to avoid duplication of information when registering an account.
Product information: If the products of two or more stores are completely repeated, the product images used are the same, and the product descriptions are highly repeated, it is easy for the system to determine that the account is associated. It is recommended that sellers who operate multiple stores at the same time sell different products in each store as much as possible. If the products are repeated, it is recommended to use different product images and write different product descriptions in each store.
Trademark information: Use the registered trademark of the closed store, or follow the sale of the products of the closed store, etc.
4. How to prevent account association
The Amazon system will determine the account association through the overlap between multiple factors. For sellers, in order to avoid the account being judged as an associated account, they must pay attention to avoid crossover between accounts during operation.
If the seller really needs to register and operate multiple accounts at the same time based on operational needs, then during the registration process, the seller must use different email addresses, new computers, systems, browsers, independent routers and network cables, phone numbers that have not been registered with Amazon accounts before, different credit cards and payment accounts, etc. During the operation process, different products must be published under different accounts, and the risk of account association can be avoided by physical insulation and differences in account information and product information.
It should be noted that account association is irreversible. Once the system determines that the account is associated, the association cannot be removed.