You can’t avoid Amazon’s Customer Metrics. The goals they set are designed to make sure you uphold Amazon’s reputation for excellent customer service, good value, and product availability. All sellers must meet these goals to keep using Amazon’s marketplace, but sometimes you might fall short and end up with a suspended Amazon account. If that happens, don’t worry; you can take steps to recover your account and create a plan to prevent it from happening again. Amazon wants to see that you are ready to improve your seller performance, showing your commitment to keeping a high seller rating. SellerExpress has put together some helpful tips for appealing a suspended Amazon account.
First, work out why your account was suspended. Amazon will have sent you a notice of the suspension, you can find this in your Performance Notifications and it will outline whether it is a performance based suspension or a violation of Amazon’s Selling Policies and their rules about prohibited content or product restrictions.
Then, determine what part of your selling practices has caused the poor performance or violation. It may be a case of removing items that are prohibited, or reviewing listings to ensure you comply with the selling policies. If it is a performance based suspension, Amazon’s customer metrics will highlight what area is causing the issue. A high order defect or pre-fulfilment cancellation rate may indicate you need to focus on your inventory management. A high late dispatch rate shows you need to improve your picking and packing process.
Next, you must come up with an action plan to ensure you can improve and maintain your performance as a seller. You can hire more staff to monitor your stock more regularly and deal with processing orders. Alternatively, you can automate your processes to speed them up. Marketplace management software can handle your inventory management by listing your stock across all the marketplaces you sell on, auto updating quantities to reduce the chance of overselling and order defects.
Once you have a plan you can contact Amazon and let them know of the measures you are putting in place to ensure you meet performance targets and selling policies. Demonstrate to Amazon that you are serious about adhering to their rules and they will review your appeal. Make sure you include all the info on your new processes, including information on marketplace management software and the benefits of that to your selling performance.
Then you have to wait on a reply from Amazon. If Amazon can clearly see that you are serious about improving your practices and maintaining their targets, they will be open to allowing you to remain as a seller on their marketplaces.