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Riverbend Consulting
Happy Hour, Jan. 23, 2024: Amazon Account Issues, Incubator Book Launch, and Supplier Documentation
Amazon is having a few hiccups on top of its typical struggles with ASIN and account appeals. One hot issue has to do with gating.
Join us as we answer all your HOT questions! plus a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!
Stream now!
#happyhour2024 #AskUsAnything #amazonconsultants #amazonsellers #riverbendconsulting #amazonsellerhappyhourlivevent #onlineretail #ecommerce
Lesley [00:00:27] Hello everybody, and welcome to the Amazon seller Happy Hour. I'm Leslie Hassell, co-founder of Riverbend. Oh look it just popped up right there. And I have with me. Wait, wait I that way. Kelly Johnston. Yes. Who also is with Riverbend Consulting. Hello, Kelly. Hi.
Kelly [00:00:51] Welcome, welcome, welcome to all of our wonderful people that are joining us, too, because I bet we've got a nice little audience tonight.
Lesley [00:00:58] Yes. And, you know, we have so many great questions today. So, y'all, the reason that we do this happy hour with me and Kelly is to answer your burning questions. And we had sent out an email a few weeks ago and got so many questions that we couldn't cover them in our last happy hour. And then we also get comments on our social media channels, which include, you can see the stream on Facebook, you might see it on LinkedIn, you might see it on YouTube. And so you can put a question in the comments section there. And we love answering live questions.
Kelly [00:01:35] Yeah, yeah. No, we live and breathe for that. Because you all have great ones.
Lesley [00:01:39] So yes. Okay. So before we get to any questions though, shameless plugs. First of all, I just want everyone to know that we do have our back. Co-host from last time. But Kelly had some internet issues last time, so my, my little friend Kelly, who's actually a wooden spoon, joined me last time and provided commentary. It was very effective. So if we get really tired of the real Kelly, we can always switch to the wood and see. That's fine. Yes. Now we have two for the price of one. And also today is a very exciting day at Riverbend because it is the launch day of my brand new book, The Amazon Incubator Grow Your Business or have a new one. And this book is, intended for brand new sellers. Also people who have a product that they already sold, but they want to put their product on Amazon for another sales channel or for people who already have an Amazon business, but they really need some new ideas and strategies and to kind of clean stuff up. Because I know a lot of us, we launch something new, and maybe there's things that we didn't necessarily set up the best and most productive way for the long term. So the Amazon incubator is live on all of the websites where you can buy books, including Amazon, of course, and Barnes and Noble, Books-a-million, Indiegogo, others. All this cool but porch light things I've never heard of and I'm super excited about it. So I hope some of you will check it out. Give it a chance. Also at the website, the Amazon incubator.com, we have some great bonuses. They were intended to be preorder bonuses. However, Amazon seems to have run out of books at some of their distribution centers. So I've got a whole bunch of people who ordered the books early who have not received them, and they're telling, they're saying it's going to come next week. Where I live, it's saying if you order now, it shows up on February 2nd. So for those of you who haven't ordered a preorder before, it's supposed to show up at your house date of. And, so far, everyone I know who bought a book hasn't gotten it. So there are some distribution centers where they have sold out already, and they're having to move inventory. So we want to make the bonuses available until everyone can get their book as an incentive to keep on ordering anyway. So if you go to the Amazon incubator.com, you can get access to a three video series that'll help inspire you in starting your Amazon journey. If you are new. And also, there is a little workbook. It's a companion workbook to the book. So check it out, y'all. And now we need to get to the important part. Unhappy hour, which is answering people's burning questions. And before we jump to the ones from the email, we just had one pop up from YouTube. Oh, right on the dot. Yes, the dot says hello, Lesley and Kelly. My questions for Lesley. Actually, Kelly, smarter than I am. So long answer you, but she's smarter. My Amazon account has been suspended and Amazon wants to verify the whole supply chain. Well, first I have to tell you, I am so sorry you're going through this because personally, I find this intrusive, upsetting, frustrating, and sometimes ridiculous. And so first I want to tell you why they're doing this to you. Or why Amazon thinks they need to do this to you. Because I don't share their opinion most of the time. So a lot of times they will look at your invoices. They their primary, purpose in asking for invoices is they want to make sure you're selling, product that is authentic. It's not counterfeit, and it's in brand new condition. And it wasn't fenced somewhere. It's not stolen. It's legitimate product. That's what they care about. So they ask you for your invoices? Well, let's say they're not familiar with your supplier, or let's say they are, and they think the invoices okay, but there's something nagging at the reviewer or they contacted your supplier, which they do, they will call them and they contacted excuse me, contacted the supplier and the supplier did not answer. So any of these reasons can be a reason that they will say, hey, we want to review you further. And so then they will ask for these chain