Amazon Sellers News 11/14/19 with CJ Rosenbaum: Amazon Related Account Issues, Trademark Complaints from Disney & Business Verification Information
If you are creating or operating more than one Amazon account, you are violating your contract with Amazon, and you need to be super careful to prevent Amazon from linking those two accounts together.
You have to stay away from shared WiFi. You cannot use the same credit card on more than one Amazon seller account. You cannot use the same bank account, same computer, same hotspot, Mac address, IP address, email addresses, similar email addresses. We’re seeing more and more people with related accounts getting caught.
IP complaints, specifically trademark complaints, continue to rise.
Disney is going after sellers and what they’re looking at now are running Disney princesses in the backend. Listen, if you have Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, any of the princesses out there and they’re in your backend in your description, get them out. Disney is making complaints because you’re using their trademark terms.
Business verification for experienced sellers continue to rise.
If you’re sending in documents, you need to send in the complete document. If it’s a banking record or utility bill, whatever documents you are sending to Amazon in response to the new TOS, which requires experienced sellers to continuously verify their businesses, send in the entire document, not just a page or two. Give them everything. Who cares if Amazon knows how much your electric bill is? Many Amazon sellers are contacting us by our telephone number, our email, or our chat through our website where they have sent in numerous appeals, numerous plans of action, and then they’re coming to us for help after they’ve already gone all the way up to Bezos. It’s definitely a lot harder, but what I want you to know on this piece of the breaking news is stop sending it repetitively. Give Amazon’s notice-dispute team time to evaluate what you’re sending in. If you’re sending it to numerous teams, stop. Every time you send something to Amazon, every time you send a plan of action to Amazon, give them 48 hours to respond.
Private label sellers, if you are creating your own brand and you have not yet filed for a trademark, I’m going to strongly recommend you take a look at Amazon’s IP Accelerator program.
There are a handful of lawyers who’ve gotten in bed with Amazon who will file your trademark. They should do a thorough search first. They’re charging three or four times what other law firms charge. But by using these law firms who seem to be in bed with Amazon, you’re going to get brand registry right away. If you use us or you use another law firm, it’s going to take nine months or so to get your trademark approved, and then you can apply for the brand registry. But if you use Amazon’s IP Accelerator program, you’re going to pay a lot more in terms of legal fees, but you’re going to get a brand registry right away. Even though that’s going to cost us some fees, I think it’s the right thing for sellers to do. Private labels, get your trademark protection. Check out Amazon’s IP Accelerator program.