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Amazon Suspends???
 

Well I had a great little Amazon account running for just over a month now, got a few orders out of it; however today I go to log in and it says: Amazon suspended your selling account because of performance issues or policy violations. If you would like more information, please contact Alliance at alliance@amazon.com.
What the *&^%^?? There was no email sent to me giving a reason why, just that.
Has anyone else encountered this problem with Amazon?
The weird thing is all my listings are still up, it just says this item is currently unavailable. So I have my email address on there so people can still put their orders in with me directly.

HI- I have been with Amazon for 3 yrs now, the first 3-6 weeks i got the message for some kind of review, but they pulled all of my listings
-- they said it was just standard. they took a solid month to release the acct,and the sales were low, i sold a $249 radar detector, and some small items,
-- Dont really know what triggered it??
-- I emailed about 50 times !!
-- I even sent them the feedback from ebay, showing i was established + my ratings were 100%.. dont know if that helped?

Strange... I've been selling books and video games on amazon.ca for a few months, have sold for over a thousand dollar and I never got any limitation. Do you use legit infos?

Well, the weird thing is my listings are still listed, it just says product not available or no longer exists, however all of the info is still there, the pics, descriptions, etc. As I said I put my email contact right there in the description hoping that people would just contact me directly anyway to put an order in as all my products are custom built.
So, as long as I can just use them for advertisement then fine, but I don't know if it's just a delay reaction that my listings haven't been completely taken off.
EBAYHATELUV, did they give you any explanation when they took your stuff off?

NO, Just one morning, it was all gone..
They said in an email it was SOP,
and they also were very concerned about the Buyers leaving good fb, I emailed + emailed, and i think i got 2 or 3 out of 8 or 10 to respond, the others, nothing..

Why would they be concerned about the buyers leaving good feedback? It's like you're dammed if you do your dammed if you don't with these companies. Unreal.
Well I expect to wait a while to hear back form amazon alliance; in the meantime as long as my stuff comes up in searches I really don't care. My contact info is there and people can just email me directly. It doesn't actually say seller suspended, it just says product is unavailable. All the more reason for people to contact the seller directly!

Does anyone know how long it takes to receive payment in your bank account once amazon.com has initiated a transfer? I received an email from amazon.com on 1-31-08 that they transferred funds into my bank account and I should receive it within five banking days. I have yet to receive the payment. My banking information is correct on amazon.com site. Does it usually take this long? Any siggestions?

Maybe amazon has a problem with the fact that you 'make' the product to order.
They may be uncomfortable with your concept. Reckon their people had better
give you a good explanation.

HI- Not to Worry. Amazon is Very Faithful about the Transfers.It's a weekend.
They do NOT play the Paypal Games, telling you the transfer is in Progress, >>The, when you write checks against that account, and find...next day or so.. NOW< theyve stopped the transfer "for your protection"..
---Your money will be there. My Guess, will show up MOnday eve, Post to your acct, Tuesday morn! Let us know :)

should take 4 business days to get to you sometimes 3 depending on the time you pull it out

I thought I would bring this thread up...
I have logged in to my Amazon account. My sales are $5,000 a week. Now I received this message " Amazon.com suspended your account because of issues related to performance or policy violations."
Anyone has this happened ? and were they able to fix this ?

have you tried contacting them? maybe its something you can work out.

amazon suspensions
 

Hello,
Mostly, you will need to check you LSR ( late ship rates), if this goes above 5% amazon will start to get nervous. If your late ship rate goes above 10% they tend to pull the cord on you. In order to correct this, make sure all of your shipment information is within the expected timeframe, and email amazon, or call your CSR explaining that you are working to correct your shipping and processinf erros, and how ou are going about doing so. Once they see that you are working to, or coreecting the issue, they will reactivate your account. Beware, with amazon requesting UPS codes for most listings now, they are able to track our product down to the manufacturer/ distributor, and may start undercutting you on your items.

did you issue a lot of refunds? amazon will suspend you if you do that too much

Amazon Suspension
 

I got suspended from Amazon for the second time three days ago.

I started listing a few DVD's but there was no room for profit as some of the prices are stupidly low , e.g James Bond - Quantum of solace (2 disc special edition) - Brand New for £ 7.99 when the cheapest retail price anywhere in the uk is £ 12 .49.