of custody invoices. It's for some reason they either don't believe you or they don't believe your supplier. They think your supplier isn't legit. Now, this is where it gets really unfortunate because you could believe your supplier. You could have vetted your supplier, you could have done everything you're supposed to do, but you're supplier could possibly be a bad actor, or Amazon could have had a past bad experience with them that you don't know about with some other seller that you would never know. A lot of this is like, how would you know all of these things? Well, you wouldn't. You can do a great job. You've got to vet your suppliers as much as possible, of course, but sometimes you miss something. So they want to know your chain of custody. So here's the challenge. A lot of your suppliers won't give it up. And who can blame them? They don't want you to know how much you pay for goods. They don't want you to know where you buy. They buy the goods because you'll just go direct to their supplier. It's like Amazon is telling them it's time for you to get cut out from your of your business. Because all of your people are just going to go direct to your suppliers. It's super unfortunate. So one thing that you can do is you can tell your supplier. So first you have to tell your supplier I'm in a pickle. And the problem here is I'm not going to be able to buy from you anymore if I can't solve this problem at Amazon. So it behooves you to help me. Not as a threat. You're not threatening them. You're just being honest. If I don't get back live and you don't help me, I could be in trouble here. And you're not going to make the 50,000 bucks or whatever in orders that I made, you know, the last six months for me. But secondly, they can sanitize the invoices. So sanitizing the invoices is where they mark out all the pricing on everything. Now, when you give your invoices that are direct from your supplier to Amazon, you cannot sanitize them. But when you do supply chain invoices, you can because Amazon at least comprehends kind of, that suppliers are worried that they're going to lose all their business if all the prices are showing. Okay, Kelly, I'll shut up and let you talk.
Kelly [00:08:56] No, I mean. I have nothing to add to that beyond the fact that everything that Leslie said is correct. I can't tell you why all of a sudden. This has become an intense focus for Amazon. But based on the information that I have available, it's definitely a thing. We're seeing.
Lesley [00:09:14] So.
Kelly [00:09:14] Many clients impacted by this, and I want to reassure you that this is not the end. You there are ways forward. You just have to do a couple of things that I think are really important to this process. Number one, be honest. Don't mess around with your documents. Don't try to change anything because you think it would look better because they are trained to look for inconsistencies in documentation. Like Leslie said, maybe they're familiar with your supplier. What if you're buying from, like the big super user distributors that Samsung has? Those those are known entities. You change anything in any way to try to make it look better, and you could be setting yourself up for a permanent vacation because Amazon will consider that to be a manipulated document. Don't do that. Just be honest. Be straightforward, be clear. And above all, brevity is not just the soul of wit. It is also sometimes the soul of your appeal. Because really, you've got to kind of take that emotion out of it a little bit and just be factual. Who, what, where, when and why. That can make such a big difference in how the the person that's evaluating your, supply chain documents and your, your other information will react to it. The more you try to stuff in there thinking that that's going to help you, the more you might bury really important information because you don't necessarily know what they're looking for. So yeah, clear, concise, honest. Don't manipulate the documents even if you think it's the thing you need to do. I promise you it's not. And I understand why people do because they're really concerned about, you know, things that are important. But. Unaltered. Clear. Concise. Honest. Those things will go a long way in toward solving this problem.
Lesley [00:11:01] And if Amazon is allowing you to provide any commentary, it's really good to actually restate the supplier information even though it's on the invoices, which seems really dumb. But I would do it. So you want to be really clear and say I purchased the products from and then have the supplier name their their physical address, their email address, their phone number that they actually pick up an answer. Their website. And then if you can, when you and you say I have attached, you know, I have attached document file, whatever, and that's your invoices from them. If you can add proof of purchase to that file. So you want to show you actually paid them. Yep. That can help a whole lot. Sometimes it can even back off. Back them off some on the chain of custody. So you're going to show your credit card statement or your bank statement or wire transfer that you actually bought the goods. So that kind of relieves some of their angst about you. Then you say my supplier purchases from and then give that same thing name, address, website, phone number, the sanitized invoice and status up front, the sanitized invoices attached in file name, whatever. If you cannot get sanitized invoices, that gets really challenging. I would encourage you to call our team for a consult call. There are some strategies, some workarounds, some escalations. But when whenever you can't give them what they want. You got to get really creative. And that's where having, you know, calling in an expert can be helpful.
