Big reversal, Amazon's illegal variants are automatically unblocked

Since April this year, Amazon has significantly strengthened its supervision of illegal variants, resulting in many sellers receiving warning emails for violating ASIN creation policies and then having their accounts blocked. This rectification action has a wide impact, affecting both experienced sellers and new entrants, especially those with repeated or multiple violations.

The main manifestations of illegal variants include: modifying the parent or child listing page resulting in inconsistent information, parent detail page not matching child products, adding products that are incompatible with the parent, introducing children from different manufacturers, merging invalid listings, and variant name violations.

Recently, some accounts that were banned due to illegal variants have begun to be automatically unblocked, some previously split variant links have been re-merged, and sellers have received notifications of account reactivation. Interestingly, the accounts of sellers who have submitted appeal materials have not yet been restored.

Sellers had different reactions, some were glad that their accounts were restored, some said they would avoid any illegal operations in the future, and some sellers mentioned that even accounts that were blocked in the early hours of the morning were restored. Despite this, there are still some accounts that have not been unblocked, and sellers choose to wait patiently for further news.

It is particularly noteworthy that the automatic unblocking is mainly aimed at accounts that were blocked in May due to variant violations, while accounts blocked in April have not yet seen any signs of unblocking.

Industry observers analyzed that given the current situation, the accounts blocked in April may be automatically unblocked in the future, and the appeal channels may be relaxed. It is recommended that sellers affected in April try to file an appeal.

Although some accounts have been automatically unblocked, the restriction on creating variations represented by the "8036" error code has not been lifted. In this illegal variation incident, some sellers failed when trying to re-upload and merge the parent body, and the system prompted the "8036" error that violated the policy. It is understood that this restriction is a normal functional restriction of the platform, targeting sellers whose sales have been suspended due to variation abuse. In addition, there is also an "8040" error code, which corresponds to the variation restrictions in the store and brand dimensions, and sellers are required to submit information for appeal.

Amazon classifies account violations into four severity levels: severe, high, medium, and low. The severity of the violation depends on many factors, especially the negative impact on buyers, or violations of Amazon policies, sales site regulations, or intellectual property infringement. If a seller repeatedly violates the rules and the account health rating score is less than 199 points, the account may be suspended. Variant violations are usually "medium" or "low" level violations, and warnings generally appear in the "other policy violations" category.

If a seller needs to appeal to restore permissions due to a variant violation, they should check the violations in the account status dashboard and correct them. The seller needs to read the violation in detail and provide corresponding explanations. Below the "acknowledge violation" appeal path, there is usually an option to "deny violation", and the seller needs to submit evidence or documents of no violation.

For sellers whose variants have been split and whose accounts have been closed, Amazon recommends first checking the specific ASIN with the problem that is not specified in the notification. If the root cause of the problem cannot be located, all variants should be checked and corrected one by one. In addition, sellers can contact Selling Partner Support to assist in reviewing the variant problem, or contact the Account Status Protection Program through the Seller Platform for help, and finally submit a Plan of Action (POA) for appeal.

Many experienced sellers believe that the storm of illegal variants may be far from over. It is reported that the rectification of variant violations may be traced back to 2021 and may continue until the end of the year. With the arrival of Amazon Prime Day and the second half of the sales season, it is expected that the rectification of illegal variants will continue. Therefore, sellers need to give up the fluke mentality, strictly abide by the platform rules, and avoid illegal operations.