How to deal with Amazon listing being blocked and frozen products being removed from shelves

During Amazon's operations, many sellers often encounter a situation where a listing that was selling well suddenly becomes unsaleable or even some popular products are frozen. Generally, Amazon will send an email warning before blocking a store or listing, but sometimes it will be blocked without any warning. Listings will not be blocked or restricted for no reason. Sellers who are blocked or restricted may have the following problems:

1. The new listing is in inactive state

When a listing is created, it is in the inactive state. In this case, it will not show the active state until the FBA goods arrive at Amazon and sign for them. In the early stage, when the Amazon operation center has just signed for and is ready to put it on the shelves, your listing will show in stock*** on the front desk. In this case, buyers can still place orders. From the customer's perspective, buyers will think that Amazon will take a long time to deliver, which will greatly affect the order volume.

2. Product changes, listings not updated in time

Sometimes a product is discontinued or replaced for some reason, but the seller does not update the listing in time and still uses the original one. This may be considered as a violation by the Amazon platform, or be complained by consumers, resulting in your listing being blocked. This situation can generally be resolved through appeals. It is worth noting that if the merchant's new product category is inconsistent with the original one, it is best not to bind the original listing, otherwise it will be easily blocked.

3. inactive out of stock status

When your Listing's FBA inventory is sold out, the inactive out-of-stock status will be displayed in the background. In this case, the common practice is to release the FBM follow-up inventory and ship it directly from China, so that the out-of-stock listing can continue to be sold and stabilize the ranking.

4. Variant shared review

A product can no longer be sold for some reason, such as the supplier not producing it or the product is upgraded, etc. In order to merge and share the reviews of the old listing, the newly listed product is different from the old product category. For example, the new product is a headset, and the old product is an LED light. Some sellers may gradually change the title, five points, description, category, etc. of the old LED light to that of the headset, so that the newly bound headset listing may share reviews. This operation is a typical violation of Amazon's relevant policies. Once Amazon's backend detects it, it will issue a small red flag warning and force your listing to become unsaleable.

5. Category review

There is another possibility that there is no problem with the seller's product itself, but the product category uploaded by the seller needs to be reviewed by Amazon, so it is temporarily blocked for review. For example, beauty products, some children's products, etc., but many times the most feared thing is that the listing can be uploaded successfully, and it can also be successfully transferred to FBA delivery, and FBA shipments can be created. When Amazon signs for it and prepares to put it on the shelves, it is informed that a category review is required before it can be sold. Amazon's mechanism for triggering category review is a bit reversed. In fact, the review should be triggered when the listing is created, rather than waiting for FBA to be put on the shelves. If it fails, a lot of inventory will be placed in FBA. In this case, sellers don't have to worry, just wait for the review to pass, and everything will return to normal.

6. Violation of Amazon product policies

Intellectual property rights, selling second-hand products as new ones, product safety issues, violations of restricted goods policies, etc. Among them, regarding the sale of second-hand products as new ones, in most cases, customers directly complain to Amazon’s backend about product packaging issues or the fact that the product itself has been used. In fact, the products sent to FBA by the seller are completely new. It is possible that the FBA operation center received the return from the buyer and sent it to the customer again.

7. Infringement issues

If a product cannot be sold, it may involve copyright infringement, keyword infringement, trademark infringement, appearance infringement, etc. Sellers can check whether there is any infringement through self-examination or third-party review, such as searching the product name on the website. If it is blocked due to trademark infringement, the appeal is often weak. At this time, what can be done is to immediately rectify the related products that have not been blocked, remove those that should be removed from the shelves, and modify the listings to avoid further losses; if it is other aspects, such as image or keyword infringement, you can file a targeted complaint and make rectifications. If the seller has infringed, he will generally receive an email from Amazon or a law firm in the background.

How to solve the freezing of Amazon's hot-selling product listings

Recently, when many sellers came to me to refurbish their listings, the most common problem was that the Amazon hot-selling product listings were frozen. What should you do if Amazon freezes your listing? You must unfreeze it and put it on the shelves again, but how to unfreeze it?

The process of appealing a listing is similar to that of appealing an account. Note that even if you are appealing just one listing, you still need to find the root cause of the problem and then explain the solution steps and preventive measures. So where do you start to unfreeze your listing? Here are the specific steps:

1. Reply to Amazon’s notification

First, sellers need to review all notifications received. Unless Amazon clearly states in the notification that no response is required, sellers need to respond to each issue. A large number of notifications received may result in an account freeze. Sellers must act quickly. The more time and effort you spend drafting your appeal and resolving the issue, the better the results.

2. Remove bad inventory

Sellers need to make sure that this bad inventory is just an isolated case or that many products have encountered the same problem. It is very likely that other products also have this problem, but Amazon has not discovered it yet. So quickly clean up all products carefully, and then tell Amazon about this action in the complaint, you have done more.

3. Find the root cause

Take advantage of this freeze to review Amazon’s help pages, selling policies, product guidelines, listing restrictions, etc. Amazon may have updated its policies since you last checked. If you conclude that the problem lies with the supplier, then pay attention to your purchasing patterns and re-evaluate your suppliers.

4. Think about your business activities

Even if your letter of appeal does not include a review of your overall operations, at least conduct a business assessment. You may be able to identify underlying issues that are indirectly affecting your performance or the quality of your service.

5. Strengthen your POA (Plan of Action) content

If your appeal is rejected, you can submit another one. Review the content of the previous one and try again. Make sure the content of this appeal is more substantial. Or you can help me appeal, but generally if the appeal is not rejected according to the appeal situation, the fee for help here will be slightly higher. Is there an easier way? Yes!

That is the refurbished listing: no matter what the reason, it can be refurbished successfully and the operation can be completed on the same day!

1. Regardless of whether the FNSKU starts with X or B, the operation can be successfully completed without logging into the backend. Just fill out the form as required: the internal channel will forcibly unblock the blocked or prohibited listings!

2. No matter the reason! Infringement safety issues, lack of certification! The link was reported for safety issues and removed from the shelves, but the appeal was not returned? The link was indeed lacking certification and was forcibly removed from the shelves by Amazon? The link was attacked and removed from the shelves by competitors? No need to move warehouses or change labels! It will be completed on the same day, and your product inventory will be restored to a saleable state!

3. Amazon's internal channels can solve the problem of restricted review of listings! Links are restricted by Amazon? Contact Amazon customer service to MERGE. Amazon customer service disagrees? We can force the link to be refurbished through Amazon's internal channels, so that the link can be reviewed again!

4. Amazon's internal channels force you to refurbish your listings! The old links have too many negative reviews and no orders are placed. There is too much inventory backlog and you have to move the warehouse and change the label to a new link. The internal channels refurbish the listings! You don't need to move the warehouse and change the label. You can directly use Amazon's internal channels to replace it with a brand new link (with the weight of new product traffic support)!

Finally, it is actually very easy for sellers to avoid listing freezes, so sellers are advised to spend more time on prevention.