Sellers must read! Amazon cracks down on refurbished listings, how to protect your store?

Recently, Amazon has strengthened its supervision of Listing renovations and has begun to strictly review sellers' renovation operations. Many sellers have received warning notices from the platform, reminding them to comply with the platform's relevant regulations and policies. The platform has made it clear that some sellers or agents have modified or replaced the ASIN of the product to replace the original product listing with a new product ASIN that does not match it. This practice has been expressly prohibited by the Amazon platform and is regarded as a "Listing renovation" behavior. The platform stated that it will take severe punishment measures for such non-compliant behavior, including but not limited to restricting sales permissions, account freezing and even permanent bans, which will seriously affect the normal operation of sellers.

Amazon made it clear in the email that any such behavior is a serious violation of the platform's seller code of conduct and may result in the risk of suspension of the relevant account. The company specifically emphasized that if such violations occur again, the account will be subject to further penalties. Violation records will not only have a great negative impact on the health of the account, but in serious cases, the relevant sellers may be permanently banned and unable to continue using the platform for sales activities.

What is Listing Renovation?

Listing renovation, in simple terms, is to replace the original product with a brand new product by adjusting or changing the ASIN. Although the ASIN has changed, the product itself has not changed at all, and the FNSKU remains the same. In this way, sellers can delete all the reviews on the old listing, especially the negative reviews, so that they can get new product traffic without being affected.

Why Renovate

1. When the sales of the old link are not ideal and the listing performance is poor, you can re-attract Amazon’s traffic attention by updating the link.

2. When the old links have accumulated a lot of negative reviews, resulting in a decline in conversion rate, sellers can choose to create a new product page by updating the link. This will avoid the influence of historical reviews, QA and ratings, while also clearing negative reviews.

3. When a link is removed for some reason, if the link is removed by Amazon due to infringement and other issues, but the FBA warehouse still has inventory, in order to avoid high warehouse transfer fees, the seller can consider readjusting the original listing to the new SKU to save costs.

Obviously, there are many advantages to updating the listing . In addition to activating new product traffic and clearing negative reviews, it can also reduce the high long-term storage costs of the backlog of unsalable old links. Even if the product is removed from the shelves, the updated link can still allow sellers to continue selling without clearing inventory, thus saving storage and label replacement costs.

Is renovation risk-free and full of benefits? Of course not. As I said at the beginning, in fact, every year there are many sellers who want to renovate, and every year there are also some sellers who face the situation of having their stores closed due to renovation issues.

The benefits of listing renovation

Common renovation methods

Taking advantage of the inventory removal function: Sellers remove outdated product listing inventory, transfer it to a third-party warehouse, and then restock it. The system may assign a different FNSKU and ASIN to the product, thereby achieving a "refurbished" effect. Create a new SKU by following the original product listing: Sellers create a new SKU and sell it following the old product listing, then migrate the old inventory to the new SKU, and finally delete the old SKU, making the new SKU a refurbished product listing.

The risks of refurbishing your listing

First, since the refurbished ASIN will generate two SKUs, if a competitor notices and complains to Amazon, it may cause the ASIN to become invalid.

Secondly, in some actual cases of refurbishment, some sellers have completed brand registration and are using their own brands and trademarks. However, even so, after the refurbishment operation, the old ASIN will still be removed from the shelves due to suspected infringement issues.

Third, after the refurbishment operation, sellers usually need to submit multiple customer service tickets to request that the inventory be transferred to the new ASIN, or after the transfer, open another ticket to request that the new ASIN status be updated to sellable. This brings a potential risk that a large number of tickets submitted may lead to account suspension.

Therefore, refurbishment operations are not completely risk-free, because such operations are essentially in violation of Amazon's relevant policies. However, if you avoid submitting work orders for mapping frequently, the risk is relatively controllable, but there is still a potential risk of the account being banned, which may lead to a "dead account" situation.

Any renovation behavior has certain risks, which cannot be ignored, because when doing renovation, you may violate the platform's rules. Just like performing a secondary operation, the initial violation may only be warned, but if the violation is more serious, the platform may take more severe measures, or even directly ban the account, causing irreparable losses. Therefore, renovation operations must be cautious to avoid any violations of the rules.

If you are doing the renovation yourself, although the operation is relatively simple, you still need to be careful. Usually, the renovation operation is mainly to open a case to map the inventory, so as to adjust the inventory or modify the product information. The difficulty of appealing this type of operation is relatively low, and usually you only need to provide reasonable evidence and explanation to have a chance to return to normal. However, even so, you still need to comply with all the regulations of the platform to avoid any situation that may lead to account suspension.

On the contrary, if you entrust a service provider to handle the renovation business, the controllability of the whole process becomes more complicated. This is because as the entrusting party, you may not fully understand the specific operating procedures and details of the service provider. Therefore, if there is a problem, the difficulty of appeal becomes more unpredictable because you cannot confirm whether the service provider has complied with all the regulations and requirements of the platform. In this case, the difficulty and time of restoring the account may be longer, and even face unpredictable risks.

How to avoid violations of refurbished listings

●Avoid variation abuse: Do not replace a specific ASIN with a new ASIN that does not match the current product to prevent violations.

● Moderately modify the listing: Appropriate small-scale optimization is acceptable, but frequent and drastic adjustments to titles, descriptions, and images should be avoided.

●Maintain consistency: Ensure that the new and old versions of the listing are consistent and avoid sudden changes to the main selling points and features of the product.

● Adjust ASIN attributes carefully: Avoid frequently submitting applications to merge ASINs or modify product attributes to avoid triggering Amazon’s review mechanism.

● Understand platform policies: Since Amazon’s policies are constantly updated, sellers need to follow up and grasp the latest regulations in a timely manner to avoid violations due to unfamiliarity with the rules.

As Amazon gradually strengthens its supervision of violations, sellers must strictly abide by the platform rules to avoid serious consequences of violations. In-depth understanding and compliance with policies that directly affect account health is crucial to protecting account security and avoiding violations.

Dealing with the problem of listing renovation requires sellers to have meticulous operations and sufficient preparation. Whether it is pre-emptive prevention or post-appeal, sellers must follow Amazon's policies and regulations. At the same time, sellers must remain highly vigilant and adopt effective strategies to safeguard their own business interests. Creating differentiated sales of their own products and a unique corporate culture is the key to gaining a firm foothold in the fierce market competition.