When you take out Amazon's insane Postage fees / ebay like final value fees / P & P costs a £ 7.99 sale gives you back ab out £ 6.25 .

It's f@#!$ insane -- either these idiots are selling themselves short or selling ⊗⊗⊗⊗ DVD's. I can guarantee Amazon is full of ⊗⊗⊗⊗ DVD's .:rant:

:focus:
Anyway, i had a stealth Amazon account for about three weeks selling DVD's ......... or so i thought.

I then decided to list heaps of high risk items such as Xboxes , wii's , laptops , etc.
Then bang , within 24 hours they had sent me the same suspension notice as was posted up by threadstarted.
I'm not exactly sure how they caught me , providing that they do not have access to the name on my credit card then i must of carelesly used same / simlar name / address to my old suspended account.

The way in which i was suspended proves that there are real people screening high risk accounts , they store details , i would'nt be surprised if there were people in their trust & safety departments taking down detailed notes and streing them as files to catch you in the future.

My views on Amazon are that without proof they will not suspend you which is the oposite to ebay because ebay will suspend you for blinking an eye lid.
Amazons detection / Linking methods are abviously more throughough and indepth.

Here is the letter i got from Amazon explaining my suspension:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,

This message is to inform you that we have blocked your Amazon.co.uk seller account. Your open listings have been cancelled and you are no longer able to sell on our site.

We have taken this action because it has come to our attention that this account is related to an account which has been previously blocked for violations of our Participation Agreement.

While we do not provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, we have thoroughly reviewed our records and have confirmed we have significant evidence that this account is related to another account previously closed for violations of our Participation Agreement.

If you still have items to dispatch, please take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your seller account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or dispatch pending orders.

Any funds that were in your account at the time of closure are on temporary hold pending the resolution of your sales. Funds are generally held for 90 days and will be released minus any unresolved chargebacks or A-to-z claims filed against your account.

While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding of our decision.



Warmest regards,

Seller Performance
Amazon.co.uk


Please note that this e-mail was sent from an address which does not accept incoming mail.
In order to contact us please visit our help pages on Amazon.co.uk under Help > Marketplace Selling FAQs > "Contact Seller Support by e-mail" and select "Respond to Seller Performance" from the subject line drop down menu.
================================================== ======== ========================

The crazy thing about all this is that on both my suspended accounts i only ever sold 2 dvd's (Both were real)
Thereason i got suspended initially was because on my initial account i listed a lot of items which went out of stock so i had to issue refunds.
Half of the buyers left negative feedback (like the twa.ts they are).
Regardless of the bad feedback i recieved if you give too many refunds amazon will suspend you - and thats what they did for me.

Overall i managed to get two suspended accounts and sold only 2 items - with no profit and a lot of effort.
This sort of treatment makes me realise why scammers want to rip off the likes of ebay and Amazon.

At the end of the day unlucky people like me are the ones taking the brunt of Amazons attacks when the people they should be catching are the REAL SCAMMERS - THE PROFESSIONAL SCAMMERS & FRAUDSTERS who are wise up to all amazons security measures anyway.

whoa! what were you selling?

From my own observations (my opinion based on personal experience), Amazon has bots that crawl around looking for spikes in revenue, spikes in number of items listed, and more. The bot sets a flag on your account. A person will come along and manually review your account. Depending on their findings, the may cancel individual items or maybe all of your listings. They may suspend you and they may only freeze your account pending more review.

If you have a listing or all of your listings cancelled, my advice is to log into Amazon. Then read a bunch of help pages related to listing. Then read the policy pages again. Just like you were a person who really cared. Stay on each page long enough to seem like you actually WERE reading. You gotta make it plausible. Then let things cool off.

DO NOT initiate any contact with them. Let them contact you. If you don't hear anything after several days, go back and review your inventory. Check any of the comments you entered on each item in inventory.

Amazon has this thing about listing EXACTLY what the predefined description says it is. So, if a DVD set says it comes with a booklet, don't say in your item comment that the booklet is not included with your item. If you don't have the booklet, don't list. They hate it and they will hate you. Even if you are listing your item as used, if it doesn't come with a used booklet, don't list it if the predefined description says it is supposed to have the freakin' booklet.

