QUESTION: I recently began selling on Amazon and had been having great success, selling an average of five books a day. However, today I was suspended from Marketplace after receiving a message from Amazon Alliance. The message said that my account has been linked to another account that was closed for violating Amazon’s “Community Rules.”
I have no idea what this is about. Do you have any suggestions on how I can get back on Amazon and clear up this mess?
ANSWER: Amazon Alliance polices Marketplace by kicking off unethical sellers — those caught selling pirated products or those who have excessive refunds or A to Z claims.
By and large, I think this system works pretty well, and is one of the reasons the typical Marketplace buying experience is positive. The problem is, there’s no apparent communications channel when Alliance makes a mistake. Apparently Alliance screens seller accounts for names, phone numbers, or addresses they’ve identified previously as a bad sellers. When they have a match, they block your account and send this message:
Greetings from Amazon.com.This message is to inform you that we have blocked your Amazon.com Auctions, zShops and Marketplace account. Your open listings have been cancelled and you are no longer able to sell on our site.
We have taken this action because it has come to our attention that this account is related to an account which has been previously blocked for violations of our Community Rules.
While we do not provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, we have thoroughly reviewed our records and confirmed that we have significant evidence that this account is related to another account previously closed for community rules violations.
If you still have items to ship, please take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your Seller Account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or ship pending orders.
Your funds are on temporary hold for 90 days from the date of your final sale. After 90 days, the funds will be disbursed, provided we do not receive chargebacks or A-to-Z Guarantee claims against your sales. If you have further questions about your disbursement, please email payments-funds@amazon.com.
While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.
Regards,
Item and Seller Quality
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
It certainly does seem unfair and downright un-American to terminate someone with no appeal process. Since Alliance doesn’t suggest any alternative, try this:
1. Call Seller Support at 1-877-251-0696. Ask to speak with a supervisor.
2. Write to community-help@amazon.com.
3. Send the same message to reports@amazon.com, the address where Community Rules violations are reported.
4. Send the same message to alliance@amazon.com.
5. Send the same message to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ staff at jeff@amazon.com
If anyone knows of a more effective way of dealing with this, I hope they’ll chime in with a comment.
UPDATE: Two weeks after his original message, our correspondent reported good news:
I used the contacts you sent me and was able to clear everything up. I did buy a used computer and think somehow this flagged Amazon of past problems. Thanks for the advice.
That’s interesting, and a possibility I never thought of — that they’re identifying sellers by the machine, perhaps cookies? If that’s the case, it might be best to log into your seller account only on your home PC, and certainly not at a public library. And if you purchase a used PC, reformatting the hard drive is probably a good idea too.
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26 Comments
Hi Steve –
While it sounds like the seller here did in fact receive a legitimate email from Amazon and had to clear up his problem to begin selling again, I thought I would take the opportunity to warn other new sellers (and maybe even some experienced ones) that I received a similar email shortly after I started selling books. Only, mine was not a legitimate email from Amazon, but a “phishing” expedition from some unscrupulous scammer looking for my account information. The email I received said my account had been suspended — used all of the same words in your writer’s email, and I was dumbstruck — and as a new seller, pretty gullible. What had I done?! Well, it turns out, nothing. I called Amazon support immediately and was told that my account was indeed still active and there had been no issue. The phishing email had a link (which I clicked on, but did not enter any information) that then went to a bogus Amazon page and asked me to enter my account information (name, password, etc.). If I had entered the information requseted, I would have given the phisher access to my account — and all of the sensitive banking information. Chances are these scammers would use unsuspecting sellers’ info to transfer earnings over to their own bank accounts, or who knows what else. Please warn other sellers that not all emails of this nature are official and they should always check with Amazon directly before proceeding.
Hope you don’t mind the long message. I thought it was important to relate my experience.
I too received a phishing Amazon e-mail two days ago. I was suspicious of it from the start, and thanks to a heads up from Amazon Soapbox Community my suspicions were verified.
