Amazon's important functions are shut down! Will FBA inventory still be subject to mandatory inspection?

Yesterday, a piece of explosive news spread quickly in the seller circle. Amazon’s well-known official review function - Early Reviewer Program will be officially closed this month!

According to information disclosed by customer service, the early reviewer program will no longer accept new product registrations starting March 5 , and will no longer provide services for products that have already registered for the program after April 20.

And not only the US site, but also the UK, JP and IN sites will be shut down together. If the registered products are released after the closure date, and those products that have not received any early reviews will not be charged. And if the registered products fail to complete the early reviewer program before April 20 (5 reviews added through the program are considered completed), Amazon will refund the fees within three months after the program is closed.

That is to say, if you register for a product that only gets 1 to 4 reviews, Amazon will refund the deducted program fee. So if you can still register today, you can register quickly. As long as you get reviews within a month, you will earn money. If you don’t get 5, you can get a direct refund, which is equivalent to freeloading.

The Early Reviewer Program is one of the few official review programs. Compared with the last shutdown of the giveaway function, there are still many sellers using this program. Early reviewers are even one of the necessary links for some sellers to create new products. This cancellation makes everyone very uncomfortable. Who doesn’t want 5 super durable and highly weighted reviews?

Some sellers think that without early reviewers, there is still Vine. To some extent, Vine can replace early reviewers, but the probability of negative reviews from Vine is generally higher. In addition, many sellers cannot use the Vine program and need to apply for it on the brand registration page or contact customer service. The threshold is much more troublesome than that of early reviewers.

There is currently no news about Amazon launching other review plans. At least in the short term, sellers will have to use Vine or one-click review requests to replace the vacancies of early reviewers.

In addition to confirming the planned closure of early reviewers, the official also issued an announcement in the Amazon forum, adjusting FBA's illegal inventory investigation policy.

Amazon's latest announcement shows that if Amazon detects that a seller may be suspected of selling counterfeit products or other illegal goods, Amazon has the right to ask the seller to provide additional product information for FBA inventory.

If sellers do not provide inventory product information as required by Amazon, a mandatory investigation will be conducted on the seller’s FBA inventory. If there are indeed counterfeit or illegal products, the products may be directly discarded and the seller’s store will be punished. This policy will be implemented from March 19th.

In the past two years, Amazon has been cracking down on counterfeits and fakes with increasing intensity, and has finally reached the step of mandatory inventory investigations. As long as Amazon thinks you are suspicious, it may investigate your products and may even have the right to dispose of them directly. Regardless of whether the mandatory investigation is reasonable or not, directly abandoning the inventory is a bit too much. Even if it is a counterfeit, Amazon has no right to confiscate it.

Currently, Amazon has not clearly explained the criteria for identifying counterfeit products and the circumstances under which mandatory investigations and inventory removals will be conducted. I suggest that if you have some products that are on the verge of being counterfeit, you should make adjustments as soon as possible. There may be some adjustments before the policy officially takes effect (March 19), if Amazon backend updates the specific policy details.