Kelly [00:12:42] Yeah. And I about the proof of placement, the proof of payment saying I want to make a comment about that because we get so much pushback from clients on this. And I understand why, because it's sensitive financial information. And you want to be sure that you are not you know, it's not being mishandled by anybody. But proving that you bought stuff. Really shows Amazon that you have skin in the game and that you are who you say you are. It is another way to show your legitimacy and your dedication to this business that you have created. I know it's painful, and I know it can be kind of a hassle to get together, but I promise you, it can really move the needle and it can move the needle quickly, because then Amazon has just that one more thing in their hands to go, oh. Oh yeah. Well this all lines up awesome. And there's less question for them about whether or not you're finding your, you know, stuff on the street corner that fell off the back of a truck because, you know. Things happen.
Lesley [00:13:47] If you're buying stolen goods, you're not doing it with a traceable financial instrument like a credit card. So if you're willing to show them and you can, you can black out like all but the last four digits of the credit card. And then on a lot of invoices, it'll show, you know, the last four digits. Or you can even ask them to add ask your supplier to add that it was paid credit card, last four digits, whatever. So that it matches, just ask them to do it. Don't you add it. Ask your supplier to add that to the invoice. They know that if you're they're legit goods that you're paying with a credit card and they know if they're stolen goods or, like Kelley said, sell off the back of the truck. You're using cash. So this can this can really help you sometimes with these objections really can.
Kelly [00:14:32] And I and I know again that it's painful an little scary. But so is this action that you've endured. So, you know I think of it like this. If it's a tool in the toolbox that can help you solve this problem, you should avail yourself of it, as long as it's not something that has more harm than good, and this is not something that's going to harm you, it's not something that's going to make it worse. It's only going to help you.
Lesley [00:14:57] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Next question. Kelly.
Kelly [00:15:01] All right. I'm ready.
Lesley [00:15:05] This is, from Akash. Okay. My Amazon account is under review.
Kelly [00:15:15] My favorite.
Lesley [00:15:17] We and we both go Yeah. And Akash I just want you to know that is directed toward Amazon not toward you. And I sent all the documents, that were expected. Now my account is deactivated the last few months. Can you explain what I do?
Kelly [00:15:34] Oh, no. That's so frustrating. I mean, do you want me to take it or.
Lesley [00:15:41] Go ahead.
Kelly [00:15:41] Run with it. Don't give up. Is the first thing I'm going to say for you to do. Is frustrating. Is what you who have just experienced is, and probably how incredibly despair inducing it is to go from, okay, I'm stuck in this limbo, but there's hope to shut down. Don't give up. Second thing is, I would recommend going back to your documentation and looking at what Amazon has asked of you, because one common mistake that we see is that clients in their panic will not get exactly what Amazon has asked for. Or there is something that is a little different. So for example, it can be challenging to get certain types of bills or utility things together because maybe they're not in your name, but they're tied to your to where you do your primary business. Maybe you do your business out of a home office or whatever, but the bills not in your name. That can be really challenging. And people don't always explain that really well. The other thing that I can see that happens is that people send really poor quality, documents. What I mean by that is you don't have a great scanner. You're in a hurry. You take really junky photos with your cell phone. They're crooked. There's a crease right in the middle of the information they need to read. And you send that on. Well, they're going to reject it. They're going to reject it. So don't give up. Check your documents for accuracy. Make sure it matches the requests that you got. And also look to see if it's a good enough rendering. Turn stuff to PDF if you can. It's a better quality thing than doing a Jpeg typically, a little bit smaller file a lot of times too. So it can be really better to do that versus an image. Those are the three things I think of when I find out that somebody's been deactivated. There's almost always an inconsistency or problem with the quality of the documents.
