Amazon Sellers’ News 9/26/19 with CJ Rosenbaum: Amazon Related Account Suspensions, Private Label Brand Protection & Global Sources 2019.
We have received an increasing number of calls from private label sellers seeking brand protection. There also is an increase in the number of sellers engaging in dirty tactics against sellers.
A lot of people bash China for taking over listings, it is not coming solely from China. Right here in the United States, sellers are taking over other sellers’ listings. Sellers are getting into a listing, and then changing the brand and the pictures, sometimes good to match that brand, sometimes just to trash it. And sellers are having people buy products and leave really poor reviews, which drive up ODR rates.
False counterfeit complaints are absolutely skyrocketing.
But for sellers don’t despair – if a brand makes a false counterfeit complaint against you, you have great leverage under the laws of defamation and tortious interference with contract. So if you never delivered the product at all, or if you are 100% certain your products are genuine that complaint, you have a lot of leverage to get that complaint retracted.
For years Amazon would approach sellers, offer to loan the account money, not even ask for a personal guarantee. And then, if Amazon Retail took over the listing, or Amazon took away the buy box, or whatever the issue was, your account went down, you couldn’t repay the loan, Amazon would go after you personally even though there was no personal guarantee.
We have been very successful in defending sellers who accepted Amazon loans to their corporation with no personal guarantee and getting the person out of the case.
I believe we are the number one reviewed law firm in the world. If you’re learning anything from these videos, please like it, please share it, and leave me a review that you love Amazon Sellers’ Breaking News. Also on October 10th, Seller Labs, which is an incredible software company providing incredible tools for sellers, is having an online summit. You don’t have to travel any place, and you could hear from top speakers in the industry. I think the topic is fantastic, ‘Understanding Amazon’s Tightening Controls: What You Need to Know,’ but more importantly as a seller, what you need to do.
In just 17 days on October 15th, the Delhi sourcing trip, indiasourcingtrip.com is an incredible event for private label sellers to learn how to source products from India where there is no trade war.
October 27 to 29th Global Sources in Hong Kong where you hear from great speakers, you can source products from Chinese factories, and use it as a stepping stone to go from Hong Kong into mainland China.
You have to be extremely careful about having related accounts.
We know a handful of the things Amazon tracks: email, phone number, address, name, bank account, spreadsheets, products, emails that are similar but not exactly the same. MAC addresses, IP addresses, pixels. These are just some of the ways that Amazon will catch you with multiple accounts.
The people we have seen do it successfully, entirely separate the two businesses. They don’t use the same bookkeepers, they don’t sell the same products, they don’t use the same computers, they don’t even use the same access to the internet. Many use VPNs to put themselves in different geographic locations, and certainly different corporations in states where it does not disclose who the shareholders are.
