All Episodes

More and more of the cases we’re working on are due to abuse- where another seller is attacking the account. In these cases, just fixing the listings, or responding with a POA isn’t enough. You need to report the abuse, to hopefully get Amazon to put an end to it (or at least create a paper trail for the next time it happens).

The hot new thing in the Amazon space is Aggregators. About 55, venture-backed aggregators have popped into the Amazon space, looking to buy up Seller accounts. We’re huge advocates of doing your due diligence, and in this episode we’re talking about why that’s so important on both sides of buying and selling Amazon Seller Accounts

Moira Weigel, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center/ Harvard Law School and Harvard Data and Society researcher, joined us for a far-reaching discussion of technology’s impact on behavior, and in our case, how Amazon’s expanding influence is taking over the lives of so many business owners, globally. She’s looking to talk to sellers about their Amazon experiences, both with their competitors and with Amazon itself. That may mean you! We discussed her writing project in-depth and the various kinds of seller situations she’s already pored over in the course of her work. She’s covering a lot of ground, as we discovered, in this conversation. Looking forward to having her back!

We’ve been fielding UPC questions from Sellers ever since Amazon changed their GTIN policy in 2016. What do you do if Amazon tells you your GTIN has already been used? How do you add a GS1 GTIN to an old listing? What if Amazon won’t recognize your prefix as matching your brand? We spoke to Michelle Covey of GS1 US to get the best troubleshooting steps for these common issues.

ASINs are getting suspended left and right for “potential” (read: often imaginary) Intellectual property infringement violations, and sellers are searching for answers. You need strategies to defend yourself against this automation and human error combo! Opening cases with Support or sending emails to Seller Performance won’t get you anywhere, unless you enjoy copy and paste generic “responses.” Every kind of seller, both private label and resellers, need to learn up on these to resolve appeals properly. Mistakes cost time, energy, effort, and make you frustrated! We discuss all manner of cases and reinforce the methods for identifying true fixes for this.

Product liability insurance isn’t just something to think about, or a ”nice to have” if you’re a private label brand owner on Amazon. You need to have it! We spoke with Matt Lovell of WELL Insurance in this episode to go through the main questions and confusion he sees from Amazon sellers pushed to provide copies of their liability coverage by certain dates. Final reminders were recently sent, too, and most dates suggested deadlines in the near future if not already passed. Matt spoke with us about every seller’s best practices and what their next steps should be.

In this episode, Leah and I cover the key differences between Amazon’s “Account Health Services” team and the “Seller Performance” team. They may sound like they’d cover the same ground, but if your account or listings get suspended, you quickly understand that they are far from the same thing. We dig into what these teams are there for, who staffs them, and how their work influences (and sometimes undermines) the reinstatement appeal process. We also cover how much you can trust the information they provide, and how to know if it’s accurate.

Amazon takes more enforcement actions these days to prevent fake reviews because they face external pressure to do so. In this episode, Leah and I walk through the sources of those policy suspensions, and why we believe sellers think they can get use giveaways, rebates, and other incentives to “game the system.” Old shortcuts to success may be mentioned in groups, classes or videos, but they have a big cost.

We receive nearly daily reports from Amazon sellers who have been hit with a listing suspension due to “Used Sold as New” complaints from their buyers. In this episode we delve into the main seller confusion around what Amazon really means by “used sold as new”. Amazon’s misleading jargon often sends sellers down the wrong appeals path.

Amazon is inconsistent in its enforcement of policies. Looking at other sellers’ behavior isn’t an accurate measure of what’s allowed, or what isn’t. Seller mindset is an important factor in what determines whether an account is successful, or gets into trouble for unknowingly breaking the rules. We discuss what you need to do to cultivate a winning seller’s mindset.