Amazon Suspensions Part Deux

“...take measures to prevent a suspension. Once it happens, you’re in for a rough ride… ”

See past and supporting posts in this series:

• Amazon Support Part 1 - A Rant
• Amazon Support Part 2 - Trying to Understand
• Amazon Support Tips
• Amazon Suspensions Part 1

The last Amazon support post was a bit emotional. However, as promised, I have been practising breathing techniques and meditation. I took time to sit on a mountain top and find inner peace. 

Anyways. Below, we hope to first define suspension types and then offer you some tips and suggestions on how to remove that pesky suspension.

Prevention

You know what I’m about to say here. The best suspension tip is to avoid a suspension. For those of you in the middle of one, I unfortunately lost the keys to my time machine. For everyone else, the time to enact changes is now.

Suspensions can cost you a small fortune, as some take weeks to overturn (some take months). Consider the revenue loss. Consider the time it will take to regain the revenue levels even once your suspension is overturned (if). These can be life-changing events for some companies and/or teams. Take the topic seriously.

Suspensions can be prevented very often by following a few simple rules:

• Check the account health dashboard militantly. Routine checks, like clockwork. Whenever something occurs, make its resolution a priority. So many suspensions are due to neglecting issues and allowing them to fester.
  
  
• Plan ahead. If you are moving warehouse, or your 3pl is snowed in, or you know of other delays, increasing shipping and handling. If you are going to be closed for 3 days, consider setting your account on holiday mode.
  
  
• Have redundancy procedures. If someone is off sick, will things  get missed? If the key member of staff who checks the account daily is on holiday for two weeks, who is tasked to replace them? Have plans that avoid a single point of failure with staff. If one person handles a check or resolution, make sure you have a wider support staff there as back up.
  
  
• Document things as you go. Often suspensions can happen with staff changes, new teams or role transitions. Similar to the above point, have a back up plan and no knowledge bottlenecks with key staff. People change roles, so expect the unexpected.

Suspension Main types

There are a few ways Amazon can ruin your day, or you can ruin your account. Some examples below might be worth watching out for (or relating to).

Verification Suspensions

These are mildly hilarious. Imagine you just started activating your account and are looking forward to beginning selling on Amazon. But then, without any warning message, clue or notification, Amazon suspends the account before it's fully active. You, waiting days, then weeks then months, wondering why it's taking so long to activate your account have just been given your first dosage of the silly world you are entering. 

Tip

Do not alter your account name during verification. If this might have happened already, open a case and ask it be double checked.

Merchant Fulfilment Suspensions

Basically, you now need to use FBA. You’re not suspended from Amazon charging you extra money via FBA, you’re just suspended from shipping orders directly. This tends to happen over poor shipping past actions, but not always.

Tip

Ship on time, always. If you can’t, increase handling times or set yourself in holiday mode during the issue. Once you’re in this mess, try to leverage FBA for a while and rebuild trust while you keep requesting an appeal. Usually with good FBA management adoption, you get granted merchant fulfilment again.

Account is Linked and Multiple accounts

Maybe you tried to open an Amazon account back in 2017, but gave up or never finished. Now, years later, someone new in the team is trying to register the company again, unknowingly about to get suspended because you already opened an account in 2017. Amazon rarely will give you much of a clue as to what account is linked, but once it thinks there is a connection, you’re stuck and suspended. On one or both, it's a game of Russian roulette.

Tip

If you have an account, try to resurrect it. If you aren't sure, check with the team. You cannot have multiple accounts. Amazon will not help you figure it out. If you are now stuck in this situation, it really can depend on the details as to how you dig out of this support-hole. Email us and I’ll try to help.

Account Hacked

A scramble to lock down banking information, hacking happens and is never fun. They may try to add products or make changes to your catalogue, so check your listings after checking sensitive info first.

Tip

Never open suspicious emails from weird people and domains. If the domain does not have Amazon in it, yet the email claims to be Amazon, ignore it. Never ever enter Amazon account information into any website on a domain which isn't on an SSL and Amazon. Once hacked, call Amazon immediately and ask your account be locked down, while you go through security checks with them to reactivate it.

Section 3 Suspensions

This can be due to a number of reasons, but basically Amazon thinks you’re in breach of their code of conduct. Hold your breath - it's a hard one to get overturned, especially when you don’t always know how you breached.

