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An unprecedented shock of account suspension in 2021 has brought about a major reshuffle in the cross-border e-commerce industry. As the platform's risk control continues to upgrade, gray areas such as fake orders and evaluations have been exposed to the sun, and compliant operations have become an inevitable path for Amazon sellers. But Amazon's iron fist has not been retracted. In the past two years, the platform's various regulatory policies have become increasingly stringent, and any possible violations have been strictly prevented. Just recently, Amazon launched a new round of strict investigations into fake orders, especially targeting new accounts. Previously, in the article "Amazon deletes reviews on a large scale, and the front-end reviews have changed again!", it was reported that Amazon is currently making a number of optimizations and rectifications to the review section, including the inability to filter reviews on the front-end interface and proactively deleting bad reviews on listings. And this seems to be just the beginning. Amazon's actions regarding listing reviews and various compliance controls are still brewing. On February 5, US time, the US government issued a new policy requiring Amazon to be responsible for the safety of goods provided by third-party sellers. In response, an Amazon spokesperson said that the platform will take measures to prevent suspicious or non-compliant products from being included in the list, and will strictly control product safety issues, delete inappropriate products in a timely manner, and notify relevant companies and government agencies. On February 20, Amazon began to mobilize a large number of personnel from other departments to cooperate in the investigation of product reviews, that is, to randomly check whether there are false purchase reviews in the buyer reviews of store listings. Not only that, Amazon has also launched a new round of review of new accounts’ fake orders, and a large number of sellers have been caught. A senior complaint service provider said that once a newly registered account is caught fake orders, it will be subject to the most severe punishment: the account will be directly blocked from logging in. According to sellers’ feedback, this round of fake order review is more stringent, mainly targeting new accounts, and many of them have been affected: "My new account was scanned, but I only placed three or four orders. What should I do?" "One of the company's accounts was warned right after posting a comment. I was speechless." "It's really safe to operate with a completely white hat operation. I received a 72-hour store closure warning for manipulating the rankings when clearing out inventory." Nowadays, the era of rapid growth through crude tactics such as fake orders and reviews has long become a thing of the past, replaced by white hat operations that have become mainstream. But at the same time, market competition is also intensifying. Faced with the strong monopoly of the top links, the survival space of new sellers has been squeezed, and the survival probability of new products has continued to decline. For this reason, although the bitter lessons of the account suspension wave are still vivid, the high risks of black technology are accompanied by high returns, so some sellers still have a fluke mentality and secretly test Amazon's red line of fake orders, trying to quickly stand out in the fierce competition. However, Amazon's sword of Damocles is always hanging over your head, and it is only a matter of time before you are caught by the platform if you venture into the gray area . "First of all, you have to find a good product, and secondly, white hats are the king of security," commented a seller. The overseas ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex, and the risk control of the platform is constantly upgraded. Amazon's strict printing has proved time and again that it is urgent for cross-border merchants to abandon the backward thinking of making quick money. Only by being down-to-earth and patient, and upgrading and iterating products and brands with compliant operations, can they go further. In the new year, Amazon's compliance supervision is still intensifying. In addition to cracking down on various violations, it has also rectified a number of policies and regulations such as logistics. Recently, many sellers have discovered that the FHDDS on the UK site seems to be tightening. A seller said in the forum: "The UK site has been offering a channel for double clearance and tax inclusion, but IEN has never taken care of it. As a result, the account was suspended today. Does this mean that the UK site will start to implement FHDDS more strictly?" ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan Amazon said in the notice: Based on the seller's shipment processing progress information, it determined that the seller did not provide IEN information for some (or all) applicable shipments within 30 days after the first receipt of each shipment at the UK operations center. Sellers need to supplement the information in a timely manner. If there is no IEN and there is a legitimate reason, they can select the relevant option from the drop-down menu. It is understood that a large number of sellers on the UK site have received the same notice for not filling in IEN. "One account had filled in IEN for several votes before but didn't receive this notification, while another account that hadn't filled in recently received this notification." "It seems that this problem occurred on a large number of accounts yesterday. We also clicked to reactivate them, but we are worried that Amazon will settle the bill later." "I just clicked the confirmation button, which felt more like a notification. The subsequent shipment needs to comply with regulations. Currently, all shipments with a channel filled in need to fill in IEN, but my freight forwarder asked me to fill in MRN. The encoding format I see in the background is in MRN format." The so-called IEN (Import Entry Number) actually refers to a number assigned by HMRC to goods imported into the UK. There are several different types of IEN, the most common of which is the Customs Identification Number (MRN). For goods with high value or complicated customs clearance procedures, many sellers often choose to go through the double-clearance tax-inclusive channel. However , under this model, goods with different VAT invoices from different stores are cleared, that is, different stores in the same tax-inclusive bill of lading use the same IEN code. However, starting from April 1, 2019, affected by the UK Customs FHDDS (Warehouse Service Operator Due Diligence Scheme), Amazon needs to retain specific records related to goods stored in Amazon's UK operations center on behalf of non-EU sellers (with non-EU origin goods), and all FBA shipments must fill in the corresponding IEN. However, Amazon did not make mandatory requirements before, so there are still many sellers who use the double clearance and tax package channels but have not filled in the corresponding IEN. Based on the massive feedback from sellers, Amazon account managers have sorted out some key issues: 1. All non-UK sellers who ship goods from countries and regions outside the UK to the UK need to provide IEN 2. Shipments created after October 1, 2023 require IEN 3. Failure to provide IEN will not affect the account status, but will affect UK warehousing 4. If IEN is not provided within 60 days, the backend cannot be edited. The European department is processing it and needs to wait further. 5. Sellers who are unable to provide IEN through the tax-inclusive channel need to select the option of not being able to provide IEN and describe the reason.Judging from the account manager's reply, as long as the relevant information is provided as required, there will be no adverse impact on the account for the time being. However, some sellers are worried about this, fearing that Amazon will settle accounts with them and cause another financial crisis. ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan One point worth noting is that Amazon stated directly in the notice: If it is confirmed upon review that the seller’s reason for not being able to provide IEN is not compliant, the product delivery service will be stopped. In short, Amazon’s stricter policies are an inevitable trend, and sellers will need to use compliant channels when creating shipments in the future. If they take some unfair shortcuts to save costs, they may be retaliated by Amazon one day.
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