Also, Amazon will automatically put every account under review and cancel listings at some point (usually pretty soon after the account starts selling). Partly, this is to see how you deal with adversity. Kindof an underhanded test of your ability to cope. It is supposedly (they won't officially say so) a reflection of your ability to deal with potential customer service issues. Basically, psych profiling.

Play it cool. Pretend you care. Do what rational and reasonable people would do. Don't flip your wig inside out.

LOL! This is becoming interesting! :yar:

Oh, if you like, I could go on and on about Amazon...

Amazon
 

Rather than read through a lot of tosh on Amazon suspension help pages i think next time i will learn from my mistakes and open a 100 % completely stealth account :D

Remember , Amazon only suspended me when they found the proof that my account was linked to a previously suspended account .
This is the exact opposite to ebay , ebay will suspend accounds for anything.

I do hate ebay's 21 days money hold rule and it is causing me loads of problems but i have to say i think they've put a nail in the coffin of the ebay scammers / fraudsters.

How are you meant to scam when virtuallay every item is classed as high risk and the 21 day hold is imposed .

From now on scammers like ebay member alisher71 are no more .
(WORST EBAYER EVER !! -- TAKE A LOOK AT THE PROFILE ON EBAY)

Can anyone see a future for scammers on ebay because i can't .

The scammers will all moved house to amazon .

In order to successfully scam, it seems you have to become a buyer. That's where the money is...

I agree that Amazon has personal review of accounts. If you have been warned, but tell them you are sincerely sorry and outline your plan for improvement, you may escape the crushing fist of suspension. Since it's more difficult to stealth on Amazon, why not let those new accounts sit for a bit. Don't try to sell $10,000 the first week. That seems to be the #1 reason for suspension. Heck, if I ran Amazon's trust & safety and a new seller just sold $5000 the first day, I would be suspicious too. Just saying...

Personally, I would leave out the "I'm Sorry" part. Never admit to anything. Ever. Just a rule I try to live by. I do slip up from time to time, though.

I agree with outlining a plan for improvement. Give that a good think and make your plan before you communicate with them. Don't be hasty. Amazon support people are not the same as the eBay Live (un)Help people. Every Amazon person I have ever spoken with is from someplace in the US, or at least they pretend (convincingly) to be from someplace in the US.

I agree STRONGLY with the cooling off, too. Real people will be conducting the review. A whole freakin' team of them, possibly from several departments simultaneously. Being that they are people, you have better odds getting a favorable result as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot. They have brains, too. So BS tactics will hurt you instead of helping. So, let your account cool. And let your attitude cool.

Amazon definitely appears to be harder to stealth, so think about that thoroughly. More care is in order, here. If you blow this one, you've probably blown it for good. Get your ducks in a row, dot your T's and cross your I's.

They don't mind people making money. That is what commerce is all about, and they are right in tune with the concept. But, they don't tolerate poor practices and weak service.

In regards to VeRO: It doesn't appear to be monitored the way eBay is. But if a living breathing person at Amazon has a reason to suspect you're into it, they will sniff every square millimeter of your virtual inventory. You're going to want verifiable invoices when they ask for them. You'll want tracking numbers for everything you ship. Don't skimp on that.

If you are doing business properly, you've got no worries. Everything will come out of the wash nice and clean. If you go there to dump, consider it temporary. CYA and be careful about what you do and how you do it.

Nice place, if you can make it work for you (I made 4 grand on a Sunday evening). Aggravating, if you don't know what to expect or if you screw it up.

Establish yourself gradually (not like a total snail), and all will be well. Be ready for the automatic review, and don't get pissy about it. It's standard procedure. Nothing personal against you. Play it cagey and calm.

A suspension is clear and well defined. A ban is final. There is no appeal at Amazon, if they decide to permanently exile you. Seriously. You can ask for one, and they will refuse.

I'm around if anyone needs me.

just something I found out that all my suspension or notices come in after few hours of disbursement of fund. Dunno if that's coincident but makes me think when you trying to disburse money outta your account. It just picks up more eyes..

Could be. Although I've done disbursements for thousands of bucks and had no issue. Maybe because I did everything right in the early days, so they like me or something.

