Amazon Finally Acknowledges The Pain Being Felt By Third-Party Sellers.

Is it the dawn of a new era?

Amazon and its legitimate third-party sellers have a long and complicated relationship that, at times, can be bitter, resentful, painful, troubling, sickening, brutal, ridiculous, and outright nasty.

I have been involved in E-commerce since the rise of eBay almost 25 years ago, and this deep-seated resentment is not unjustified. One only has to take a look at the many heart-wrenching comments left in the successful petition for the #workWithUsAmazon campaign to see why.

• The casual, matter-of-fact way in which they could destroy millions of dollars of FBA inventory is based on one vague email.
• The way in which they could freeze large amounts of funds on a whim with no email sent or reason given.
• The suspensions of businesses for one minor violation are viewed with zero context or logic.
• A company locked out forever for the sin of mistyping a password 3 times.
• And businesses destroyed by one non-existent Rights Owners email.

It was basically a compliance machine that operated with a heart of stone and the fairness of a kangaroo court in the Dark Ages with the power to instantly wreck your life.

The system was contradictory, robotic, and unclear, without any checks and balances, but the enforcement was frighteningly brutal and unforgiving. To make matters worse, the communication was generic, and a few seller performance templates were expected to encompass thousands of usually illogical scenarios — not just unclear. The system was not just broken. There was no system.

The result was unintended human suffering in an almost lackadaisical manner that would never have been accepted in any other industry. While GoFundMe pages are regularly set up for restaurants destroyed in a fire that tend to cause much smaller losses, nobody lifts a finger to help a $25 million a year seller with 30 employees destroyed by a fake RO.

This, unfortunately led to legitimate sellers having multiple stealth accounts, black hat tactics that were sometimes considered necessary, and led to an invoice creation industry where most invoices had to be “made” to feed a heartless, senseless, and logic-less machine. The victims were legitimate US-based sellers who were caught in the crossfire, which often forced them to have no choice but to cross the line and resort to using illegal tactics, which then caused them to get suspended or worse.

Amazon was never intentionally cruel, but boy did cruel things happen to legitimate sellers.

ASGTG aimed to change that by unifying legitimate sellers’ voices so that we can be heard and listened to like normal, regular people where logic and reason are heard and then acted upon with sane and clear policies that work for both sides. I believe the ASGTG Telegram groups, the world-famous alert system, and the ASGTG FB Group to be the most significant change engine in this relationship between Amazon and its Sellers (though not without some hiccups).

As we move into 2021, and the group/blog reaching unprecedented growth I think an acknowledgment of the many changes Amazon has made to reform selling on Amazon is in order. (I am well aware of the endless open black hat hackers and insiders still publicly advertising their services on social media, but that is a discussion for a different time.)

My list is in no particular order, inspired partly by this post.

1. The way Amazon authenticates products and verifies invoices. In 2016, almost no store receipt was accepted, which meant if you bought Coach items from Coach after you got the inevitable few complaints, you were suspended and terminated from Amazon. If you did not create an invoice, you’re suspended, and if you did, you can be suspended for forged invoices. You then had to set up a stealth account (or maybe 5) and had to be running from performance for the rest of your life. Eventually, you were suspended for being related to an account that sold counterfeit and tagged a “bad actor” for multiple accounts (of course items were not counterfeit). Today receipts are regularly accepted, and more importantly, specifics of WHY an invoice is denied are given so adjustments can be made (i.e., Letter from supplier, proof of payment, photos of items, earlier invoice, etc.), and the appropriate information is given. Furthermore, if you supplied an invoice with not enough qty for sold items, it was rejected without an explanation, so you had no way to know if all you needed was additional invoices or the supplier was not verifiable. The invoice verification process has improved 10-fold mainly because a broader type of invoice is accepted, and information on what’s needed is much clearer.
2. Account Health Dashboard. Prior to 2019, there was no dashboard, and the performance notification interface resembled a first-grade arts & crafts project. It was literally impossible to know your account status, find areas of concern, or even count the amount of a particular type of complaint. Today with the Account Health Dashboard, you can easily clean up and fix your issues as well as drill down to the specific area of concern. There is also a “Next Steps” and an easier way to appeal with upload docs features as well as check box options to help you with a POA. There are still some issues, but it’s really pretty awesome now.
3. AHR. Account health rating is a major advance as you now know at a glance if your rating is good or at risk. It has become more accurate since it was rolled out. This is working better than I had expected.

4. Calling AH. This is major as this is no longer SeSu with a different name, though not quite Seller Performance. The reps have information on your account, and if it’s a clear false positive, explaining the situation can sometimes get them to escalate your case and get you reinstated without a POA. Amazon also now gives you meaningful information in the notification and on the call to AH, making it easier to write a realistic POA with much less guessing.

