AMZ Insider Info 2/5/20 with CJ Rosenbaum: Richemont international making complaints against sellers, Dropshippers have to review Amazon’s policies, AMZ’s neutral patent evaluation program, Used sold as new suspensions spiking, 6 books available for Amazon sellers to download for free.
Richemont international making complaints against sellers all over the world.
They are accusing sellers who are selling genuine products of selling counterfeit and they’ve also gone to court and obtained what’s called a TRO. TRO stands for temporary restraining order and what happens is this, a company goes to a courthouse, usually the Northern District of Illinois where the judges give these orders out like candy and they tell the court, “We are suffering counterfeit sales” and they do it in secret. Then before the lawsuit is ever provided to the sellers, they go back to that judge and they say, “We need an order right now freezing all of their accounts.” You don’t get to respond. You don’t even know the orders are being filed until it’s issued and served upon you and boom, your account is frozen, your bank accounts are frozen, world currencies, everything is locked down and then you’re in a position of going to that courthouse and defending yourself or hiring a lawyer to settle those claims. Now we handle dozens (if not hundreds) of these claims every single year. A lot of the claims are nonsense, some have merit. If you contact us we can give you an idea of where you are headed based upon the litigation because we are involved in many of them helping sellers.
If you’re dropshipping, you have to review Amazon’s policies.
You have to make sure that if you are dropshipping that it is being done specifically in accordance with the policies. Amazon consumers cannot receive packaging from Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, anyplace else. It has to be done specifically under Amazon’s rules because when you get suspended and you’re a dropshipper and Amazon wants an invoice, you don’t have one because you didn’t own the product before the consumer ordered it from you.
Amazon has a fantastic program, the neutral patent evaluation program, where if you own the patent and somebody is violating, you don’t have to expend the time and money to go to court.
You can do through Amazon’s program and we have been remarkably successful. Robert Siegel, one of our fantastic attorneys here, heads that department, and he has won just about every single case that he’s been involved in. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to win yours, every case lives and dies on its own merits, but if you have any questions, if you need to protect a patented product, give us a call 1-877-9-SELLER. We can tell you all about it and you could decide how you want to do it. You can also make an intellectual property complaint through the Amazon system, although before you do either, we strongly recommend that you send a cease and desist letter.
Used sold as new suspensions are spiking.
Both listing suspensions and account suspensions. Across the board, Amazon sellers generally do not sell used products. They sell new products, source new products, send new products over to FBA and Amazon delivers them to consumers, they accept returns with nobody with any significant ability reviewing them. They go back into inventory, they go back out to consumers and boom, sellers get hit with a used sold as new because somebody else bought the product, opened it and sent it back to Amazon and they didn’t identify it as a product that should never go back out the door.
We have 6 books available for Amazon sellers to download for free.
Free books online. “Amazon Sellers Guide to Copyright”, “Amazon Sellers Guide to Trademark Law”, “Amazon Sellers Guide to Suspensions and Reinstatements”, the brand new book that we just published, “The Amazon Law Library”, and specifically if you’re selling fashion on Amazon, “Amazon Sellers Guide to Selling Fashion”.
