Amazon is cracking down on variant abuse! Are compliant products also being abused?!

Recently, there have been many cases in our group where Amazon has issued warnings in the background due to variant issues, and most sellers have also had their products split.

The abuse of variants is indeed expressly prohibited by Amazon. From time to time, some illegal variant operations such as picking up zombies and refurbishing listings are discovered. Amazon will split the seller's products and issue warnings on the grounds of abusing variants.

The new situation now is that many normal variant operations of sellers have also been warned, and there are even cases where variants that were merged a few years ago are now directly separated by Amazon.

Amazon was not so strict in its review of variant abuse, which in turn encouraged some borderline operations. Generally, Amazon would focus on cracking down on variant violations at a certain time. Now it does seem like Amazon is conducting a large-scale review, but the number of accidental kills is a bit too frequent, and even products that have been merged for several years have been dismantled.

Because the situation was unusual, I went to the backend to check the relevant policies and pages and found a noteworthy change.

The backend has been relatively quiet recently. Apart from changing the homepage beyond recognition a while ago, which was criticized by sellers for being useless, there has been no other action. However, when I checked the policy, I found a change - there is now a dedicated reporting portal for variant abuse.

In the past, we could indeed report some violations by sellers or competitors in the background, but all reporting types have the same entrance and are not divided according to the reporting type. Amazon also made it clear that such reports will not receive an official response from Amazon (sometimes the reported problem will indeed be resolved).

However, the revised reporting entrance has become more obvious, and different reporting entrances will be subdivided according to different violations, including duplicate listings, page detail content violations, and keyword abuse, etc.

This means that Amazon has further relaxed and condoned the reporting of violations, which is actually a disguised way of encouraging sellers to proactively report violations.

I can't help but break out in a cold sweat when I see this. Once this loophole is opened, it will definitely become a means for certain people to attack their opponents. Anyway, most large stores these days have some shady operations. If you have nothing to do, just report it. Maybe one day your competitors will be caught in the crossfire and dealt with.

Recently, normal product variants have been split frequently, which is probably related to this change in the reporting policy. If a competitor reports that a seller’s product is suspected of violating the variant rules, Amazon may review the reported product. At this time, if the product does have variants, it will be very dangerous.

Because the boundaries of many sellers' variant operations are relatively vague, it is difficult to say whether it is an illegal merger or a legal merger. The standard for this judgment actually depends on Amazon's auditors. Now that Amazon has tacitly approved sellers' reporting behavior, whether a product has been reported will also become an important reference standard for auditors, greatly increasing the chances of a successful report.

At present, only the abuse of variants has shown a significant increase in number and the misjudgment rate. It may be that Amazon is conducting a test on the "abuse of variants" point first. Hopefully, this will make Amazon realize that "open reporting will definitely lead to the abuse of this feature" and stop further operations.

Amazon sellers never simply open stores to sell. In addition to gray operations, sellers can also direct traffic to Amazon stores through social media, off-site deals, and other channels when necessary. Even if you open up your mind and learn the operating model and logic of cross-border e-commerce, you can also use it to develop your own other businesses.