I think it is important to share my story on this. I was selling well on amazon.com with over 600 feedback and 99% of them positive. Of course, I had more than 5000 transaction on amazon.com. All of sudden they discovered that my account was linked to some other “Bad” account and they had shut me down. It was shocking and very tough to swallow. I started with one book and bloated my inventory to over 3000 book based on my amazon.com sales. All of sudden I was out of business. Of course, they do not provide any explanation or there is no fair way to argue your case. I can swear that I had no other account and they never told me how they linked it. As in all business, I guess, all professional should be at least worry about this HUGE business risk. It could really put you any one out of business overnight. I truly believe this is not fair and there should be a fair resolution process for seller who achieve certain minimum level(500 feedback, 50000+ in sales or more than 2 year old account or something like that). I think this is much more serious issue than what sellers think, until it happens to them. Please post your comments en masse here. Thanks
Amazon is very particular about certain things. 1. You cannot have multiple accounts under ANY circumstances. 2. They track via IP address, ISP and MAC addresses, so library computers, used computers, etc are all big no-no’s.
It’s extraordinarily difficult to get an Alliance boot reversed.
PS Multiple accounts means not only yourself, but anyone you share a computer, an IP address, a physical address, a bank account and/or a credit card with. As I said–they are WAY picky.
You could certainly sue Amazon for civil damages. You would not get reinstated, but you could get lost profits if you win. As to the chances of prevailing, I have not researched that, but during discovery you could force Amazon to reveal the basis of their termination of your account.
Change the MAC address of your LAN card.
And better to use win98 than XP(they take too much informations from your computer with XP), and much better to use other than windows.
I am so very sorry to bother you with my problem,I have never written an email to anyone for help until now but I have tried everything else and I am hoping that someone (even one person with influence) may be able to help me. I will try to give you the short version of a long story.
I was a video tape seller on Amazon.com, I started this when I was laid off from a big corporation and could not find work. I was doing allright and made some money from this for a while, not alot but enough to support my family but no more.
All was going fine for over 7 years but I am sorry to report, actually I am devastated to tell you that the amazon “Alliance” (an amazon watchdog team that sellers refer to as “The Gestapo” because they do what they want to whomever they want and do not have to have proof of wrongdoing to ruin someones life) have made a terrible mistake by blocking my account. This means I can not get paid the money that customers have already sent for videos they purchased from me. They say they are holding the funds for up to 90 days. Which means I may and probably will not ever get the money. This is an error on their part that they say they will not reverse.
They have stated that they have blocked my account because I they feel i have tried to “Divert” customers from amazon, an accusation which is Absolutely Not True! Not one of my customers have ever stated this, And that they have absolutely no proof of whatsoever. I have Never tried to divert even one customer from the amazon site.
This is a terrible error on their part but so far they have refused to even consider unblocking my account. Meanwhile, I have no job (Retired), no money coming in and I am losing thousands of dollars that my wife and three kids depend on to live.
I had an excellent feedback rating from my customers before this incident and many have written on my behalf to tell amazon that I Never, tried to divert them from the amazon site. I also have documented proof that what they accuse is not true. Also, I have found there are many websites dedicated to this problem they main one is (ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff169143.htm) and it is sad that amazon is doing this to countless others and getting away with it.
PS. Actually, anything anyone can do to help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You All!
Hello Steve and others,
I am sorry that this has happened to you. Sometimes life is not always fair.
However, it is Amazon’s website and therefore, they make the rules. I highly doubt that any of you could even have a chance of suing amazon. It is not Amazon’s fault that you are out now out of a job, and no, Amazon did not ruin your business. Perhaps it will not be as easy to sell online without Amazon, but you do have options. HAve you thought about ebay? Half? Or perhaps opening your own website?
We just had our Amazon account suspended due to them linking up a failed attempt from 2004 with our current seller account, which had a 98% positive feedback rate, and 32,000 orders since 2005.
I emailed all the recommended emails (including Jeff Bezos) above, and called Amazon. They told me to email the “alliance” address.
I can’t imagine why they would turn away all that business just because I accidentally used the old account to buy some Disney DVD’s for my kids on the same home computer I would dilligently answer customer questions on, especially after almost three years of great service on the new account.
