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How to Appeal an Amazon Inauthentic Suspension

By John DiGiacomo

If your Amazon seller account is suspended, you will need the assistance of an experienced Amazon appeal attorney. One reason is that Amazon seller account suspensions occur for many different reasons and a proven Amazon seller’s lawyer will know how best to respond to each different type of Amazon seller suspensions.

For example, one of the most common reasons for an Amazon seller account suspension is because of complaints of inauthentic sales items or suspicions of inauthenticity. If this happens, you will want to know how to get your Amazon seller account reinstated. The key is to directly address and respond legally to the specific reason why Amazon has suspended your Amazon seller account. A generic “catch-all” type of response will not succeed and might be counterproductive. More importantly, recent trends show that Amazon is not too interested in repeat efforts at getting an Amazon seller account reinstated. In other words, you may have only one shot at an Amazon suspension appeal which means you have to get it right the first time. Your best chance is to hire a Law Firm with Amazon suspension appeal experience.

What is an Amazon inauthentic suspension? As noted, this is one of the most common reasons for Amazon seller account deactivation. An Amazon inauthentic suspension is similar to an Amazon counterfeit suspension. With both types of Amazon suspicions, there is a concern about protecting brands and trademarks, but less so with suspicions of inauthenticity. Often the problem is poor quality and poor control over product sourcing or an Amazon suspicion that the items are coming from a vendor/supplier that is not authorized to sell it. By contrast, an Amazon suspicion of counterfeiting, the problem is almost entirely about trademark and/or branding infringement where the item — which might be of superb quality — is falsely tagged or labeled.

What to do? If your Amazon seller account has been suspended — or is threatened to be suspended — due to inauthenticity, you will need to provide the following:

  • A detailed letter to Amazon as a Suspension Appeal (or as a letter to prevent a suspension)
  • A Plan of Action — as part of an Appeal or to prevent a suspension and
  • Copies of invoices from the suppliers for the last 365 days with respect to the items of concern

With these types of Amazon suspension appeals, several issues are priorities. First, if you have them, the most important documents are quality invoices. Maybe you don’t have them or maybe you do not have quality invoices from your suppliers. If that is the case, then the Plan of Action becomes the key document. If your invoices are missing or of low quality, the best approach is to admit this in the Plan of Action, state that such vendors will no longer be used and explain how quality control over vendors and suppliers will be accomplished for the future.

What, then, is a quality invoice? A quality invoice will contain basic and complete information on the vendor including vendor’s name, address, telephone number, website, buyers name, address and telephone number, item descriptions and numbers matching the detail page and more. For purposes of an Amazon seller suspension appeal, the key item for an invoice is the phone number. It is important to have a number that will reach a live person that has familiarity with what the company sells and, ideally, with the Amazon seller. Amazon does not always call a vendor’s phone number, but if it does and no one answers or the number is an “800” number which does not quickly get a relevant “live” person of the phone, Amazon will likely indicate that “vendor information cannot be verified.” That will cause a problem for a successful Amazon seller account suspension appeal.

Next among the priorities is a good and effective Plan of Action. Remember, for Amazon, the issue is low quality. Thus, in addition to verifying vendor/supplier information, the Plan of Action must address how the quality control problem will be fixed.

For more information about how we can help reinstate your Amazon account, or if you have other legal issues related to internet law, contact the trusted Amazon Seller Account Lawyers at Revision Legal.You can contact us through the form on this page or call (855) 473-8474. Get the Amazon legal help you need. We are lawyers specializing in internet law.

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