When your Amazon account has been suspended for having systemic problems, your Plan of Action or your Suspension Appeal should be written to reflect significant changes to your Amazon based operation. The goals: Amazon account reinstatement and preventing future Amazon account suspensions.
How most Plans of Action and Amazon Account Suspension Appeals are Drafted
When an Amazon sellers account is suspended, the seller needs to submit a Plan of Action or an appeal. The Plan of Action and the appeal are exercises is persuasive writing. You as a suspended seller are trying to persuade the Amazon staff to reinstate your selling privileges rather than deny your request to reinstate your account.
The basic format of a Plan of Action or an appeal has three sections:
- The root cause of your suspension;
- Immediate corrective actions, and;
- Systemic changes to your business to prevent future problems.
As a law firm focused on the needs of Amazon sellers, we draft many Plans of Action for suspended sellers. We monitor what is working and what does not seem to be working as well.
Plans of Action when your Business Needs Revamping
While most Amazon suspensions result from individual problems with individual products or complaints from an individual consumer or a brand, it is not uncommon for larger sellers to suffer suspensions because of systemic problems in their account.
Systemic problems in larger suspended Amazon accounts should include
- Repeated intellectual property right complaints
- Repeated issues with detail pages and image violations
- Systemic packaging issues
- Systemic issues with sourcing
When a larger account is suspended with systemic issues to address, the larger volume seller should address the issues differently then when there is a single problem in small volume account.
Large Sellers with Suspended with Multiple Intellectual Property Right Complaints
If you are a significant seller with multiple rights owner complaints, your plan to recoup your suspension should begin with obtaining the retraction of all of the complaints. If you cannot obtain the withdrawal of all of the rights owners’ complaints against your Amazon selling account, then you should obtain withdrawals of as many intellectual property right complaints as you can.
As a law firm focused on Amazon sellers, we address many complaints of intellectual property right violations. The complaints almost always claim that a seller is violating a brand’s trademark or copyright interests.
Basic Trademark Law for Sellers: A Trademark is a symbol, word or way of writing text that indicates that the item is a specific brand and the quality and benefits that go along with that brand. Generally, unless you are taking the mark and placing it on your product, you likely NOT violating anyone’s trademark rights.
Buying a brand of product with a trademark and reselling that product does not. Generally, violate anyone’s trademark rights.
Basic Copyright Law for Sellers: Copyrighted material includes creative works. Images and pictures are subject to copyright because someone created the image. The wording on a package or insert is protected under copyright law because it was created…written, by someone. Amazon sellers are generally subject to claims that they violated a brand’s copyright interests because they used an image or the verbiage from a brand.
However, an issue that we repeatedly see are claims by a brand that a seller violated someone’s copyright law for selling on a listing created by a different seller. Since a violation of an intellectual property right requires an act, selling on a pre-existing listing is not a violation.
Assuming a large percentage of the complaints are withdrawn, then reinstatement is likely. Retractions are generally obtained from brands and their lawyers when their baselessness of their complaints is addressed.
Your Plan of Action to obtain reinstatement during the process of obtaining retractions, should include the following:
- The early successes of rights owners’ complaints. Show Amazon that the complaints are being withdrawn. Attach the letters your attorneys drafted to the rights owners to obtain their withdrawal of the intellectual property rights.
- Include your attorneys’ letters regarding each and every intellectual property complaint that is against your Amazon sellers’ account. One by one, in concise persuasive language, show Amazon that you are not violating other’s intellectual property rights.
- Demonstrate to Amazon that you have a systemic plan for avoiding intellectual property rights issues in the future.
Large Sellers with Suspended with Multiple Detail Page and/or Image Issues
When your problems are voluminous, your Plan of Action should be provide strategy for correcting the errors. Instantaneous store-wide fixes are not required. Amazon has recognized that larger sellers may need time to fully correct their accounts. You can successfully submit a Plan of Action that identifies what you have already fixed and your plan to fully remedy the issues in the near future.
A method of regaining your significant Amazon sellers’ account is to make headway on your issues. Make a concerted effort. Show improvement and partial corrections of past issues. Show, not simply state, that the corrections will be made.
For example, if you have hundreds or thousands of ASINs, hire staff or a consultant and begin the work needed. Redraft five or ten percent of your detail pages and report that progress to Amazon. Simultaneously in your Plan of Action or Appeal inform Amazon of the progress you have made. Inform Amazon of how you are correcting the issues and a time frame for completion.
With regard to your “root causes” of the issues with your large account, a valid explanation of what caused the issues are problems with scaling as you grew. As Amazon’s Leadership Principals state, take ownership of your success, issues and responsibility for continued repair and growth.
Advanced sellers may want to implement automation to their systems for listings, images or whatever the issues were with their suspended account.
Another successful method for addressing systemic issues in a large volume sellers’ account is to hire outside consultants to help restore order to the account. In your Plan of Action or Appeal, you may choose to identify the companies that are assisting you. If you do hire outside firms, identify the firms in your Plan of Action or Suspension Appeal.
Other issues large sellers may want to address in their Plans of Action and Suspension Appeals is the institution is better management practices. Large sellers may wish to mimic Amazon’s growth strategy so that you are writing what about what the reader at Amazon lives on a daily basis.
Amazon Sellers’ Lawyer Conclusion
Finally, large suspended sellers and smaller ones should accept responsibility for making their businesses operate better. This is also a part of Amazon’s Leadership Principals and sellers should mimic them in their Plans of Action and Suspension Appeals.
