What to do if your Amazon listing is hijacked? Here are some solutions and prevention tips

As more and more sellers flock to Amazon, the competition on the platform becomes more and more fierce. If you don’t stand out from the crowd of competitors, your e-commerce business will not be able to operate in the long run.

Today, we’re going to discuss a common problem that almost every successful Amazon seller has probably experienced: Amazon product listing hijacking.

When checking your product listings, you find that there are other sellers selling your products besides you. How is this possible?

What’s worse is that if the product quality is not that good, then when consumers buy cheap and low-quality products and have a bad shopping experience, they may leave bad reviews on your listing.

Let’s say you sell fidget spinners, and you have a product that you created and manufacture under your own brand. One day, you happen to check your listing and see that there are other sellers selling it as well. You see something like this:

Click to view other sellers and you will find the following:

The first offer is yours, but there are other sellers competing for listings under your brand.

So what can you do in this situation?

The first thing you should do is lower your price so you can grab the buy box back, but this also means your profit will be reduced.

Then you can register your brand and add your brand to your product listings, or bundle your products. Of course, you can also send warning letters to the sellers who are selling fake products and ask them to remove their listings.

You can write a warning letter like this:

If the seller doesn’t get back to you, you can file a counterfeit complaint with Amazon:

Amazon has a strict anti-counterfeiting policy, which you can find in the seller backend help file. The policy clearly states that Amazon has zero tolerance for counterfeit goods on the platform.

When you click the "notify us" link, you will see Amazon's infringement complaint policy and form, and you can submit the infringement complaint.

Within 24 hours, the copycat listing will be removed and you will receive an email from Amazon’s Seller Performance Team notifying you that the “listing has been removed from Amazon.”

According to Amazon's anti-counterfeiting policy, there is another way to file a complaint against a seller, which is to have a friend buy a counterfeit product and initiate an A to Z claim with Amazon.

Here is the exact process:

1) Let a friend (not a relative) buy the product in question;

2) Wait until the item is shipped and after receiving it, have your friend file a complaint to the seller saying the item is fake, then click “Report a Problem” on Amazon and select the option for the product “not being materially the same”;

3) Wait a day before filing an A to Z claim against the seller of the counterfeit goods.

Remember, sellers should make sure that friends use keywords such as "fake", "not authentic" or "counterfeit" when filing complaints. If everything goes well, Amazon will remove the listing within a few days.

First and foremost, you need to register your brand on Amazon. After registering your brand, you should make the following adjustments to your listings:

1) The product image contains the brand name

Listing hijackers are unlikely to steal listings that have obvious brand names in the images, so you will need to reshoot your product images and use your brand logo on the product images and product packaging images.

For example, if you sell superhero action figures, make sure your brand and logo are clearly visible in the main image. If you offer any special type of packaging, take a picture to illustrate. If you sell plastic products, make subtle modifications to the mold so that the brand becomes part of the product itself.

In short, make sure your brand is part of the entire listing. However, don’t include any URLs in your listing or try to direct customers away from Amazon and onto your own website.

2) Add value to your product or sell it as a bundle

In fact, there are ways to fundamentally reduce the possibility of listings being hijacked.

First, you can offer very unique products in your listing, things that are not mass-produced or easy to find on Alibaba. For example, if you sell yoga mats, you can use a specially customized portable yoga mat bag.

The second is bundling. If you can bundle 2 different products together, the chances of your Amazon listing being hijacked are much lower because it’s a hassle to find two different products to bundle together.

For example, let’s say you sell a fruit blender. Instead of listing the fruit blender for sale separately, you could choose to bundle it with a similarly priced vegetable grinder.

From the buyer’s perspective, it’s great to buy these two products as a bundle. But from the perspective of copycats or listing hijackers, they have to find the corresponding products to hijack your listing, which is troublesome, and therefore obviously reduces the possibility of Amazon listing hijacking.