Is Amazon cleaning up its membership business? A large number of sellers’ accounts were blocked overnight!

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It is learned that Amazon recently announced in a regulatory filing that Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon's global consumer business, will resign on July 1.

As the right-hand man of former CEO Bezos, Clark has been in charge of Amazon's most important e-commerce retail business for more than 20 years. He can be regarded as the soul figure of Amazon. However, the sudden "escape" of such an ace executive before Member's Day is bound to arouse people's speculation.

It is reported that after the announcement, Amazon's stock price fell by 2.52%. Some sellers joked: "The CEO who slaughtered sellers last year is now unable to bear the performance pressure and is running away."

However, the changes at the senior management level still do not affect Amazon's thundering measures, especially the "double the attack during every festive season" law that never goes out of date, and a large-scale number-sweeping wave was set off during the Dragon Boat Festival.

Last year, Amazon banned a large number of sellers during the Qingming Festival and Labor Day before Member Day. It seems that the sudden ban before Member Day and during traditional festivals has become an unspoken rule.

According to feedback from a seller, 16 of his accounts were cleared overnight during the Dragon Boat Festival. Some of these accounts had just been put on the shelves, some had just placed orders a few days ago, and some had goods still on the way. Most of the remaining accounts were vacant.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

Amazon said in the email: Your account has been deactivated and all listings will be removed. This happened mainly because we were unable to verify the information related to your seller account or did not receive any information about listings and sales history.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

According to the content of Amazon's email, some sellers pointed out that there might be a problem with the payment account, and they should try to ensure that each person has one account and do not open multiple sub-accounts. Similar situations have been reported before, where some sellers encountered a second-instance scanning, and both new and old stores registered with real information were swept away in batches multiple times. The cause of death was that the account was internally determined to be a high-risk account involving payment security.

However, some sellers also said frankly that there was still an opportunity to appeal in the second instance, but the seller’s account was directly cleared and it was very likely that he did not even have the opportunity to appeal.

"You are being punished by association. It must be linked to an account that violated the rules before, or your existing account has been found to have infringed the rights."

"Mine was linked to an account that was previously removed from the shelves due to association. Apart from selling the products of the previously removed account, I did not do anything else. I don't know why I was implicated."

"If you don't list products, place orders or have no sales records after registering your account for a long time, it will be easily blocked. We have had such a situation before, which is a bit like the second trial."

According to sellers’ speculation, any store that is judged to be associated with an organization or has been inactive for a long time and has been restricted may be cleared out by Amazon.

A seller who also received a warning email during the holiday revealed that Amazon sent him a performance association notice, indicating that his account was suspected of being associated with another seller's account. However, surprisingly, Amazon gave the seller a 72-hour deadline and a dedicated customer service phone number to help write a POA.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

Similar situations also happened to many sellers. Some sellers received related emails for unknown reasons, but their appeals were rejected three times. Some sellers were also linked to accounts that were deactivated due to failure to pass KYC review.

A seller shared his experience. Last year, the seller's accounts in four European countries were closed one after another due to fake orders and manipulation of reviews on the US site, leaving only the German site. Until April this year, the German site was also about to be suspended due to the association with the North American site. During this period, Amazon customer service called the seller many times, and finally, under the guidance of customer service, he successfully appealed to all European stores except the Canadian site.

In addition to the related account suspension, the problem of account scanning for infringement also exists. A seller revealed that his newly opened North American store in May was suspended because Amazon determined that it infringed the rights. Amazon informed him that it had a list of related infringements. However, his US account has not uploaded any products since its registration, and his European account that has uploaded products has no record of infringement.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

According to sellers’ feedback, Amazon has experienced varying degrees of account scanning during the Dragon Boat Festival, mainly involving:

1. Joint responsibility

2. Scanning for infringement

3. Authenticity ban

Regarding this "Dragon Boat Festival Shock" incident, some sellers also contacted customer service and received the following reply: The account team is currently taking inventory, and sellers will receive reminders when there are any policy violations in their accounts.

As we all know, Amazon's account status panel is mainly used to remind sellers to pay attention to the health of their accounts. If they receive a yellow card or even a red card warning, they can appeal to eliminate the warning according to the prompts. However, Amazon started to settle accounts again during the Dragon Boat Festival, so there were a large number of account suspension risk notifications. All accounts with a history of violations were sent a notification of account suspension.

This also warns all sellers that if there is a violation warning in the account status panel, they should handle it in time. Some sellers have sorted out several situations that may occur when clicking the appeal button and how to deal with them:

1. Click the appeal button and check it to delete the record. If there is no violation and it is wrongly judged, you can select wrong judgment and submit the information.

2. Click the appeal button, which requires study, usually about half an hour. There is also a similar situation where the store is closed, but Amazon allows the seller to take an exam directly and pass it. This is rare and is a lighter penalty.

3. If there is no picture, click on the appeal button and there are multiple boxes, which requires you to submit an appeal letter.

(Source: Weibo @PinkPig-pink)

Now that Prime Day is approaching, Amazon's "clearing all obstacles" operation inevitably makes many sellers panic. However, sellers don't have to be too anxious. As long as they always pay attention to the health of their stores, clean up violation records in time and avoid illegal operations, they will not have too many problems passing Amazon's test before Prime Day.

Did any sellers receive a warning of account suspension during the Dragon Boat Festival? Please vote or leave a message to share~