AMZ Insider Info 2/20/20 with CJ Rosenbaum: Brand protection for private label sellers, 72-hour suspension notices, Information for health and beauty sellers, IP complaints on the rise.
72 hours to submit a plan of action or your account/listing is going down.
If you get that 72-hour notice, do not immediately start typing away. Think through the process. Think through what you’re going to write to Amazon. Call us for advice. Hire us to do it for you. You need to identify the root cause. You need to identify your immediate corrective action, what you did to make that consumer happier. Amazon needs to be assured that they will not have the same problem with you in the future. It doesn’t matter whether you have a week to do it or 72 hours, you need to handle it calmly. You need to write persuasively, and you need to write concisely.
Information for health and beauty sellers.
Okay, so I have been retained as an expert witness in at least three different cases. Yesterday I was deposed by a lawyer who works for a company called Amazzia who does brand protection for Amazzia. The case I’m involved in, they were taking sellers down left and right with baseless counterfeit complaints so that they can sell the product themselves. To me, they were practicing law without a license, with a 100% conflict of interest. What did I learn? I learned that sometimes Amazzia is worse than even VORYS because they’re asserting baseless counterfeit complaints. If you’re a third-party seller, you’re selling health and beauty products, and you receive one of these complaints from Amazzia, please contact us. I’d be happy to go after them any single day of the week.
Brand protection has a vital role in private label sellers.
You work your tail off, you develop a product, you’re sourcing it, and all of a sudden you have hijackers. If this is you, you need to build in something to your product, something into your warranty, so that other sellers cannot deliver the same thing to consumers. That is doing private label brand protection the right way, where you warn sellers saying, “Hey, you’re not delivering the same thing. Please stop selling.” Also, you’re only making complaints when it is 100% legitimate.
IP complaints on the rise.
We’re seeing more and more baseless counterfeit complaints from companies like Amazzia and huge, huge conglomerates. We’re also seeing trademark complaints. We are seeing these complaints go up and up and up. What you need to know is, if you’re selling a genuine product and the consumer’s receiving the same thing, with no material difference, you’re most likely not violating anybody’s intellectual property rights. It’s simply untrue. Also, look at the warranties on the products. If the warranty only gives a money-back guarantee, it is practically meaningless because Amazon gives every consumer a money-back guarantee under the A to Z claim.