Lesley [00:17:34] Yeah. And also, I got to tell you, Akash, one really frustrating thing is these account reviews take forever and then they deactivate you. And that is so frustrating. I just want to throw stuff. That's. That's probably why we both made face in the beginning when I read the book. Because, you know, it's very stressful to get together all the documents for an account review. Let me submit all the stuff. I have one client that we submitted everything for his account in October and we are still waiting October. So yes. So yeah, that's fun. And so it's it's just silly. And and sometimes also at Amazon, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
Kelly [00:18:13] So true.
Lesley [00:18:13] True. It is completely reasonable to resubmit a lot of times with these, reviews, they've actually given you an email address to send all the documents, look through back through all the emails and see if they gave you an email address to submit. Because sometimes that's more likely to get reviewed than the whatever you still have in seller performance.
Kelly [00:18:34] Yes. And I just thought of something that my fabulous consultant, Nita, she's not over here. She's not over here. But she might be Lauren. Who who works with us in our consulting firm, asked a great question today. That also can have an impact on verification docs in a big, big way. And we do see this frequently is what language are they in? Amazon does not have the ability to support any and all languages. If you, for example, are in, you know, if your documents are in a very. You know, rare dialect of, say, Arabic or a dialect that is not commonly spoken in Hindi or excuse me in India and it's not Hindi. You may have a problem getting your documentation read, which means you would need to get it translated and probably notarized to confirm that the translation is correct. That's another added hurdle that can happen to people, and we see it a ton. And I think actually we've probably seen it more in the last few months than we have in a while. So, keep that in mind as well. That can be a stumbling block if you have something that is not in English, and it is not in the list of the languages that they support, which you can find on the original notification that shut you down if your language is not there, they do not have the ability to translate it.
Lesley [00:19:51] And if you do submit, translated documents, you need the original and the translated version. And then to note to them that you are sending both so they don't just look at one and reject it out of hand. They need to know that, yes, there's a page two. Yeah. On the file. Yeah. And, we had our charcoal toothpaste from so long ago was, oh, Cambodia I think. Yep. I mean, and Amazon was like, whatevs. And so as soon as we got everything translated, we were good to go. Yeah.
Kelly [00:20:20] And so that's that's why I bring it up. Because there are I think the thing about this process that I would highlight, particularly as verification, is that there just so many pieces, a lot of moving parts and probably almost more documentation than anything else that you could possibly deal with as a seller. So there's the potential for so many mistakes, little and big, to derail you. And the translation one is one that a lot of people, I think they gloss over it because they're so panicked about finding what they need to find that they're like, I'll just get it together and send it. It'll be okay. Well, maybe. Maybe not. It depends on depends on what language it's in.
Lesley [00:20:56] So and Kelly, I just have to point out that Sadat with our first question said, thank you so much. You're right about Kelly. She added very valuable pieces of advice. Yes, I'm telling you, she's smarter than I am and she knows more. So lies is so many lies.
Kelly [00:21:14] We are.
Lesley [00:21:14] Smarter.
Kelly [00:21:15] Together.
Lesley [00:21:16] That's that's true, that's true. So thank you. Our Wonder Twins power thing going right.
Kelly [00:21:22] Good. Good luck to you, sir. And I hope that, if you do need some additional questions answered, you give us a call so we can help you out.
