Ugly behavior丨Exploiting Amazon loopholes to make fun of them, a large number of victimized sellers jointly speak out!

In recent days, many sellers have reported that their listings were removed without any notification, and Amazon did not even provide an appeal button.

After further investigation, we found out that it was because the seller’s product listing was judged to contain sensitive words.

So, what caused this situation? Is it caused by peer competition or a bug in Amazon itself? How should Amazon sellers deal with this situation?

Peers exploited the loophole and maliciously added sensitive words

Competition on Amazon has always been fierce, and pranks and malicious competition from peers are not uncommon.

After his listing was removed, a seller reported that after seeking help from Amazon’s customer service, he learned that the details page of the Canadian site contained illegal words, which caused the US site to be implicated and the listing was removed.

The seller was very confused. He did not open a Canadian site, let alone sell products in Canada, so how could Canadian products have sensitive words? Even if there was a problem in Canada, how could it lead to the removal of products from the US site?

Coincidentally, another seller reported that his product Asin on the US site was uploaded to the UK site with sensitive words such as "mandragora, Indian hemp", causing the listing to become a mess.

    ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

In addition, some Amazon sellers on the US site have also stated that the products they sold on the US site were copied and sold by other sites and had illegal information added, resulting in the original listings on the US site being removed from the shelves.

What are the sensitive words?

According to seller feedback, it generally includes the following four categories:

    ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

Some sellers speculated that this phenomenon of "collective delisting" was caused by competitors. Sellers analyzed that some competitors took advantage of Amazon loopholes and maliciously added sensitive words on other sites, causing the listings of the original sites to be delisted in order to reduce competitors for their own products.

Sellers unite to attract attention from Amazon executives

According to the editor, the victimized sellers were very angry about this incident and united to question my brother-in-law: "Why can my listing be modified on a site that I don't operate, and also affect the site I operate?"

“Malicious competition is disgusting.”

"ASIN changed to dog and was restricted for 4 consecutive times. I am sick of it."

"This has always been a bug, and someone who is interested can fix it every day."

"It's really bad. Just the day before yesterday, one of my popular links was hacked by someone in the same way. It has been hacked by the same method for no less than 5 times. I wish I could kill the person behind it."

In this situation, some sellers are still asking how to resolve the situation, while some sellers have been unable to tolerate it any longer and have even made harsh remarks on the forum, offering a reward of 20,000 to capture the other party.

    ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

In addition, Amazon’s sensitive word determination bug is also one of the reasons why sellers’ product listings are repeatedly removed from the shelves.

Some sellers said that their products had nothing to do with insecticides and pesticides, but were still classified as such by Amazon, and their product listings were disabled because they contained sensitive words.

    ▲ The picture comes from the seller communication group

A seller opened a case with customer service and was told that "waterproof" is a sensitive word. In addition, statements about ingredient safety such as "safe," "harmless," "non-toxic," or "pure natural" are also considered sensitive words.

Therefore, in response to this incident, some sellers posted an appeal in the community, urging all relevant victimized sellers to take action and use some channels to express their opinions in order to attract the attention of Amazon's senior management to related incidents and patch Amazon's sensitive word loopholes, so as to solve this problem from the root and prevent sellers from being troubled by this matter.

The call was responded to by sellers.

"I'll write it tomorrow. I'm so mad. Li Siting hasn't recovered yet."

“This problem is really terrible. The product was selling well but suddenly it was restricted. It’s really annoying. Friends, please write an email or go to the backend to give your opinions.”

"I give my thumbs up to this OP, this is horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!"

However, some sellers said that the problem has not yet attracted the attention of Amazon's senior management. So in the meantime, what should we do when we encounter such a situation? How to prevent this from happening?

In response to this, some sellers have proposed relevant solutions.

Treatment and prevention after being infected

If a seller has been caught, what should he do? Here are some suggestions from sellers who have had relevant experience:

In order to prevent the situation where products are copied and sensitive words are added by other sites, resulting in the removal of the listing, some sellers have made two suggestions:

1. Select other sites to search for your ASIN number, monitor and check in real time whether your listing is being sold by other sellers or whether the product information has been modified. If modified, report it immediately.

2. Authorize the brand registration of the US site to other sites such as Canada and Mexico. Whether you do it or not, the editing rights of the listing should be in your own hands.

In recent years, "fierce fights" between Amazon sellers have emerged one after another. On the one hand, the reason is the psychology of sellers. Some sellers want to use all means to reduce competitors in order to gain more profits; on the other hand, it is the problem of Amazon's own supervision. For example, in this incident, there were loopholes in Amazon, which were exploited by interested parties to engage in malicious competition. However, Amazon failed to supervise effectively and failed to remedy the situation in time, which led to the repeated fermentation of the matter and the damage to the interests of most sellers.

Faced with this situation, in addition to speaking out, sellers should also abide by industry rules and stick to their own principles. Healthy competition is the way to long-term business development.

Have you also been affected by this Amazon loophole and had your listing removed? Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.