If anyone has any new suggestions, please let me know, as the alternative is shuttering the store at year’s end and letting my 8 employeees go.
I read your post, this is a big problem. Is there any class action going on?
If not, should there be?
Imagine how much CASH, Amazon held by closing all the accounts.
If you know anything, let me know. I will do the same. Selling on Amazon was my job, I would not have risked it for anything.
Lucas
We were just closed ourselves for being linked to another account. Not sure why but we are new to this and trying to do everything we can. We’ve been selling for 11 years on eBay and have a very high percentage..we’re a legitimate company with legitimate product. I really do not understand their reasoning…if anyone has a suggestion it would be very helpful.
Here are a few updates:
reports@amazon.com now sends you to the website, it is no longer a valid e-mail to send to.
alliance@amazon is apparently now:
seller-performance@amazon.com
I too have recently been blocked from selling for being linked to a previously account that has been blocked for violating amazon’s policy.. I do not know what to do right now because i am out of money that i need and amazon said theres no way of reinstating this account.. The thing that got me is because i setup my account at my friends house and only use his personal computer for amazon and his computer is new but yet they still sent me a message stating it was linked to a previous blocked account.. Any ideas on how i can get my account back? Or how to create a new account where they cannot link me?????
I, too, was selling regularly on amazon, with great feedback. As an avaricious reader, amazon proved a good platform for me to sell all the books lying around my home. I sold 5-10 books per week and the money supplemented my income nicely. Then, out of the blue, I experienced 2 bad buyers in a row. One posted negative feedback THREE days after the sale because she hadn’t gotten her product yet, the other posted bad feedback (understandably so) because I had mistakenly listed a vhs as a dvd (I promptly refunded her). The next thing I knew over 50 listings had been removed and I was permanently suspended. My daughter wanted to sell some of her textbooks on amazon and found that when she tried to sell, she too was closed down because they linked her with my account. Help.
I had the almost same thing happen to me. My dad for some reason had his account suspended and then a few days later mine was closed too. My boyfriend’s account was then closed too. They might as well just chain react that down the line and close all accounts.
Hi, I had the same email this morning. My aunt was selling for years on Amazon (with a 98% rating) until she came down with serious medical issues.Due to her serious illness,in a very short period of time she fell behind with her orders,and wound up having to close the store permanently.I (her niece, a college student)took over her inventory as she was unable to sell anymore. Same as the others, I had excellent feedback and was doing really well (close to 10 orders a day) which is pretty good for a very small business.I also received the notice that we have been blocked from selling due to being linked to a bad account.I have not been given any recourse or opportunity to speak to someone in person to offer any kind of proof necessary to prove that I am a different seller.My Aunt has over 3,000 books/dvds, etc. which she passed over to us. Fortunately, we’re all employed and the selling was a second income, and it was great at helping make ends meet, especially in this economy. Of course, we are listing on Barnes and Noble and considering Alibris, although regretfully I don’t believe they have the excellent volume of business that Amazon does, and I believe many buyers aren’t even aware that Barnes and Noble has used books for sale.In short, we are pretty devastated because this was a sizable extra income and a big help in making ends meet.In this economy, you would think Amazon would give people a chance to clear their names and continue selling if they are excellent sellers. If anyone has any ideas, we’d be glad to hear them.Thanks again.
Joey
We were shut down for opening an FBA account … go figure.
They have a policy against "linking" two accounts – that is, selling under multiple ID's, or, having one account to purchase and a different account to sell. We knew that – we're a small bookstore, with 9 years experience selling on Amazon, 99% positive feedback, earning about $5,000 per month.
They had been sending us invitations and special offers to join the FBA program (Fulfillment by Amazon), so we decided to give it a try.
We signed up, shipped them about 5 boxes of books, and the next day they closed our account!
They accused us of having a regular seller account AND an FBA seller account. Well, duh! That's the way it works – FBA sellers get upgraded to something called "Seller Central", which is separate from your normal Amazon buying/selling account.
