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Banned from amazon: what course of action?
 

Hi looking for some help and advise, I had been selling on amazon for about 5 months and every thing was perfect, all items were shipped out on time and all messages etc were responded to. My feedback is 99% 134 positive. I received an email 2weeks today stating that my listings had been cancelled and my account blocked, and the reason they gave was not matching catalogue entries? I'm still not sure what this means. They also stated that they had previously warned me about this (which is incorrect as I have checked all emails from amazon) I sent my appeal in explaining that I was a legitimate seller and that to go on selling I would like further information on the actual policy violation. They sent a robotic response stating that the ban is final. I appealed again and the exact same email was sent except at the bottom it stated no further replies will be sent. What annoys me is that the weekend they blocked me i had sold over 125 items but there still happy for me to send these out? So my policy violation can not be that bad? Can it? They have over £4500 of mine and I have been emailing them fir the past 2 weeks but have had no replies to any of my messages or case logs.

Please can someone help me on this matter, any help I would appreciate

Amazon is very strict about what you can and cant sell, how you sell it, and if you dont follow their rules they will kick you. Odds are they have emailed you, as one violation rarely gives you the boot. If you were selling high risk items, and only a couple people complain in a given period, they will just let you go, so they dont have to deal with you issues. You can sit on here and b!tch about how bad amazon is, but at the end of the day, you will end up going back. Stealth is your only option, so I would take some time to make sure you know exactly what you are doing. Your funds will be on hold for 90 days. Dont waste your time calling asking them to release them, they wont, and you will just get even more pissed.

Fromt the sounds of it - this is your legitimate account - and you have done nothing wrong.

I would not write them off -

Persoanlly - I would go to a legal aid house - A registered letter from a lawyer to the addtress for service will get a ball rolling - I belive at this point you will get a proper answer and the remedy they wish to see - however failing an answer - file a claim in debtors / small claims court - they have to answer - Internationally they have extra time but they still have to answer - if you have to file in another jurisdiction there are services that assist. In a lot of courts you will also be able to seek damages and legal costs.


My two cents for what it is worth...

Welcome to the forums Mcgarry84. Sadly Am az on is known for random suspensions with no good reason (as we the sellers see it). I have never had this catalogue listing reason but I have had all kinds of suspensions which hurt but I moved on.

Yes it looks bad - a nice account like this just randomly banned but you will have to go ghost now...or keep appealing (low success rate though).

@oflmedia, why are you speaking about legal aid house / lawyers? Am az on can block as they please - the seller`funds will be avail in 90 days as per usual.

Remember that Amazon gives itself the right to "terminate you without notice or cause". Maybe not those exact words, but same effect. You have no natural right to sell on Amazon. As unfair as it sounds, it's their marketplace, and they can run it like a tyrant if they desire.

Log into your account and take a look at your message center. Do you really have previous warnings from Amazon for policy violations? Quickest way to a suspension is to ignore these emails. You have to read them or Amazon gets pissed off.

And the category violation could be..just a thought.... abusing the EVERYTHING ELSE Category. Example: You have a used hand held game, thus do not know the UPC Code. It belongs in Electronics but you create a new listing as Pro Merchant and list it in EVERYTHING ELSE Catagory

Correct. Using the Everything Else to avoid category restrictions is a huge no-no.

Thank you for all your replies, I have checked and checked again all my emails, and I can verify that I have no other policy violation messages. I keep a track of my customer metric through out the day making sure I stay within the green and the percentages. I created 2 f my own listings which I did because amazon didnt have these products (these listings are still up and running in amazon) also I use the sell yours on the right hand page of a product listing. Making sure that the item and the correct description matches the product I sell. I have emailed jeff bezos and will see if I get a reply. So far my account has been blocked for 2 weeks and i have had no response from tnm for 11 days. I will keep you all updated , thanks again

You will get your funds fter 90days. I had the same problem... previus warning, but I never got previous...

you will get your funds for sure..

The outcome of any appeal depends... Doesn't sound good because they say it's final. I didn't get those kind of messages with my suspensions until the last (3rd, I think) suspension, which really was the final one.

What`s this have to do with Am az on?

There's an "anything else" category on Amazon too.

welcome to amazon!
amazon really blows I thought the people at ebay were the worst until I encoutered these royal Aholes at amazon.You have to look at it like a game,Your a pirate sailing the seas and sometimes they sink one of your ships,get back out their and rain down terror on those amazon *******s no matter what they try to do to you.Sure sometimes they get me and mess up my pay for a week or so,but Im back to sailing the high seas of online foolishness faster than they can invent ways to stop me.Im sorry your account got messed up it sounds like you were really trying to be a good seller and you found out that they will make up an excuse to sink you,why you ask? because they can and thats what they do.When your the small fry to a company like amazon they really dont care about accomodating or helping you.Robotic responses and bad service are the twin children of Amazon,Ebay,and Paypal.To make you feel better get on there and create an amazon stealth (follow the guide if you dont know how yet) I havent read the amazon guide yet but highly recommend the ebay guide from askpin.Get back on there once you figure out how and do something heinous to get revenge on those amazon dilweeds.

hi rsot~:)

OP has excellent stats, feedback, ship time etc... but banned due to some type of Amazon Catalog violation.
We were guessing of what that could have been exactly

Wow I had no idea there is an Anything Else category - I guess you can only list on that if you have a Merchant account (the one you pay 39.99 for) right?

Edit: Hi Melissa =)

You may have piggybacked someone else's listing for a product (innocently enough) but if they raise a policy violation to Aamzon, there is little you can do about it.

May I ask what you were selling?