5. Related Accounts. Up until six months ago, false-positive related account suspensions were every seller’s nightmare. You had to prove you are unrelated to a suspended account which is logically impossible. Today, AH will give you the first three digits of the root-related account so you know if it’s accurate, if a mistake was made, or just a brother-in-law messing you up. False-positive related suspensions of major accounts are now almost unheard of.

6. Inventory Destruction. Unsure if this was directly related to this, but Amazon now has a serious interface that allows you to set settings for the various different types of stranded inventory, so it rarely gets destroyed by accident. Furthermore, they warn multiple times via SP notifications (not SeSu emails) prior to destroying inventory. This process has improved 10X, and very little inventory is now destroyed because an email was missed.

7. 72 hours before Suspension. This was tried in 2018 but works much better this time around. Most sellers I have seen do not end up getting suspended as long as they submit a POA within the allotted time. The 72 hours and a functional AH make this a much less stressful situation than in the past — when you are suddenly suspended without warning and scrambling for a POA.

8. Rights Owner Suspensions — While not perfect, the days of shutting down an account for one or 2 Rights Owner complaints are long over. The apex was after this petition, which was the largest and most successful one ever, that was picked up by the national press. Rights owner suspensions are still common, but any seller dealing with complaints as they come in should not be suspended. The complaints are much better vetted, and gone are the getAlife@eee.com ridiculous “complaints.”

9. Acceptance of SP getting it wrong. Prior to 2019, it was extremely difficult to get SP to accept that they may have had it wrong. “item was the Bomb!” was a safety complaint, and you had to “ADMIT,” aka lie, in order to be reinstated. Today, every email has the option to dispute the allegations, which is a major step forward as you now no longer forced to lie on a POA as in the past.

10. Messaging explained. In 2020 Amazon released clear rules that clarify what a seller is allowed and not allowed to put in messaging and feedback requests. I found this a bit convoluted, but at least now we know what is allowed and what is not. In 2016, I honestly do not think Amazon knew the messaging rules it was trying to enforce and kept it vague only because they had no clear rules. They then brutally suspended you for violating their unknown or unclear rules and demanded a perfect POA to be reinstated.

11. Suspensions are now used as a last resort, and many chances are given before an actual account suspension. For ASINS, lately, I have seen this “Your listing is still active; however, to prevent interruption to your selling activities, please send us….. (either asking for invoices or a POA).”

12. Changing LLCs or bank accounts is no longer a heart-stopping “say your prayers” a big deal and almost always goes off without a hitch.

13. Seller groups. Gone are the days of selling blindly, not knowing when the hammer will come down and destroy your business. By being connected to the alerts, chats, groups, snap polls, and breaking news, most sellers know what’s happening instantly which is important if you’re going to survive on the marketplace. Most suspensions can be avoided by simply following these groups and following the advice of compliance-minded sellers. Amazon seems to have recognized these groups as part of the ecosystem and reacted to its concerns. The friendships made in these groups are priceless, with everyone helping each other in their time of need — often, the need is not Amazon-related.

Recent comments from members:

“Amazon platform thrives on people using their platform but not understanding the ins and outs. Thats why i believe @EdRosenberg thought of creating these group chats, so that Amazon shouldn’t be able to take more advantage of sellers and i agree, thank you so much to Ed and his entire team for what they created to help sellers no matter what ethnicity, race, sex or age!!!”

There are other improvements, but these are the ones that come to mind. I am under no illusion that much more work remains. Much More.

Next year, we will focus on creating a way to resolve post-suspension disputes fairly and not through the AAA arbitration process currently in place. The current process is unfair towards sellers and highly abused by Amazon which uses exhausting and expensive litigation tricks that make it almost impossible to even get to a final hearing. I will explain in due time why arbitration is a mirage used by Amazon that gives itself a draconian advantage, especially against a small seller.

I will also focus on the endless amounts of black hat tactics many foreign sellers use that put legitimate US-based sellers at a major disadvantage. I also expect FBA to finally have a way to send all returns back to the seller or implement the suggestion given here.

Finally, a way to quickly escalate legitimate 911 concerns 24/7 is a must for a dynamic marketplace to thrive and a process that will need to be put in place this year since there are always “one-off” issues that need to be resolved quickly without any red tape.

This was quite a year for me personally and the seller community at large, and looking onward and forward to an even better 2021.

Wishing all an extremely healthy and happy new year.

ED ROSENBERG / ASGTG

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.