The strongest audit in history? Amazon starts a new round of account verification

The strongest audit in history? Amazon starts a new round of account verification


In recent times, the "destined people" who have crossed the border have been experiencing their own "ninety-nine eighty-one difficulties".


After the newly added fees caused costs to rise continuously and large-scale products were restricted due to misjudgment, the new round of audits recently launched by Amazon has once again become a major ordeal for Amazon's "destined people".



It is learned that since August, a new round of enhanced video verification has been sweeping towards many Amazon sellers.


According to feedback from multiple parties, a large number of sellers have recently received inventory authenticity review emails from Amazon. They are required to participate in video interviews to verify the authenticity of their accounts and inventory, otherwise they will face the risk of account deactivation.


The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure


Key point: If the relevant seller fails to complete video verification within 14 days to prove the authenticity of the account and inventory, the account may be deactivated.


Based on industry feedback, the seller accounts that received inventory authenticity review this time are mainly the following three types:

  • No brand registration, relying on whitelist operation;

  • Brand authorization and multiple stores at the same time, poor management;

  • There are behaviors related to following sales.


The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure

It is still difficult to know Amazon's motivation for launching this round of audits, but from the email notification, compared with ordinary video verification, this inventory authenticity audit is more like a combination of "product authenticity audit" and "supply chain video verification" , which is more difficult:

On the one hand, the relevant sellers need to provide more and more detailed review materials: including but not limited to valid identity documents, bank statements or credit card statements, business licenses, supply chain documents (invoices, receipts, etc.);

On the other hand, the difficulty of video verification has also increased: the owner and operator of the account need to participate in the interview, and other partners closely related to the business (such as suppliers) may also participate in the interview.

The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure

According to sellers who have already conducted relevant verification, the success rate of such verification is not high at present. Although some sellers have successfully passed the verification, more sellers have failed the verification, and even had their funds withheld.

Therefore, many sellers have called this inventory authenticity review "the strongest review in history". Sellers who have received relevant notifications are reminded to prepare relevant materials in advance and have their legal representatives prepare to cooperate with the video verification, and try to pass this type of verification in one go to avoid account deactivation.

In fact, with the upgrade of compliance and risk control policies, Amazon sellers have long been accustomed to the account verification trend in recent years. Compared with the impact of account deactivation on sales, many sellers are more concerned about the issue of fund retention. After all, judging from the previous account scanning storms, the funds withheld after scanning are often "throwing meat buns at dogs, and they will never come back."

However, it is understood that recently some sellers seem to have launched a counterattack against number scanning.


It is learned that on August 12, local time, the American autonomous organization Justitia DAO LLC (hereinafter referred to as Justitia), represented by lawyer Benjamin B. Solter, filed a formal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, requesting the judge to force the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to accept and rule on the arbitration case previously filed by Justitia against Amazon.


It is understood that the case involves about 2,300 sellers whose stores were closed and about 23 million US dollars seized by Amazon .

The lawsuit stated that in November 2023, Justitia filed an arbitration request with the American Arbitration Association on behalf of these sellers, claiming that Amazon abused the terms to withhold tens of millions of dollars of its members' funds and demanded compensation from Amazon for closing their accounts and withholding all payments. However, the American Arbitration Association rejected the arbitration request.

So nine months later, Justitia filed a formal lawsuit seeking a court order to compel the American Arbitration Association to adjudicate Justitia’s claims against Amazon. Without court intervention, Justitia’s legal team said, these sellers will lose the opportunity to have their claims heard in arbitration or court.

At present, the case has been accepted by the court.


In this regard, Justitia legal counsel believes that this case will be the key to a possible overturn in the ongoing struggle between small businesses and large e-commerce platforms that dominate the online market .

It is understood that a large number of sellers were severely damaged by the wave of Amazon account bans in 2021. According to incomplete statistics, from May to August 2021, more than 50,000 Chinese sellers' stores were banned , and the losses reached more than 100 billion yuan .

To this day, many sellers are still trying to recover some of their losses by arguing with Amazon: large sellers will directly initiate arbitration against Amazon as applicants, while small sellers will mostly conduct collective arbitration. Some of these sellers have successfully won the case and recovered the frozen funds of Amazon stores, and are regarded by the industry as an important reference for "fighting back against account closures."

But rationally speaking, the time cost and arbitration fees of negotiating with Amazon over account suspension cannot be underestimated, which inevitably discourages many small and medium-sized sellers. Therefore, rather than pursuing past losses, most sellers will still put their hopes of "recovering" funds on future sales performance.

As for whether Justitia can successfully claim compensation from Amazon, it is still unknown. We will continue to pay attention to the follow-up progress. If you know of relevant arbitration cases, you can also share them in the comments section.

In addition, since the large-scale account blocking wave broke out in 2021, Amazon's account blocking routines have also been gradually upgraded. Under this circumstance, sellers also need to strictly abide by the various new regulations introduced by Amazon and pay attention to the account status of the store to avoid being blocked.


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