In recent years, Amazon has been making great efforts to attract investors in China. For sellers who intend to operate on the Amazon platform, it is easy to apply for an account. After having an account, how to operate it in a long-term and stable manner is what sellers should focus on.
Many sellers have their accounts closed or sales permissions removed for various reasons during operation, either the operation rhythm is disrupted or the inventory backlog causes losses. In order to avoid these situations, we must increase our risk awareness and prevent and avoid the following situations that may lead to account restrictions.
The speed of product listing and sales growth is too fast: Amazon platform loan issuance has special characteristics (loans are issued after the order is confirmed and shipped, 14 days is a loan cycle, and each account has a basically fixed loan date). Previously, bad sellers used this special feature to maliciously deceive the platform for payment, causing losses to the platform in terms of funds and reputation. In order to avoid risks, the Amazon system will monitor the product listing speed and sales growth rate of seller accounts (especially new accounts) in real time. If an account’s product listing speed is too fast, the quantity is too large, and the sales volume fluctuates too much or grows explosively in a short period of time, it will trigger a system warning and cause the account to be reviewed.
According to convention, the first three months of an account’s operation are defaulted as 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.
Poor account performance and substandard performance: 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’s voice” buyer dissatisfaction rate and other detailed indicators. Next, interpret the requirements of each indicator and the response strategy to prevent exceeding the standard.
The core indicator of customer service performance is the order defect rate, which is what we often call ODR (Order Defectiv Rate). According to the requirements of seller performance indicators, the order defect rate must be less than 1%. Exceeding this rate may result in account restrictions. The order defect rate includes three different indicators: negative feedback, A-to-Z Guarantee Claims, and 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. The Amazon Marketplace Transaction Guarantee Claim refers to a dispute opened by the buyer requesting the platform customer service to intervene 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 and take the initiative to assume and resolve if it is their own responsibility; if it is not their own responsibility, they can provide evidence and the platform will make a ruling.
Credit card chargeback claims are buyer or system security issues, and the probability of occurrence is very low. If it occurs, it is basically not the seller’s responsibility. The seller only needs to provide valid evidence for the platform to make a ruling.
Product policy compliance mainly assesses whether the seller is suspected of intellectual property infringement, complaints due to intellectual property, complaints due to product authenticity, complaints due to product status, complaints due to product safety, and whether the seller violates the platform listing policy, restricted product policy, and buyer product review policy when listing products. If the seller encounters the above situations during the operation, the account may be restricted.
How to understand and grasp the requirements of product policy compliance during the operation? Suspected intellectual property infringement: If the platform determines that the seller’s listed products are suspected of intellectual property infringement due to Amazon system identification, platform manual sampling, and being reported by the right holder, including trademark infringement, patent infringement (invention patents, utility patents and appearance patents), copyright infringement and stolen pictures, the Amazon system will remove or delete the corresponding products, and require the seller to provide corresponding authorization, certification, purchase documents and other information to prove the legitimacy of its sales. The platform will also require the seller to provide an improvement plan. If the seller cannot provide information that meets the requirements, the infringement of intellectual property rights will be counted as account performance. In serious cases, the account will be removed from sales rights, and even the funds in the account will be frozen. This is also the reason why the author repeatedly emphasizes in the following text that we must stay away from infringement during operation.
Intellectual property complaints: In order to avoid complaints of intellectual property infringement during operation, sellers should do the following. First, try not to follow the sale, which is the main cause of infringement. Second, when listing products, do not sell unauthorized products with other trademarks, do not write other trademark names in the product details, do not use patterns with other trademarks, etc. Third, in order to avoid patent infringement, sellers should cultivate industry common sense, improve their professionalism in products, be familiar with the patent situation in their industry, and avoid selling unauthorized products containing patents of other rights holders. Fourth, to avoid copyright infringement, sellers should understand the copyrights that may be involved in the products and the copywriting and pictures used on the products. Do not plagiarize other sellers’ copywriting in the product details, do not steal other sellers’ product pictures, and do not use any product pictures of unknown sources.
Buyer complaints about product authenticity: This complaint mainly includes two aspects. On the one hand, it is the unauthorized sale of products of other brands, and on the other hand, the products sold do not have legal trademarks. It is best for sellers to register their own trademarks and sell products with their own trademarks during operation.
Buyer complaints about product condition: If the buyer doubts that the product they received is used, they will complain to the seller that the product is “passing off old as new”. The seller must do a good job of quality control and try to avoid this situation.
Buyer complaints about product safety: After the buyer purchases the product, if there are safety problems during use, they will complain to the platform. For product safety complaints, the Amazon platform will generally directly remove the product from the shelves. In serious cases, the seller may also seek corresponding compensation and even require the seller to bear legal responsibility. Shelf policy violations: The way the product is listed does not comply with the platform rules. In serious cases, the account will be restricted. Violation of restricted product policy: If the product that is prohibited from sale is listed on the platform and is captured by the system, the product will be deleted at the least and the account will be restricted at the worst.
Violation of buyer product review policy: Violation of platform rules, inducing buyers to leave comments, or using other methods prohibited by the platform to add comments to their own products. In serious cases, the account will be removed from sales permissions.
The above are the specific requirements and detailed explanations of product policy compliance. It is hoped that sellers will carefully study the platform’s relevant policies during operation to avoid account restrictions due to improper operation. Delivery performance: including three specific indicators: late shipment rate, pre-delivery cancellation rate and effective tracking rate.
According to the order processing regulations of the Amazon platform, all sellers’ self-delivery orders need to be shipped within 72 hours after the buyer completes the payment. If the order is not shipped in time, it will be counted as a late shipment order. The late shipment rate (the percentage of late shipment orders within 30 days to the total number of orders) is less than 4%. If the late shipment rate exceeds the standard, the sales authority may be removed. The late shipment rate is one of the important indicators that self-delivery sellers must pay attention to in their operations.
The pre-delivery cancellation rate refers to the situation where the seller cancels the order before delivery due to out-of-stock reasons after the buyer places an order. According to the regulations of the Amazon platform, the pre-delivery cancellation rate must be less than 2.5%.
According to Amazon’s requirements, the effective tracking rate of orders must exceed 95%. If the effective tracking rate is too low, it may also lead to account restrictions. In order to avoid the removal of sales authority from the account, self-delivery sellers must ship in time and fill in a valid tracking number that can be recognized by the system.
In addition to the above indicators, false shipments will also be severely punished by the Amazon platform. If a tracking number is determined by the system to be a false shipment, for example, the tracking number has been successfully delivered before the order is shipped, or the seller has modified the tracking number multiple times after shipment, etc., then the account may be removed from the Amazon platform. According to the rules of the Amazon platform, false shipments are fraudulent acts. Once they occur, they may lead to direct restrictions on the account. Sellers must be vigilant in operations.
The buyer dissatisfaction rate is also a performance indicator that sellers need to pay attention to in operations. If a product becomes “unqualified” due to too many complaints from buyers, the system may automatically stop selling the product. During the operation process, sellers must check the indicators of each product in the “Voice of Buyers” in a timely manner and make timely adjustments.
After understanding the relevant indicators that affect account security, as a seller, you must understand the relevant regulations of the platform during the operation process, and do a good job of risk prevention on the premise of complying with the platform rules to maintain long-term and stable operations. Only in this way can the performance continue to grow.