Lesley [00:21:29] Okay, so my next question is from. Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize, I'm going to say your name wrong. Omotosho hmhm. My Amazon KDP, that is Kindle Direct publishing account got banned because they thought it was connected to an account they'd banned before, and I was still sent messages to pay for ads after the account had been banned. Thanks, Amazon. Yeah, I filed an appeal, but nothing happened. Okay. Omotoso. And I'm sorry I said it wrong, but I got to tell you, you are not alone. So the first thing you need to know is you are not alone. And I really think that's like the whole value of this podcast is when we tell people the problem that they have is not them. So you filed an appeal with Kindle Direct Publishing and you got no response. That's what they do. Yep. They pretty much ignore, appeals, all the time. Or they say we received your appeal. Sorry. Yeah. Or you can actually call them, and they will tell you that they filed an appeal for you. So, like, you call and say. Hey, man, I got this problem. You suspended my account, and it's inaccurate. I'm not actually connected to another account. And so I need to appeal. And you're sitting there on the phone, like, waiting for them to tell you how to appeal or the next step, and they're like, okay, I've just filed your appeal for you. And they literally write out a sentence like, like seller says no related account. And that's the appeal they filed for you. And then you've you've used your appeal. It's the stupidest thing. It's actually worse than stellar performance for, for three sellers. So and then I love that they're telling you to pay for ads. However, if the ads were number one. If they ran before you were suspended. Or number two, they ran after you were suspended, but they don't cost very much. First step is you pay that bill and then after you get reinstated, you come back and you tell them that you want a refund and that you only paid it because you had to get reinstated. Now I'm I'm talking if it's like, you know, a couple hundred bucks and you can afford it. If it's thousands of dollars, don't pay the bill. But if it's a couple hundred bucks, you need to pay that bill or they won't even consider your appeal. Second thing is. They don't actually like review appeals, as far as I can tell. I mean, maybe they do, but, every Kindle Direct publishing I've gotten back, I've done through escalations. So this is where we tell you the magic email address and the magic thing to try, which is you're going to email Jeff at Amazon.com. Yes, we know Jeff no longer works there. However, there are a staff of people who read his email and you want to address it. Dear Executive Seller relations. Now, I know that that is three peat, but they're the closest you're going to get to KDP people working in this group of people. Yeah. And then they will direct this where it needs to go. And you're going to need to explain why they think it's connected to another account. Or you can say you have no idea, but you need to make darn sure that you really have no idea, because if you say you have no idea and you actually have a connection, they're just going to deny you and ignore you. So brainstorm. If there's ever been any kind of Amazon account with that log in email address, it can be a buyer account, a seller account, another Kindle Direct publishing account, an associates account. Is there anything ever that you've had that's been banned? Because if you get an associates account beyond or a seller account banned, or by your account banned and is the same email address as your KDP, it's going to. So you got to make absolutely sure you've never had anything in the past that was banned.
Kelly [00:25:41] Or anybody in your household as well, like a spouse, a parent, a close relative that would have a lot of common, information with you. That could be the source of the problem as well. And that is unfortunately increasingly common because Amazon's been around a long time now. They've done a lot of things. They've got a lot of services. And it doesn't take much to get connected to somebody else. So all all of that what Leslie just said, plus a bag of chips.
Lesley [00:26:09] And once again, I hate saying this because we we do not do this podcast as like a business development venture. It's always been our model at Riverbend that we give away a lot of free information. And then you know that we know what we're talking about, and we build trust with people who are Amazon sellers. And then when they have a problem, they come to us. So I hate saying this, but it's true. Yeah. If you try your escalation to the Jeff team and it doesn't go anywhere. Give us a call. We would love to work with you and see if we can fix it. But it's sometimes these are really difficult, frankly, because the KDP team does not have a good structure for how they handle appeals. Just straight up.
Kelly [00:26:52] Yeah, it's very different. And it's always been that way. And even even before it was Kindle and it was CreateSpace, it was the same thing. So you had issues with getting to the right people and getting the right information in front of them. But we've had good success with Kindle and there is a path forward. It just sometimes doesn't seem like it's moving very fast. And as we've noted in other examples tonight, Amazon's not always the most responsive as you have also found out. So don't let that be the deterrent that keeps you from getting it back there. There are ways to move. We just have to, you know, get the particulars of your situation under control and figure out what those are. But there are ways.
Lesley [00:27:32] So funny thing I was thinking about today. Kelly. Kelly and I were talking about lightning deals and joking around about something, and, it is someone who had done a post on LinkedIn about lightning deals, and I found myself wanting to comment on their post. Oh, yeah. Another thing Amazon can suspend. And you know, it's it's funny, people think of Riverbend and also think of just Amazon in general when it comes to suspensions. They think, oh, that is something that happens to third party sellers. If they even know about suspensions, they think it's limited to third party sellers. What they don't realize is, you can be suspended from Amazon Associates, Kindle Direct Publishing, your buyer account can be suspended.
Kelly [00:28:15] Subscribe and save.
Lesley [00:28:17] Subscribe and safe lightning deals. Your brand registry, portions of brand registry, like just losing report a violation, just losing certain brands, just losing ability to add users to your account. You can lose Project Zero. So anything that is an Amazon program that you can take it, oh, Amazon Pay, anything that is an Amazon program that you can take advantage of. You can also have suspended. It's a crazy world over at Amazon. Yeah.
Kelly [00:28:53] It is that the truth.