What a hassle. After reading the discussion boards, we learned that Amazon Alliance only review/reverse about 1% of their cases. They even "froze" (dare I say "stole"?) the money in our account, and froze another $500 from our checking account.
We went through the appeal process (don't bother calling or emailing anybody other than Alliance – it's just a waste of time – they won't even pass on your message). And don't bother suing – we talked to a lawyer and the state attorney general – this is all somehow legal.
It's been almost 5 months. Lost income is adding up: $5,000 per month ($25,000) + $500 seized from bank account + $2,200 which sits "frozen" but unaccessable in our Amazon account.
Plus, they won't even let us log in to download our inventory files. So it's virtually impossible to know what our current online inventory is (vs. our other inventory). It will take us weeks to relist everything, re-grade all our books, & upload to Alibris or some other site.
Have a high official from the IRS perform an audit on Amazon’s books to see what they are doing with all the money they are holding for 90 days. This would close them down
Same here guys my acc got blocked I did sold adult item but but the thing is they have the pictures in the system i was doing really good and they going to keep my money for 90 days if these items are prohibited they should remove the picture from their system.
Hey my account got closed i got this massage. Hello from Amazon.com.
We are writing to let you know that we have blocked your Amazon.com selling account. You may no longer sell on our site.
We took this action because despite our previous warnings, you have relisted items that are restricted to pre-approved sellers only.
I was selling cell phones in electronics category, i was using ready catalog listings. A lot of sellers used this categories. Its really confusing becouse when u go to cell phone category u got informatian that this cvategory is restricted only to pre aproved sellers, And when u go to electronics there is no info about doing anything wrong. I was selling on amazon for 3 weeks manage to build 30+ inventory items my last day got 6 sales with 2-3 sales average sales a day and growing fast!Is there anything i can do to have my account working again?? Please help me!
Amazon will suspend your account at the drop of a hat and you will not receive anything but a canned answer.You will usually get an email saying you are suspended but they will not explain how they link accounts.I wish someone who knows would explain exactly how they do this and ways to defeat it.trying to reason with amazon is not possible as they do not care it is a multi billion dollar company and you are a minnow in a huge pond.Ebay and Amazon have gotten quite seller unfriendly in the past two years.
"Amazon.com Inc is trying to survive the economic crisis".
It looks like not only major financial companies are trying prevent themselves from going down while financial crisis is showing its power, but also Amazon.com looks like showing all the signs that deep recession or may be early depression is on its way.
Sellers on Amazon.com are frustrated because every action leads to suspension of their accounts on Amazon. And what’s even worth, sellers find out that their money are reserved by Amazon for 90 days without any right to get them back for that period of time. Every Amazon policy is written in the way that leads to suspension of your account without any serious reason. Amazon blocks sellers accounts and reserves thousands or may be millions of dollars for 90 days without any valid reason. For example, a statement like: "You have 5% of your orders cancelled or refunded, and we suspend your account because of your low selling performance", looks suspicious to me. Don’t the buyers have the right to cancel the order? Or we cannot cancel or refund the order just because Amazon doesn’t want it? Or maybe it wants us to do so in order to block our accounts and hold the money?
It looks like a good way for the company like Amazon to loan money without any interest in this tough economic situation. Do you think Amazon is trying to boost up its bottom line by reserving people's money? Good strategy but looks quite fraudulent.
The government really needs to check Amazon's activities. Companies have no right to reserve people's money for such a long period of time (90 days) or have no right at all. According to Amazon the reason why they reserve your money on their account is that in case if there are any claims from the buyers they will give their money back. Don’t they have 30 day return policy? So what about the rest 60 days?
The rest 60 days is enough for Amazon to invest your funds and make money or probably just cover their losses. Can you imagine what they can do with your money during 90 day period? They can invest many times in inventory or many other things and make it look like a healthy company. But there is no place on their financial statements that shows that this or that amount of money is the actual amount that was reserved (taken) from the sellers without their permission. I think they should be forced to have a section on their 10-K reports showing the amount of money (cash) that is a reserve amount that belongs to sellers on Amazon. Otherwise it makes their financials look good and their potential stock buyers are fooled.
