Interesting case - Deactivated account for violation of restricted product policy

Account Health Restricted Products
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Hi all, so here is a fun one. I run an agency and as a favor to a client, had a chat with a seller whose accounts were deactivated due to the seller’s failure to submit evidence or documentation demonstrating that their account did not violate Amazon’s “Adult products policies & guidelines” repeatedly or in an evasive manner.

Here’s some details
• Well established and reputable adult toys (read 18+) company hired a web company to develop their first transactional website 2 years ago to sell 500+ adult items online (on their own website).

• As an added service, these geniuses thought it would be a good idea to open an seller account under this company (let’s call it Seller Account A) and to use Magento to “push” the products to Amazon so that the products would also be listed there… obviously without considering any Amazon restrictions.

• This led to the several hundreds of these products being flagged for a variety of reasons around ingredients in massage oils, to some items being wrongly categorized as medical devices, some imagery not compliant with amazon… so lots of issues.

• The owner of the account did not address any of the violations thinking that given all the restrictions perhaps Amazon was not the best place for their company to sell their products. Given Amazon said they would deactivate the listings if they heard nothing back from the seller, the owner thought that Amazon delisting the products would be the end of that.

• Now, the owner also owns another company (let’s call is Seller Account B) that is specialized in women’s sexual wellness and so opened another seller account to sell these products. They registered their brand with Brand Registry, opened a brand store, everything was done in a compliant manner. These products are already sold in pharmacies and had started selling pretty well on Amazon as well.

• In February 2024, Amazon deactivated Seller Account A given the unresolved numerous violations. However, given that the Directors of the registered company behind seller account A are the same as the Directors of the registered company behind seller account B, they also deactivated that account. Amazon said that in order to reinstate Seller Account B, the violations in Selling Account A would need to be resolved through an Appeal on Selling Account A and when successful then to submit appeal for Selling Account B (which looked like a formality). Alternatively, they could also prove that they no longer own Company A by submitting evidence.

• Ok so from here… where should we go. They only want to be able to sell the products they were selling under Selling Account B that Amazon have already found to be compliant.

• So here are the options I thought of:

  1. Dissolve company A … but I doubt this is an option for the client
  2. Resolve violations in Seller Account A… starting a massive process to resolve the hundreds of policy violations (some of which are over 2 years old) does not seem realistic to me
  3. Work with an arm’s length distributor who will open a new seller account to list their products. This seems like the best option however do you guys think that Amazon will allow the brand owner (who has an unresolved account deactivation) grant brand rights to this new seller account?
    Thoughts?
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Hello @Qwik,

welcome and thank you for joining the forum!

Unfortunately, the situation which you described above is one of the reasons why Amazon is so strict with their policies and with deactivating accounts.

Many people who already have established businesses think of Amazon as an additional platform, where they can effortlessly just transfer all of their products / listings using an automated software and make some extra buck.

It doesn’t work like this. On Amazon, you need to treat your account like a baby. You need to address any issues as soon as possible. This is because once your account gets suspended and there is a history of the seller entirely ignoring all warnings, you won’t get reinstated.

When assisting sellers with deactivated accounts, frequently I can see established stores with just one listing with issues, that cannot get reinstated. If it’s like you are saying that there were hundreds of listings with ignored warnings, then I think it’s highly unlikely the account would get reinstated without a very strong Plan of Action and a long period of appealing.

Also, Amazon is known from maintaining a complex network of data regarding each seller account to track any duplicate stores opened in efforts to circumvent suspensions.

Opening a new company or seeking to convince a friend, supplier, family member or anyone else to assist you with opening a new account would only lead to them also getting linked, with more and more related stores being added to the relations records.

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Thank you for your reply. I think at this point they should just get one of their distributors to put their products online on their own store and forget about selling them directly.

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They could also find an active and experienced Amazon seller, who would be willing to resell their products on Amazon.

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