Lesley [00:28:56] So our next question is from Ed Lane. And Ed Lane asks, do I have to be enrolled in Brand registry to sell private label products on Amazon? Yeah, sure helps though. That's a great answer. So the short answer is, as Kelly said, no. Sure helps.
Kelly [00:29:17] I mean, realistically, you you gain a lot by being able to register your brand because the whole point of brand registry was originally to give you IP protection measures and some control over the detail pages that you create for your products. Very, very important things for sellers. So while you don't have to register, like maybe you don't have your trademark settled yet or you haven't even decided on it yet, that can be a blocker to getting trade. Getting into brand registry because you have to have at least registered your trademark. But let's say you have done that part. You've done that footwork. Go you because that's a pain in the butt and it takes forever. And it's nerve wracking. And you're like, did I pick the right name? Yeah. I don't know that panic at all. Nope, nope, don't know at all. But if you've done those things, getting set up with brand registry can really, really help you. But it isn't a requirement. It's that's kind of what is I don't know, is is it a nice to have? I don't even know if I would call it that anymore. I almost feel like it's it's that thing to aspire to if you haven't done it yet, because it will elevate the way that your brand is seen and is able to be protected on Amazon. But it is not a requirement in the strictest sense of the word. Would you be better off for doing it? Yes, I believe that even with brand registry problems, which we will not get into because that's too many podcast count. Yeah. I do think it's worth it.
Lesley [00:30:43] So, and especially because let's say you pick a winner. Yeah. And you develop a really successful product and it's selling like hotcakes and it's killing your category. It is going to take about six weeks for someone to knock that product off, and then just start selling on your listing, because why would they create their own? You didn't do brand registry, so you're not protecting yourself and your trademark isn't really protected as part of the Amazon system. Therefore, some seller can just, you know, sell counterfeits off of your listing that are bad quality. And then all of a sudden your rating start going down and all these other problems. So, if you if you never hit a winner on Amazon, not having brand registry and going to hurt you that much, but if you get a real winner, it's going to break your heart. Yep.
Kelly [00:31:32] And honestly, it's kind of that whole. That whole axiom. If you can, why wouldn't you? Because there's really not anything that you're sacrificing per se to to do this. I mean, it just gives you some more tools, and those tools can be the difference, I think, between protecting your your investment and not in some cases, especially when it comes to IP. So don't don't dismiss it as I can't do that and you shouldn't do that or whatever. You're have to evaluate where it fits with your business at the stage that your business is in right now. But I absolutely think it can be a game changer in the best way for sellers.
Lesley [00:32:13] Okay, so I've got a Facebook question for you, Kelly. And it's another another of your super favorite topics. Oh, God. Or hey, this is from Christian or Christian. I apologize, y'all, if I'm butchering your names everywhere. I love you. We do what we can. Forgive me. My account was under review July 2023. They selected SKUs and asked for documentation. I submitted what I had. They asked for my suppliers invoice. My supplier didn't want to share it with me. My supplier agreed to submit documentation directly to Amazon. After doing this, Amazon insisted they couldn't validate the supplier and my inventory would be disposed. They are calling it unsuitable inventory investigation policy. Okay, so. So I want to jump on the first piece and then let you take in suitable inventory because you've worked more on those than I have. So your supplier may have submitted. Documentation directly to Amazon. I would be stunned if that was ever actually connected to your case. Amazon doesn't really some doesn't really accept documentation from third parties, and they won't disclose anything to third parties and will talk to third parties and believe third parties as far as they're concerned, the third party could be your brother in law, with a really great scanner and the ability to forge documents. So, I would really be shocked if any of that actually reached Amazon. They probably didn't consider that at all. Okay, I'm done now. You. Kelly.