I would suspect that the first large transfer or two are the ones that get looked at. Say $1k+, and after that, probably safe. Just a guess. YMMV.

Agreed. First ones they probably look at closely. After that? Probably not so much. I transfer about 3 grand a week, but usually in increments of 500-700.

Hmmm. I just lump mine all at once. Let it run all week and dump in the wee hours of Monday morning. I haven't been bothered by them in forever. The first time, I think it was when I moved maybe $800. The second time was around $600 if my memory is right. I've dumped some substantial amounts since then. Quite a few. And no sweat.

That's why I am pretty sure the Amazon nasties work on a formula early on, and if you're underwear are clean, you're good to go from then on.

I don't guarantee this to be true. But it's as much as I have been able to figure out. Not much statistics for me to calculate with. More input may alter the theory.

so would ebay stealth work on amazon?

It works as giving you the basis to create a stealth amazon account. Amazon has different means to detect suspended players. BUT if you pay attention to the threads in this sub-forum, it is possible to sell on Amazon after suspension.
Ground rule: do your homework. Plan, refine, plan, refine. Good Luck:peace:
ps I made one UK amazon account this way & it is sound

Study your enemy BEFORE you try to sneak into his camp.

Yeah, most of the stealth techniques would apply to Amazon. Maybe some minor refinements. I'll see what I can compile. Might take me a bit, but I'll report back when I have something SOLID.

I want to sell on amazon but I don't know if they track my IP Address or not ? I mean if my IP Address 's in California and my amazon's account information is from NY , will they suspend me ?

I know that they track IP. I know that they constantly bust people for having linked IP. I do not know if they check IP location. It doesn't seem like it, but I'm not positive.

My IP is not linked to any other account . I just don't know if they track the IP location or not

See the PM I sent you. And try to at least have your IP be in the same country Amazon expects it to be.

They don't mind aircards. You could get one of the mobile broadband units from Verizon, Sprint, or At&T. I think most IPs show location as the ISP headquarters. For example, my Sprint mobile broadband connection shows location as Virginia (though I am in Oregon). Our local high speed ISP shows location as our closest big city, where the ISP has its offices.

I've been playing the game for bit now and what I've figured out, is that Amazon DEFINATELY tracks you different than Ebay. They put something on your computer that identifies you. It is hidden so you cannot remove it using Objection (SOL files) or Cookies. When someone finds out what this is...please post:)

Anyhoot...my suggestion is to use a NEW computer AND new IP. I am also of the opinion that they track you based on your inventory (ex. banned account selling Winnie the Poo, new account selling Winnie the Poo = LINKED/PERMABAN)!

Any thoughts? I'm still trialing and error'ing:p

based on many users here . Once you cleaned the cookies and SOL's then you should be fine without changing a new pc. Don't forget to uninstall any ASON software if you have installed.

Create new user account on your PC helps too.

the only thing amazon does differently is...look at the catergory that you start off your account with. if you listed electronics and were banned then start off the new account as a book seller and work your way back in electronics if you like over a span of a couple weeks. GO SLOW! also hold off on adding the bank info for about a week. otherwise follow the ebay method and you should be ok. i open amazon accounts at will.

Thanks. I have not tried starting my account off in a different category...hmmm...makes sense though. I will try that and report back if it works. I am, however, going to try it from another computer though, luckily I've got like 10 computers at home:p

Now that I think about it, each time I've listed, I've started off with the same product/same category. At first, they did not link, but now, they link me within 24 hours. I'm getting the Amazon bug again, and need to start listing.

The last account I had, I used the same computer, but logged on under a new user account name on my computer, changed IP (cable internet/router) used firefox, did not block cookies or sol's, used new visa gift card, and did not enter my bank account info and BAM - got the permaban within 24 hours.

Few months ago, I used a new computer on the same router, did not change my IP, and NEVER got linked. This leads me to believe that IP is not as important as one may think.;)

Anyhoot...I'll report if this next account lasts using your method. Thanks again.

you are on the right track but you do not need to change PC's. they don't track the PC.. but they track the cookies & IP & catergory. I make many,many accounts with the same computer, same modem, same ISP..just new IP and computer user account. but i can't stress enough to START SLOW! also wait a week to add that new bank account.

trust me ....this works!