How To Avoid Amazon Seller Account Suspension?

‍When Amazon suspends your account, that means you temporarily can’t sell on it—your listings will not be visible to buyers. That can happen when you violate Amazon's policies or have poor performance.

Amazon will not allow you to open a new seller account after suspension. You will need to reinstate the old one. Usually, the process of reinstatement takes time and effort. Moreover, each minute your listings are not visible, you’ll lose money because there are no sales.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to proactively refrain from Amazon’s policy violations that trigger account suspension. Is there a way to avoid account suspension? Keep reading to find out.

What Does It Mean When Amazon Suspends Your Account?

Account suspension means your account is temporarily deactivated, and you can’t sell on it. Amazon disables your listings, and they are not visible to buyers until the account is reinstated.

That can result from Amazon's policies violation, low-quality products or services, or poor seller performance.

As a rule, you won’t be able to get your account back until you fix the problem. The suspension time depends on how fast you can address and correct the violation. Sometimes, you’ll need to file a reinstatement appeal to Amazon and submit a Plan of Action (POA). If you have to undergo the appeal process, it may take 2 weeks or up.

Amazon policy prohibits you from opening a new seller account if the old one is suspended. You will need to reinstate the old one by following Amazon’s guidance in the account health dashboard and resolving the issue.

Account health dashboard

Why Can Amazon Suspend Your Account?

To avoid account suspension, you must first understand why that may happen. Typical suspension reasons are related to either Amazon policy violations or seller performance.

Poor customer service performance

Customer service performance is a set of metrics that Amazon measures in the account health dashboard in your Seller Central. To determine customer service performance Amazon uses Order Defect Rate (ODR). The seller’s target ODR is lower than 1%. Non-compliance with customer service performance targets may lead to account suspension.

Order Defect Rate

Order Defect Rate (ODR) includes the percentage of negative feedback, successful A-to-z claims, and credit card chargeback.

Negative customer feedback

Negative customer feedback is when a customer leaves a two- or one-star review on your product’s listing. Many bad reviews are a red flag.

Successful A-to-z guarantee claim

If the buyer is unsatisfied with the product and can’t settle the matter with the seller, they can file an A-to-z guarantee claim to Amazon. With an A-to-z guarantee claim, buyers can ask Amazon to investigate a dispute concerning an order and resolve it. If a buyer wins the A-to-z claim and gets a refund, this negatively impacts ODR.

Chargeback claims

A chargeback happens when the order amount is refunded to the buyers because of a dispute or return. If you have a lot of chargeback claims, this is reflected by ODR.

Creating multiple seller accounts

Many sellers start to investigate how to open a new Amazon seller account after suspension. It’s against Amazon policies and guidelines.

If Amazon suspends your account, you must correct the old account issue. After that, you should file a reinstatement appeal to Amazon and submit a Plan of Action (POA) or follow any other instructions Amazon will give you. You can review all your violations in the account health dashboard.

Creating a new account instead of appealing for the activation of your old one may involve extra problems with reinstatement because creating multiple accounts is also considered a violation.

Note. It is possible to have multiple business accounts only if you have a legitimate business reason. You need to ask Amazon for approval to do so.

Upset Amazon seller sees that account is suspended

Amazon policy violations

There are several types of Amazon policy violations that can trigger account suspension. They are related to not observing intellectual property rights, poor product quality, violating safety requirements, and listing policies.

All policies that affect account health suspension are listed in the account health dashboard in your Seller Central. If you violate one of them, Amazon will issue a warning, and this may be a reason for account suspension. Some of these policy violations are triggered by customer complaints.

Intellectual Property (IP) policy violations

There are two types of IP policy violations—suspected intellectual property violations and received intellectual property complaints.

Suspected intellectual property violations

These violations are generated automatically and usually trigger the deactivation of a listing, not the whole account. They often happen because you added the wrong brand name to the title or the Brand field. For instance, you mentioned in the listing title that you sell “iPhone accessories.” If you correct the brand name, the listing may get reactivated automatically.

Received intellectual property complaints

Received intellectual property complaints are IP rights infringements reported to Amazon by rights or brand owners who detected them with your listing. These violations require settling the matter with the right owner.

Tip: Seller Assistant App’s IP Alert functionality indicates if a product has IP claims. It shows a red triangle icon on the Amazon search or product pages.

Product quality policy violations

Product quality policy violations happen when you sell prohibited or illegal products or receive authenticity, condition, or safety customer complaints.

Selling prohibited and illegal products

Amazon doesn’t allow you to sell counterfeit, inauthentic, illegal, or low-quality products.

Product authenticity customer complaints

Product authenticity violations mean that Amazon received a customer claim that your product is not authentic. They are referred to as intellectual property rights infringement.

Product condition customer complaints

Product condition violations appear when a buyer files a complaint to Amazon that a product they received doesn’t match the condition described on the product detail page.

Product safety customer complaints

Product safety customer complaints mean that the shopper complained to Amazon about the product being unsafe or not corresponding to applicable standards.