Kelly [00:33:55] So there's been a big uptick in these investigation types. We just started seeing them within the last six months. And there seems to be a similar mechanism driving those. That is driving the supply chain verification, one that we talked about earlier, in this podcast, because the asks are almost identical. They're looking for those documents that you mentioned. They're looking for information that proves that your stuff is is legitimate. Now, there are some of the cases I've seen where there's a safety angle, like there actually is something wrong with the goods that makes them unsafe and thus unsuitable. But unsuitable is a pretty broad term, and Amazon seems to be using it for mostly what I think they are classifying as either inauthentic goods or things with condition problems. Not so much anything with infringement or again, the safety issues. But I will say that a good chunk of what we've looked at have been consumable goods. So there's always risks there. But what Lesley said is so true. On one hand it's like, yeah, you supplier, you want to help me? But there's literally no way for them to get that information that they have submitted if they even did it. To be connected to your account. So the only way to ensure that this process moves forward is for you to do all the work, which is really frustrating. But if they won't give it to you, there is no way for them to submit it. On your behalf that is going to get it to your account. So I agree with Leslie. It was probably never is probably never, considered these are kind of difficult to overcome the same way the other ones are. But a lot of it depends on how much documentation you have, how clear and forthright you are with your answers and questions, and how responsive you are. But it is not the end of the line. But again, have you vetted your supplier? Do you have the right documents? Have you messed with any of those documents in an attempt to make them look better? There's a lot of factors that can go into why these things don't always go the right way. But even if you have tried and failed to appeal and you haven't gotten where you want, that doesn't mean we can't potentially help you. If nothing else. Book a call. Let one of our consultants look at what you have done so far, and tell you where you might have gone better, or if you did make a mistake which nobody's born knowing how to do this stuff. Nobody. Nobody as smart as we all are, as smart as we might be in our respective businesses just knows how to communicate with Amazon. It's like it's ridiculous that we we exist. In a way, it's ridiculous to exist. But I'm here to tell you that you can be brilliant, and you still are not going to have what it takes to get through that broker's bureaucracy and inertia in some ways, to get to the right answer. If you're not talking to somebody who can, you know, kind of paint that path, it's hard. It's not easy.
Lesley [00:37:00] And I'll also give you a crazy, stupid suggestion. That sounds insane, but I did get to work one time. So this.
Kelly [00:37:09] One time in being can't.
Lesley [00:37:10] Just, just say. Yeah. So, one time I did get a client to, sign an affidavit, where they swore that they would never contact their supplier. Supplier, that they would never disclose that information to anyone but Amazon. It went on and on, and then their supplier actually had their attorney look at it, because my client was a big enough buyer from that supplier that they didn't want to lose them, and rewrote it and made it into like, you're going to have to give up your firstborn and, you know, we're going to, stab you in the eye if you break this and, you know, all this stuff. But.
Kelly [00:37:53] Yeah, it works. And these penalties. Yeah, but.
Lesley [00:37:57] They did didn't get the sanitized invoices from doing that. But we've had a lot of situations where we have offered signed affidavits, even signed affidavits that no lawyer was involved, where our, our a consultant worked with the client to write up language that was reasonable. And then the client goes down to their local UPS store or whatever that has a, a notary, and they, they notarize it and they send it off. And people will accept that because they know they can take it to a court and waive it in front of the judge and say, did you sign this? Yes. Okay. Judgment for the plaintiff. I mean, that's it, right. So yeah.
Kelly [00:38:38] No. That's legit. That's a good that's a really good suggestion. Sometimes it takes a little bit of creative thinking to figure out how to get around this. Kind of blocker that you have with suppliers who don't want to give their, their stuff up. So totally understandable why they don't. But.
Lesley [00:38:54] Okay. So we just had a question from Sarfraz. Come in on Facebook and we have a related question we got by email, from Adam. So we're going to hit these two at once and know we can't do a happy hour without talking about, multiple accounts or related account suspensions if every time. And I'll tell you why. Multiple accounts, linked accounts, related accounts. The reason is because that is like our number one suspension type and has been for a year or two years, I don't know, long time. Yeah. There's lots of it. So a quick primer on this. You can only have one selling account on Amazon if. Okay. Not anymore. So confusing. I was like, where are we going on this? You can't have more than one selling account on Amazon. If you have a legitimate business reason, you must have legitimate business reason. You cannot ever have had an account that is no longer allowed to sell on the platform. If you have ever had an account suspended for any reason, you are banned as a human. You're not allowed to sell on Amazon. So if you open a new account or if your new husband or wife that you now live with and didn't live with before had a suspension, or your roommate from college had a suspension, or your cousin that you want shared a bank account with, that your grandparents set up as a kid? Savers account has had a suspension. All of these can make Amazon think that you had a bad actor account at some time. There are reasons for this. Number one, if you break serious rules, they don't want you on their platform. And number two, if you had inventory. That they considered, counterfeit or inauthentic or anything like that. They think you're just going to move it to your other account and sell it. You know why they think that? Because that's what people do. So, that's why if you've ever had a bad account or they think you're related to a bad account, you can't sell on Amazon. So, one person says, have you been able to help sellers with multiple accounts suspensions? I've submitted appeals and a notarized letter, but to no avail of getting approved. And then the the other account is fast. The other account. The other question is fascinating. I have a deactivated Canadian store. For having a duplicate account or related account whatever. My U.S. account is fine. Will this affect it at all? Oh, so to start with, have we helped sellers with multiple multiple accounts? Yes. Every day. We get these solved on the regular. They are more time consuming than impossible. So the vast majority of the time they can be solved. But they can take a long time. Because people in the front line of Amazon do not feel empowered to overturn these decisions, which a lot of times they're not made by AI, they're not made by tech. But the tech detected something and served it up to a human and said, you need to click suspend. And so frontline people in solar performance don't feel like they can overturn techno technology and intelligence like that. So most of these are solved through multiple escalations to different teams at Amazon.