Just a little update I sent an email to jeff bezos 2 days ago but still no reply, I also contacted amazon through seller help and used the review my account option, I have not had a reply from jeff yet, I received a message back from my case log stating that they dont review accounts and that I need to contact seller performance. ( so why did the option to review my account go to these people if they don't review accounts) it's now been 2weeks since I have had a reply, I feel this is ridiculous and the must be another way to communicate with them or even going to someone else to sort this out, or instance if you have a problem with paypal you can go to the financial ombudsman. Any help would be appreciated.

It is so sad. Am does as it pleases. It feels like your arm been cut off.
Please dont waste time on them,Ghost is the way to go!
Getting back on is a good feeling.:pry:

I'm so sorry! :pry:

Update, I received a response from my email to Jeff Bezos not what I expected here it is;

Hello from Amazon.com.

Jeff Bezos received your e-mail and asked that I respond on his behalf.

Unfortunately, we were unable to locate your account.

For privacy and security reasons, we can only send information to the e-mail address that is registered to your Amazon account. Please write from the e-mail address that is registered to your account and we will be happy to assist you.

Thank you for your patience and we look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Seller Performance Team
http://www.amazon.com
=============================

There is no need for this email because the email address I used to contact jeff is the same one I use to log in, and also I received the reply to my amazon email address, this is very childish, seller performance obviously don't want to sort this out. I have contacted jeff back with a copy of the email I received and also my further details full name, business name etc, so I shouldn't receive the same email back fingers crossed. I will keep you all posted

Of course they wont assist you if you send emails from another email account requesting information about an account that is not associated with said email

Did you read his post???

Hi

Thanks gamefreak, the problem is that I did use my email address that is link to my amazon account. And still they are saying this.

Do not hold a torch for this lost account. ITS GONE! Do not fall in love with any Amazon account because you can lose it in a heartbeat for any number of reasons. just let it go already. all of us here been there done that. move on. The time, stress, energy, effort and worry your putting into getting this lost account back could be used to create 5 new accounts, and you could be making money as we speak. If you search these boards, I dont think you will find one successful appeal to recover a lost account from those asswipes at Amazon. Good luck, and make us proud=}

Did you sell on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk?

If you have a seller account on amazon.co.uk and you sent email to amazon.com they wont find your account..

If there are funds in the account we should be able to retirve them so I have been advised from other memeber on this forum, if we trying to activate a suspended or deleted seller account that is another issue..

dont give up keep trying!! Im in the same postion..

Hi kickboxerfighter I sell on amazon.co.uk, I emailed jeff bezos for advise because I had been told that he may be able to help, is this guy just for America ? If so is there anyone one that I can email. This is the email address I was given jeffbezos@amazon.com

Thanks

It doesn't show up in the drop down menu but yes, when creating a new listing w/ the needed 39.99 for merchant account then it pops up. The choices are only two or three- Wedding, one or two other categories.

I don't know if that's the right email addy but Jeff is the head honcho for all of Amazon.
it's doubtful he told anyone to respond to his email for him, that's a general response.

Thanks so you saying that probably jeff himself sent me the email, as how would anyone from seller performance know I had emailed jeff if he didn't give it someone to sort out in that department?

amazon.com is diffrent .amazon.co.uk so u wont have an access to your account cause they will be looking for a .com account!

But wouldn't they have checked both amazon.com and amazon.co.uk? As this was passed from jeff to seller performance to sort out? Do the same seller performance sort out .com and .uk issues? Or is there 2 different seller performance departments ?

jeff does not personally answer any of these emails sent to him, his minions do all the replying....but jeff does have a personal email address that is not public...but again if you do email him at his personal email address, he will just pass it on to his minions...unless if the situation is worth his personal attention

you might want to reply back and say that you were selling on amazon uk. maybe they just assumed to look in amazon.com instead.

jeff does not personally answer any of these emails sent to him, his minions do all the replying....but jeff does have a personal email address that is not public...but again if you do email him at his personal email address, he will just pass it on to his minions...unless if the situation is worth his personal attention

I think that Jeff is tired of getting all these emails that are from suspended sellers. Bottom line is, leave Jeff alone unless you really are being abused by Seller Performance!

I only mean it is a general reply I've heard before, that Jeff B. has so and so answering his email for him.

I got this yesterday on a stealth account, no money left in thankfully 2 days before the review was due to finish, 33 items sold, no a-z claims, no returns/refunds, 6 positive feedback no negative, listing an item amazon already sell themselves in the Home Audio & Video Accessories section, havnt had anything listed on said account for 45 days or so either

Worth appealing or just leave it and move on?

Dont waste your time.

amazon.com and .co.uk do not talk i had 2 accounts one .com and 1.co.uk the .co.uk got booted about a mth ago so moved on to the .com not a single problem.
but as i see amazon are in there own world i have also opened 1 stealth .co.uk and plan on opening a couple more just waiting for my bank accounts to be opened.

Just me, but that seems like a lot for one weekend. Had you ever gotten close to this number before? Could that have triggered it?

Funny enough I have a young account about 2 months old , about 100 good feedbacks, sold about 200 items over the weekend. Got a warning on Monday
Items are found to be in violation of our Participation Agreement by not matching catalogue entries
And all listings are removed ( not just the problematic ones)
Looks like this is common . I remember listing under someone else’s listing before but there were a lot of different sellers and it was a non branded product anyway
Does anyone know how do we avoid not violating the policy or is this just an excuse ?
Can I unblock some of the listings / or relist some items straight away as I am sure those are fine.
I agree with most people here, don’t get emotional with the lost accounts, its not worth our time arguing about it. The question should be how to avoid being noticed/ suspended and how to get back on quickly . Amazon Ghost is the way to go