Announcement reposted from Amazon Japan:
Effective October 18, 2024, we will be updating our Fund Withholding Policy to help you have more clarity and visibility on our relevant procedure with the following changes:
- Renaming of the policy from Fund Withholding Policy to “Funds Disbursement Eligibility Policy.”
- The sentence in “Our funds disbursement eligibility policy is aimed at protecting customers and sellers from abuse.” “If we find that you have engaged in such activity, we may deactivate or close your seller account and withhold any funds that have not yet been disbursed to you in the cases set forth below.”
- The sentence in “We will withhold the full amount of funds not yet disbursed and outstanding in your account to settle transactions outstanding at the time of the withholding or damages; including costs, and outstanding fees incurred in connection with product returns or refunds, A-to-z claims from buyers, inventory removal costs. This amount may change when an outstanding transaction is settled after the withholding, or when there is an offset with payment you are obliged to make to Amazon.”
- The sentence in “You may appeal the withholding of funds by following the instructions provided to you in the notice of funds withholding or in Seller Central. If your funds are released as a result of the appeal, funds will be disbursed according to your disbursement schedule. If funds are not released after the appeal, or if 60 days have passed from the date the funds were withheld, you can separately appeal to obtain your funds by contacting [email protected] at any point after 60 days from the date the funds were withheld. We will release your funds after confirming your identity and evaluating your account for deceptive, fraudulent, or other illegal activity.”
- Addition of the sentence “During this process, we may request that you provide additional information or documentation regarding your identity, financial instruments, or supply chain. This additional information is critical to our anti-fraud controls. Additionally, we may validate any information that you provide with third party services or government agencies.”
You can access the program policy mentioned above from this link.