I think their shareholders have the right to know what is going on inside the company. They just cannot continue boosting their earnings by taking people's money without any permission.
Amazon’s “service” that allows others to sell on their website have to be terminated or BLOCKED, like they call it. Because what they are doing it is far from being ethical. I think this company is doomed to be exposed one day like any other company with practices like that.
My recommendations for Amazon stockholders: SELL, SELL, SELL. And to potential buyers: DON’T BUY. Avoid risk as this company doesn’t pay for the risk associated with its actions.
I have reviewed Amazon seller guidelines 100 times and I am not sure that this seller guidelines works equally for everyone, I know many seller up there and I know exactly what they sell, Amazon simply profile people. I know many sellers has more than one account
Most video game seller has import games, import video games supposed to not list on Amazon
Galactic and bargainstations operated by one republican women
CDromUSA and Geekwhosaler operated by Korean people
Inetvideo and hubbagames operated by one Jewish guy
Hitgaming sell %90 import games
For example if you are selling a book which talks about Israel negatively, most likely your account will be locked, Jeff Bezos will not allow anyone to sell this book or you get lower search
(for example Jim carter )
Jeff Bezos is big Jewish and he specifically target Muslim seller on Amazon
Amazon has technology that can check your ancestry
If you have problem Amazon just go ahead file a case with American arbitration association
Finally there are no rules or regulation for seller on Amazon selling on Amazon depends on your religion and your ancestry
Amazon did the same thing to me and my brother. We were both selling on Amazon and would check our account from each other’s home computer. They then linked us and said we had multiple accounts. We got the standard canned letter. We were doing a fair business with 20,000 books so we had to do something to start selling again.
The secret to reopen your account is to change everything. It is not that expensive but will cost you some money. Here are the steps to take. Open a new cable or dsl account; this will give you a new IP address. You will need a new telephone number that Amazon doesn’t know about. Next, use a cheap online lawyer to open a corporation and make a family member the signing officer with their name on the bank account. Anyone can be a signer/officer of a corporation and be on the bank account but not really own the company. Now here is the key, buy a new computer, like a dell laptop for $250 and use it to access your Amazon account. Amazon will read the computer information and so a new computer is key. Then open the new Amazon account under the company name and use the new bank account. Use the visa debit card they give you at the bank. Last use a service like fillz.com so you can access your account from anywhere without worrying if Amazon will shut you down. This way you only log onto Amazon to do customer service. Hope this helps you guys. I hate the fact that this company can mess with people’s lives like this.
WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO DO IS TO GATHER TOGETHER AND HAVE SOME BIG LAW FIRM FILE A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST AMAZON SO THAT THEY STOP ABUSING THE LITTLE SELLERS FOR STUPID, BS REASONS.
PEOPLE SHOULD ALSO NEVER EVER BUY ANYTHING FROM AMAZON AGAIN. THERE ARE PLENTY OF OPTIONS OUT THERE FOR BUYING ITEMS.
IT IS THE LITTLE PEOPLE THAT MAKE UP AMAZON AND THAT CAN OFFER THE DEALS. THE BIG STORES CAN'T OFFER SUCH GREAT DEALS AND WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY FROM A BIG STORE IN AMAZON WHEN THEY CAN BUY DIRECT FROM THEIR MAIN SITE.
IT'S SICKENING AND EMBARRASSING WHAT AMAZON IS DOING. ALSO THE PEOPLE MAKING THE DECISIONS TO CLOSE THE ACCOUNTS WITHOUT GIVING CLEAR, CONCISE DETAILS MUST NOT GET PAID TOO MUCH TO SIT AND ANALYZE ALL THE MILLIONS OF ACCOUNTS THERE ARE SO THEY MUST NOT CARE WHAT HAPPENS AND IF NO SUPERVISORS REVIEW THIS NOTHING GETS DONE. ULTIMATELY IT IS THE MANAGEMENT'S FAULT ALL THIS IS GOING ON. USE EBAY INSTEAD.