Stay Up to Date with Amazon’s NEW Dropshipping Policy Causing Suspensions for Experienced Sellers
Drop shipping makes people a lot of money, but it doesn’t come without risks.
But before we dive into that, what is drop shipping? It’s a process where a seller accepts an order, but then orders the product from somewhere else to be delivered to the buyer. This allows sellers to operate their business without having to worry about managing inventory. However, Amazon does not allow drop shipping unless you are completely compliant with their policies. If your product arrives in Walmart packaging and the customer reports you, your Amazon account is at risk of being suspended.
Amazon recently announced changes to its drop shipping policy. Since then, for the first time in a very long time, we’ve started seeing super large, experienced drop shippers lose their accounts.
The updated policy is as follows:
• Be the seller of record of your products;
• Identify yourself as the seller of your products on all packing slips and other information included or provided in connection with them;
• Remove any packing slips, invoices, external packaging, other info. identifying a third-party drop shipper prior to shipping the order;
• Be responsible for accepting and processing customer returns of your products;
• Comply with all other terms of your seller agreement and applicable Amazon policies.
If you plan on starting out with a drop shipping model, it might be a good idea to reconsider. Better to start small and slow, and keep your own inventory. Keep a few of each product and build up your listings one by one. You can always add more listings as you go, but adding too many at once opens you up for more mistakes that could cost you your account. Once you’re used to using the dashboard and have a better feel for how everything works, then you can expand. If you want to start with drop shipping anyway, or you’re already an experienced drop shipper, take extra care to follow every part of the policy perfectly.
For those of you who are experienced already, you still need to be careful. Not just when it comes to getting caught for drop shipping, but also when it comes to the listings you join. We’ve seen a lot of advanced drop shippers get suspended recently due to joining listings of gated, restricted, or somehow protected products. As always, there’s always multiple variables to deal with when it comes to Amazon.