Tip

Read the Amazon policy pages. Learn them. Make sure your staff read and learn them. Take the time on this. If you are in this mess, it's another one of those multi-dimensional possible ways to get resolved. Email us, we’ll try.

Once Suspended, fasten your seatbelt

Everyone will tell you - take measures to prevent a suspension. Once it happens, you’re in for a rough ride so it's all about avoiding the potholes of repetition. This is our number one focus in managing Amazon accounts - we prevent with routines, rules, training and tools as much as possible.

Amazon won’t tell you specifically what went wrong at times. That is perhaps the biggest annoyance you can face. They may hint at why you were suspended, and offer for you to draft an action plan on why you should be reinstated… then continue to reject your action plan due insufficient information. You might read “your plan is not complete”. They won’t tell you what to add. They seem more inclined to torture you and waste everyone's time.

You might get the impression the replies are automated, and you might be right. I often suspect they simply don’t read replies at times, and simply send automated replies to drag the suspension out to buy time, or inflict more pain? I’m not sure. At times there isn't a human being on the other end. Just an illogical ruthless machine. 

Suspension plan principles

They are not guaranteed to work, but after a decade of suspension case support and literally hundreds of successful outputs, we’ve found the below to be some key rules to always follow. While most suspensions can be overturned, some take months, (one took over a year).

Be polite and apologetic. As much as you may hate the position, the injustice and the power Amazon suspension teams wield in the moment, you need their help. You want to be reinstated. Own the mistake. Even if it's absurd. Even if it's not directly your fault, make it yours. Politely recognise the mistake you made. You shouldn't have picked the SaaS provider. You should have done a test order. You should have manually double-checked what you just paid a system to automate(!). You should have called the French President and negotiated a deal for the strikers. Be apologetic to the point of ludicrousness, and remain polite.

Detail things with files. If you have a pack of cancellations, attach a list of all orders affected. Add files, screen shots and supporting documents. This adds to the accountability and shows you took time to investigate and tally the events. You’re speaking the same language. If it's a few overlapping events, detail them out separately. 

Focus on the solution, not the cause. While the above should be done to show accountability and a recognition of what happened, do not dwell on that. The above should be 20% of your reply at the beginning. The remaining 80% of your pleading prose should be about preventative solutions; what you will do to ensure this never happens again.

Think broadly about multiple changes. Do not just offer one solution. Offer a plethora of different overlapping checks, changes and procedures. Will you actually do them? Will they even help? Who cares, the main goal is to get the suspension overturned. Nothing else matters if you don't get that outcome.

Read and link Amazon policy pages. This helps with the accountability, and hints to the support agent you’re checking up on things in detail. It can help defend your position, or simply showcase you understand the fault you are responsible for. 

Maybe make stuff up. Again, it's about getting reinstated. It’s in your best interest to implement the new checks and balances and changes so you really don’t get suspended again. Each suspension increases the pain to overturn, and timeline. Your risks compound greatly if you repeat-offend in the same areas. But your main goal is to get reinstated. What you do after is up to you. So… be inventive with your ideas to prevent future occurrences.

Call them. Sometimes that voice down the phone can help by giving you clues and details to the nature of the suspension that the automated replies won’t offer. This helps you refine your replies and new case responses. Sometimes the person can even help too.

Never surrender. We had one suspension take a year to resolve. We simply did not give up. Amazon Support teams change. Policies change. Managers change. Keep messaging. Escalate and email Jeff@Amazon.com. He wont reply, but someone will. Email management emails and contacts. Keep being apologetic and polite, but do not give up. Sometimes, your only weapon is attrition.

In summary

The appeal needs to tackle three main questions.

Why did the issue occur - accountability and detailed information points above- the 20%. 

What have you done to fix things - half of the remaining 80% where you define the changes and procedures to ensure it won’t happen again. Nothing short of the apocalypse will come in your way now.

How it will never happen in future - the other 40%, where you add all the extra checks, procedures, steps, new team members, machine learning scripts, a HAL2000 computer, employ a NASA engineer and never sleep because you’re always checking.

Challenge Us

If you tried all the above, message us. Maybe you’re doomed, or maybe a different tone and approach is needed. 

Whatever you do, know you’re not alone and not stuck in a 5th dimension of purgatory. You’re just reaping the rewards of ‘consumer’ driven growth. Joy.