I have been approached by a client who is facing an account suspension under Section 3 of Amazon. This suspension is connected to another account that was prohibited from selling on Amazon, and that account happened to belong to his friend. Despite the client’s efforts to resolve the issue, including contacting Amazon’s health support team and submitting multiple appeals, he has been unable to reinstate his account.
The client was uncertain about the next steps and deeply worried about the $6,000 worth of inventory trapped at the Amazon warehouse, unable to be sold.
This was a particularly difficult case, as the account had been linked to another account that had been deactivated for a serious violation of Amazon’s policies. The client had already submitted multiple appeals before seeking my assistance, forcing us to draft an appeal that aligns with their previous submissions, avoiding any conflicting descriptions. While I was reviewing his account and going through his previous appeals he mentioned about a VA(virtual assistant) that he hired in the past in one of his appeals. Then I started to connects the dots and draft an appeal which revolves around the VA and our Client. To ensure a smoother reactivation process, I avoided any mention of the “friend” linked to the banned account.
We started by reviewing the client’s account and identifying any potential issues. We removed the credit card and added a new one. I conveyed in my appeal that the linkage was created by a VA who had been working on both accounts and used the same charge method on both accounts without our client’s acknowledgement. We presented this information to Amazon and explained that our client recognized the other account, but did not have any authorization for it. We also showed them that our client had taken steps to ensure that this would not happen again in the future, including terminating the VA and updating all sensitive credentials, such as charge methods, to ensure there was no association left between the two accounts.
Unfortunately, Amazon has rejected the appeal four times, even after making changes to both the appeal and the seller central. This was disheartening, as I couldn’t think of a way to move forward at this stage. Each time we contacted the health performance team, they acknowledged that the appeal was perfect, and even they were surprised as to why the suspension team continued to reject it(NOT SURPRISED).
After engaging in extensive negotiation and continuous back-and-forth communication with Amazon’s health support team, we spent an hour speaking to them, persuading them to escalate the appeal once again and they said they have requested the suspension department to review it again.
My efforts paid off, and the following day we received the good news that my client’s account had been reinstated after two months of continuous battling.
Note: Whatever statement you include in your appeal, make sure to back it up with evidence. For example, if you mention hiring a VA, be sure to attach the hiring contract with the VA. Otherwise, Amazon may not accept this fact.
