While most sellers are still focusing on price wars and advertising algorithms, a wave of store closures caused by "picture comparison" is sweeping the cross-border circle. At the beginning of 2025, the Amazon platform brought a big "surprise" to sellers - the new performance indicator "Sales Policy and Seller Code of Conduct (Attempting to Damage or Insult Other Sellers)" came out of nowhere. As soon as this news came out, it instantly caused a storm in the seller circle. Many sellers said that they were caught off guard and said they "could not afford it." The crisis caused by picture comparison
The cause of this incident was that the seller found that he received a strange performance warning in his backend: Sales Policy and Seller Code of Conduct (attempting to harm or insult other sellers).
This made him very confused. He had been working hard to run the store and strictly abide by the platform rules. How could he suddenly receive a violation warning? At first, he thought it was a malicious complaint from a competitor, but after carefully checking the store 's operations, he did not find any obvious violations.
So, he used Amazon's CASE query function to ask the platform's customer service for the specific reason. After waiting for a while, he finally received a reply email from Amazon. The email clearly stated that "adding malicious keywords or images to harm or abuse other sellers, their product information or ratings is a violation of policy."
This warning was like a bombshell, instantly plunging them into confusion and anxiety. After careful investigation and analysis, the seller was surprised to find that the reason why the store received a performance warning was that he used the product pictures of competitors to make comparative promotional pictures. According to our understanding, this is one of the common strategies used by many sellers to improve conversion rates. Specifically, they directly use pictures of competitors for comparative promotion, and detail the advantages of their own products in terms of performance, price, etc., hoping to attract more consumers to buy their products through this intuitive comparison. However, the sellers never expected that this seemingly ordinary operation would now be judged by Amazon as a [serious] violation level behavior, which directly triggered a new performance indicator assessment. Most of the merchants who received warnings from Amazon this time directly used pictures from their competitors, while sellers who modified the comparison pictures without any direct meaning escaped. The minefield of illegal activities revealed Amazon’s updated “Sales Policy and Seller Code of Conduct (against attempts to defame or insult competitors)” can be regarded as a comprehensive regulation of sellers’ competitive behavior. If a seller violates Amazon's "Selling Policies and Seller Code of Conduct (for attempts to defame or insult competitors)", the most common result is a warning from the platform, which is Amazon's first reminder of the seller's violation. If the seller ignores the warning, or the violation is serious, Amazon may take measures to remove the product from the shelves. More seriously, Amazon has the right to freeze the seller's account for multiple violations or particularly serious violations. In order to help sellers better understand the platform rules and avoid losses due to violations, we will now reveal in detail the illegal "minefields" of product comparison pictures on the Amazon platform. 1. Directly using competitor pictures for comparison : In product comparison charts, directly using competitor pictures and comparing them with your own products in one picture is strictly prohibited. 2. Denigrating competitor products : Whether through text descriptions, graphic hints, explicit statements, or other means, denigrating competitor products, such as implying that competitor products are of poor quality or have poor functionality, is not permitted. 3. Adding malicious keywords or images : Adding malicious keywords or images to product comparison pictures, such as combining competitor brand names with negative words, or using insulting or defamatory image elements to target competitors, seriously violates Amazon’s platform rules. 4. Misleading comparison: Deliberately causing misunderstanding when comparing product performance, quality, etc. is also a violation. In short, Amazon has very clear requirements for product comparison pictures. Sellers must strictly abide by these rules when making and uploading product comparison pictures to avoid stepping into illegal "minefields". Only under the premise of compliance can we better display product advantages, enhance the competitiveness of the store, and achieve sustainable development. |