Forum

At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

And by this I mean at what level would a seller get their own rep to deal with any potential issues, including policy violations/suspensions. There's obviously some level where a seller is no longer subject to automated suspensions. Like Pharmapacks isn't going to randomly get suspended because a few customers filed bogus used as new complaints.

I'm at a crossroads right now. It's my 4th month selling on Amazon and I'm doing around 10 - 15K / week in sales, and it's time to make a decision as to whether I want to continue growing my current account, or if I want to diversify and start spreading out the sales over multiple accounts to hedge against suspension risk.

Getting to the million / year sales level is easy , but that makes you a very small fish on Amazon and there's plenty of stories of million dollar sellers being suspended for dubious reasons.

Obviously just having back burner accounts isn't a good solution. I would either have to go all in on my current account or actively manage and sell on multiple accounts, since it looks awfully suspicious if a dormant account suddenly picks up where another just suspended account left off, not to mention I have thousands of units of inventory at FBA and would be on the hook for thousands in removal fees (and obviously if I'm going all in on 1 account I'd likely have tens of thousands of units at FBA within a few months)

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

There's no guaranteed sales level at which you get a rep. Amazon is introducing a program soon that lets you pay $400/month to have a personal rep, but full details aren't available yet. Otherwise you have to wait and see if Amazon ever reaches out to you. You may need closer to millions/month before they even try.

Years ago it was much more common to have a contact on the inside, but it's not something common any more.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

Once you start getting to around 20-50K/mo they usually reach out to you with an offer to have a personal manager / assistant. That was the case about 2 years ago, could have changed by now

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

Where did you hear about this program? I've never heard of any such thing

I have 40K in sales for august. Not expecting anyone to reach out to me. Sellers my size are a dime a dozen.

Does having a personal rep mean that they speak to you about suspension related issues BEFORE issuing a suspension? I don't really need anyone to help me manage my sales, I'm more concerned about being suspended and having it take forever to resolve (or not get resolved at all).

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

It's a pretty recent development:
Would You Pay $400 a Month for Seller Support?

I've not heard any first-hand info from others recently about any sort of personal rep. The last I personally dealt with one was back around 2005 and that was for a 500k/month account. They were extremely helpful back in those days. We'd have friendly calls all the time and even visited headquarters for discussions.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

Oh, that program sounds useless. That sounds like it's strictly for essentially expediting all your seller support requests. Not to mention it sounds like anybody can sign up. I'm more interested in having someone who has power over seller PERFORMANCE have something to do with the account.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

I paid 15K in fees in August, so having them try to charge for their mediocre seller support is just insulting.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

40k a month gets you nothing now in USA, just throwing that out there.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

Yeah I know. Like I said, 40K / month on Amazon is a small fish. I was wondering if like 250K / month would get you special treatment, since that's a # that's attainable within the next 6 months. I would go out on a limb and do it now, but I don't want to take the kind of risk I would have to in order to do that. I mean, I'm not exactly doing everything on the up and up (products are all real, it's just that I'm not exactly authorized to sell them on Amazon, and I been using ⊗⊗⊗⊗ names to buy things from suppliers since there's quantity limits so if I ever get asked for invoices I'm going to have a problem), and even if I was, Amazon's been known to suspend people over things that aren't their fault. For example, I sell health and personal care items, and FBA has been restocking stuff that people returned as sellable. If someone gets say, a used toothbrush that some idiot at FBA restocked as new, then I get suspended for that.

So again, the original question is.. what level of sales does a seller need to hit to basically be immune from suspension assuming they're not doing something like selling bogus products or actually ripping off customers? (Basically a seller who's innocent until proven guilty, rather than the default suspend first, ask questions later model that Amazon has). I'm at a crossroads where I either need to decide to try to hit that threshold, or get serious with spreading my action over multiple accounts.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

No special treatment on amazon UNLESS you have exclusive items that amazon does not sell with huge volume.

OR be a private major distributor.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

I'm sure there's some level where the regular rules do not apply anymore.

Like if Pharmapacks had a bad batch of something that led to a bunch of complaints, they would not be suspended and have a plan of action demanded from them. I just can't see that happening. Same goes for other mega sellers on Amazon.

Re: At what sales level do Amazon sellers get preferential treatment?
 

I doubt it but I am not that size on Amazon.

On ebay, I can tell you, sell a few hundred grand a month and yes, you have what seems like perks but mess up one time and you get the axe... You have MORE scrutiny on how you handle returns and cases. They expect UP AND BEYOND service.

Just as an example.