Forged & Inauthentic Invoices – Amazon Seller Suspension
Forged and inauthentic invoices were the topic of Amazon Sellers Lawyer’s most recent news video on Facebook Live. Become educated on the topic of invoices and how to keep yourself out of trouble with them and it will keep you in business with Amazon for longer.
If you want to keep your Amazon seller’s account from being suspended, make sure to double and triple check your invoices, warns CJ Rosenbaum, Founder of Rosenbaum Famularo, P.C., law firm behind AmazonSellersLawyer.com.
“The number one reason for Amazon suspensions across the board is this nonsense about inauthentic, or Amazon wants to see your invoices,” Rosenbaum said. “They want to see where you’re purchasing your products from, where you are sourcing your products. They want you to show some connection to the brand so they know their consumers are getting the real-deal products.”
Amazon is cracking down on Forged or Inauthentic Invoices
Recently, Amazon has been cracking down on invoices that are inauthentic or forged. Rosenbaum and his law firm aim to reinstate sellers who get into legal troubles with Amazon. While it’s possible to help out sellers who have sent forged invoices to Amazon, it’s a lot trickier than one might think.
“Here’s our advice to you: if you are forging invoices, don’t do it,” Rosenbaum said. “We are more successful at getting sellers back online without invoices than after you get caught with forged invoices.”
November 2018 CJ Update:
We have seen Amazon reject invoices claiming that the invoices were electronically altered when suspended Amazon Sellers add circles and arrows to the PDF to indicate the specific products at issue. If you are going to use an. editor to identify the product on an invoice containing multiple products, send two copies of the PDF. Send one copy of the invoice with your plan of action or appeal that is not marked up in any way and send a second copy of the invoice with your plan of action that has your arrows and/or circles on it. To me, seems this seems silly but it is working and helping get suspended Amazon Sellers reinstated.
Naturally, Amazon wants information on your business such as what you’re selling and how much, how much money you’ve made, where you’re getting your items from, where you’re selling from, your contact information, and a number of other factors. If any of your information is false or Amazon is suspicious that it might be false, Amazon will come after you and could suspend you. Amazon Sellers’ Lawyer can help if this happens, but it’s important to know how to prevent having an issue in the first place.
“Amazon takes forged document complaints lethally serious,” states Sean Law, Paralegal at Rosenbaum Famularo, PC. “These types of complaints are often caused by small clerical errors or oversights on the part of the seller. Amazon sellers often submit internal documents instead of invoices; when that mistake is made, it can be devastating because Amazon views the documents as forged. Always keep in mind that Amazon will not accept any internal document unless the seller is the rights owner of the product.”
As Rosenbaum noted, the best way to avoid getting in trouble is to be completely truthful about your invoices. Be as honest and detailed as possible when filling them out. This will naturally make it easier for you to avoid trouble with Amazon. Ashley DiPinto, Paralegal at Rosenbaum Famularo, PC states, “Always listen to your customers and pay attention to your performance notifications.” Jason Powell adds, “Make sure to anticipate the needs and requirements of your product category. Be sure to respond to all Amazon requests and provide all required documentation.”
“On those invoices, you’re submitting, on your side of it on the right side, it’s going to have your name, your address, your email, your website, your phone number,” Rosenbaum said. “What you want to make sure is that information, as much as possible matches your Amazon account.”
If you make sure your information all matches and that your addresses are real findable places using a simple Google search, Amazon won’t be as suspicious of your invoices. The more details you fill out, the smoother the process is going to be for you.
“What you want to do is you want to make sure you don’t provide the ability for anyone at Amazon to poke holes in your invoices at all,” Rosenbaum said. “Try to poke holes in it [yourself]. Pretend you’re Amazon and try to find reasons they’d reject it and deal with these things in advance.”
Take the necessary steps to ensure that you’re being as honest with yourself and your invoices as possible, and you shouldn’t have any problems with Amazon in this regard.
Additionally, Amazon has been rejecting more invoices that come in large files. If you’re sending an invoice, do your best to make the file smaller to avoid issues.
Some Final Advice for Amazon Sellers
“When you’re submitting your invoices, you want to keep it to the 25-35 megabits,” Rosenbaum said. “Keep it less than that. If it’s more than that, we need to work with you to do something about it. Maybe submit it in separate files or something.”
Related articles regarding inauthentic invoices and Amazon sellers:
Plans of Action for Amazon Vendor Suspensions
5 Tools for Your Amazon Arbitration Plan
For more breaking news and tips of the trade in the world of selling online with Amazon, like us on Facebook. Tune in live to the page’s videos and ask questions to get free live answers from Rosenbaum and other experts in the field.