Hello Everyone,
I opened last year an FBA seller account in the USA, with my business address in France, where I own a company and where I live. No pb here. Then I opened an LLC in Wyoming as a non-US resident and a bank account in the USA. My project was to transfer my FBA business from my company in France to my LLC.
Before making this change, I decided to extend my business to Europe, starting with the UK. Helpdesk told me I had to open another seller account in the UK with a different email address, then I will be able to link both of my accounts in the US and in the UK. Instead of opening my account in the UK with my French company, I decided to use directly my LLC, thinking it will save time in the future: only my US seller account will have to be transferred. By opening my account in the UK, I fulfilled the LLC business address but when Amazon requested a utility bill, I sent my own documentation from France. Obviously Amazon does not accept the seller and the company to be in 2 different countries. I did not understand it because it is perfectly legal, so I continued to send documentation with my French address. My account has been deactivated right away.
It took me 3 submissions to understand. The last email from Amazon has been sent on Dec 27:
Your Amazon seller account has been deactivated in accordance with section 3 of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement. This decision was made after reviewing both your account and the information provided.
So for the 4th submission, I changed my business address in my seller account to put my french address, in order to match my documentation. Then I wrote a proper appeal with correct docs:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for providing me the opportunity to appeal my seller account's deactivation due to a lack of documentation to verify my identity.
I understand that Amazon takes problems with identity verification very seriously and I would like to share with you my Plan of Action.
What were the root causes that led to the issue?
I currently have an FBA seller account on Amazon.com in the USA, and I would like to expand my account to Europe.
So I followed the process which is first to open an FBA seller account in Europe, then to link my 2 accounts.
I started to open a seller account in the UK but the documentation I sent did not match the Amazon requirements:
- The address on the documents did not match the business address I provided,
- I did not scan the original document in color or take a picture using my mobile device.
What actions am I taking to resolve the issue?
I am sending you the following documents:
- copy of my passport,
- last Internet Bill,
- last Bank Statement.
All documents are matching the information I provided in my account.
Also, I took pictures of the original documents using my mobile device.
What steps will I take to prevent future issues?
Before sending any documentation to Amazon, I will take time to:
- check each and every document,
- verify that all of them are matching the information I provided in my Amazon account,
- verify that all of them are correctly matching all the Amazon requirements.
I believe that this plan sufficiently addresses the issue and I hope I will be able to sell on Amazon in Europe.
Sincerely,
Benoit Sylvestre
Attached
📎 Last passport 2.jpg
📎 Bank Statement.pdf
📎 Internet Bill.png
This appeal has been sent on Jan 21. No news from Amazon since then. I sent the appeal again by Email to seller performance UK, and I also sent an email to
managingdirector@amazon.co.uk. Nothing.
My main question is the following: I don't know what is going to happen to my UK account. Maybe it will remain deactivated forever if I don't get any reply. But do you think it could have an impact on my US account? Not being able to open a seller account in Europe for such a mistake, is something. But I don't want this mistake to affect my account in the US.
I have another question regarding the behavior of Amazon seller performance. A specialist in Amazon suspension wrote recently that Amazon have changed their processes, stringency and seller performance behaviors greatly over the last few years, but last few months especially. The appeal process has become very unfair, un-rational and often results in no reply from Seller Performance.
Do you confirm this trend?
Thank you.
Link between FBA seller account in USA and in UK 