Listing policy and restriction violations

Listing policy violations

Listing policy violations happen if your listings are not in line with Amazon listing policy, for instance, if you create duplicate listings, inconsistent variations that don’t comply with Amazon variation policy, and more. Also, some products can’t be listed at all, for instance, promotional samples, expired or soon-to-expire products, and items deemed unsellable.

If the data or description in your listing is inaccurate, missing, or misleading, this is also considered a violation, including incorrect sales details, like improper UPC codes.

Restricted product policy violations

Restricted products are those that Amazon requires you to receive approval to list. You need to apply for permission to sell them. Product and brand restrictions may change over time. New restrictions can affect existing listings.

Tip: Seller Assistant App’s Restriction Checker functionality indicates if a product has IP claims. It shows a closed red lock icon on the Amazon search or product pages.

Related: Amazon Restricted Products – Complete Guide for Sellers

Customer product reviews policy violations

Customer product reviews policy violation means infringement of Amazon's reviews policy. Amazon doesn’t allow sellers to review their own items or competitor products. You can’t manipulate reviews, ask buyers to make, change, remove a review, or incentivize them to leave a positive review with refunds and discounts.

Related: How to Handle Negative Reviews on Amazon

How To Know That Your Amazon Account Is Suspended?

You can find out why your account has been suspended by checking your account health dashboard.

A metric called Account Health Rating (AHR) shows your account status. If your AHR is “Unhealthy” (red), and you have a score of 99 or lower—your account is either eligible for deactivation or already deactivated. In that case, you should hurry up and apply for Amazon seller account suspension reinstatement.

If your AHR is “Unhealthy” (red)—your account is eligible for deactivation

How To Avoid Amazon Account Suspension?

If your account is suspended, this means zero sales. Every day of suspension costs you money. That means you should do your best to prevent suspension.

To achieve that, you should keep your ODR below 1%, sell quality products and refrain from Amazon policies violation.

Tips for keeping ODR below 1%

Avoid negative customer reviews

• Keep your listing information clear, structured, and updated. Give buyers enough information in the listing title, bullets, and description.
• Respond quickly to all customer issues. Communicate with your shoppers, and be helpful. Address any problems that arise using Amazon’s Buyer-Seller Messaging Service and emails.
• Respond to bad reviews—apologize and help the buyer address the problem. Fix the issue and promise that it will not repeat in the future. You can also publicly reply to a negative review using the Feedback Manager.

Deal with A-to-z guarantee claim

• If a buyer contacts you and complains that they have a problem, prioritize it, respond quickly and try to resolve the issue directly.
• Offer a full refund to the shopper before the A-to-z guarantee claim is filed.
• Always reply to the A-to-z claim and file an appeal. Dispute the claim and attempt to win it.

Chargeback claims

• Issue a full refund before a shopper files a chargeback claim.
• Dispute the chargeback via Amazon Pay if you think the chargeback claim is wrong.

Tips to avoid Amazon policy violations

Amazon has many different policies. To be compliant, you must sell high-quality, authentic products that don’t involve any selling restrictions. In most cases, violation of Amazon policies triggers account suspension.

Some of these policies are constantly updated, like product safety regulations, restricted products and brands lists, and more. That means you must keep yourself updated on these policies. Amazon considers that sellers are responsible for ensuring that their products and listings don’t violate Amazon policies and don't infringe any regulations.

To proactively prevent Amazon policy violations that lead to account suspension, you need to review the product history and ensure that the product hasn’t previously caused problems for other sellers.

Seller Assistant Аpp will help you with that. Seller Assistant App combines all functionality necessary for product research. Among them are Restriction Checker and IP Alert features. IP Alert would show a red triangle icon right on the Amazon search page or product pages if an item triggered problems with account health, IP claims, and other Amazon policy violations. The restriction checker shows a red closed lock icon if a product is restricted.

Seller Assistant App shows product's restrictions

How To Quickly Reinstate A Suspended Amazon Account?

Unfortunately, Amazon can suspend your account for various reasons. If your account was suspended by Amazon, there is a solution to it. Solver can help you with Amazon suspension appeals. Solver deals with any kind of suspension: from “defective items” to “related accounts”, from dropshipping violations to intellectual property infringements. Every case is taken with an individual approach to get you back to selling as soon as possible.

Final Thoughts

If Amazon suspends your account, your listings are temporarily inactivated, and you cannot sell. The reason for that is usually non-compliance with Amazon's policies or poor customer service performance.

In that case, the only way to reactivate your seller account is to reinstate it. As a rule, the process of reinstatement takes time and effort. Therefore, it’s a good idea to proactively refrain from Amazon’s policy violations that trigger account suspension.

To prevent Amazon policy violations, you must ensure that the product hasn’t previously caused problems for other sellers. Seller Assistant Аpp will help you with that. This extension shows if a product has any sales restrictions or has led to issues with account health in the past.

It combines an FBM&FBA profit calculator, IP Alerts, Quick View, Stock Checker, and Restrictions Checker in one tool.

Try Seller Assistant Аpp now. Register for our 14-day trial. Grow your Amazon business with confidence.