Kelly [00:42:30] And there's a difference too between multiple and related accounts. I want to clarify that because I think this is really easy to get twisted. We have seen of late some violations coming across as critical defects which I find just baffling. But whatever age are some critical defects for multiple account policy violations. And in those cases, there actually were two separate accounts, two different customer rates, two different setups, but they were violating the rules. Guess how? By selling the same exact thing on both accounts at the same freaking time. Same brand, same same everything. And even though they weren't, like the same people, they're very obviously related and connected and doing things that were designed to get a bunch of market share that they shouldn't have. It all should have been on one account. If they had the two, they should have been doing completely different things and they weren't, so they got busted. The other situation is the one that Leslie explained earlier, where you have had an account in the past that was closed for some sort of reason, whether legitimate or not. But Amazon has decided that you didn't. You done the badge, you're not getting back. And so what happens there is a little bit different investigation, but both of them have the same. This requires persistence. This requires stick to itiveness. This requires you not to die of a broken heart in the process. Before we get to the end. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and it is a pain. And it requires you also to do that thing that you mentioned earlier. If you recall, Leslie was saying, where could I possibly have been connected to somebody? How could I have been connected to somebody? And it's can be nerve wracking to try to figure out, especially if you have no idea who it is. But at least Amazon does now tell you you're related to an account that starts with whatever. That can give you somewhere to start. Even if it's to say, I have no idea who that is.
Lesley [00:44:22] Well, and not gonna lie, I have worked on some of these suspensions where frankly, I came up with an idea with the seller. So, so will one of our consultants will get on the phone with the seller and ask, go through this list of ridiculous number of questions of ways that we have seen people's accounts linked. That sounds ludicrous. Again. I mean, we will just keep asking and keep asking and keep asking and even send them to talk to family and friends and roommates and spouses and all the things. So there have been times where I've chosen the most likely option, or the somewhat viable option. And I've told the client, okay, straight up, I don't actually think this is your problem, because really, they're not supposed to suspend based on using public internet at a seller event. Yeah, but that's all we've got. So we're going to cop to that and see what happens. And believe it or not, sometimes that works. So.
Kelly [00:45:27] In those cases, I tend to think that the original investigation was a mistake. And, and you just had to be able to say, look, you know, and present information to the reviewer who who can see, oh, this doesn't really line up correctly. But, you know, if I had to say anything about this particular suspension type. Persistence is what will win you your account back. Every day I try to reassure clients that are working with our consultants who are frustrated because they can't get a response, or it's just taking a long time. These things are not solved in a day. Rome was not built in a day. It didn't fall in a day. And getting your account back is not going to happen overnight. Do we get one and done successes with these? Absolutely. But I tend to believe those are the most egregious mistakes. And it's really easy for the person looking at it to go, oh, we we shouldn't have done that. That was that was wrong. But the majority of these do not work that way. And you have to be willing to to put that marathon level effort in, because that's what's going to take to get you back.
Lesley [00:46:33] And to answer your question, Adam, about the deactivated Canadian store, for a duplicate duplicate account. But U.S. account is fine. You have a ticking time bomb in your house. Or like, my favorite analogy is actually Wiley Coyote when he has the anvil and it's, like, hanging over his head and he's waiting for it to fall. You are wily, coyote. You have got to solve that Canadian suspension, because eventually it's going to blow up your your U.S. account. I'm surprised it hasn't already, and it's only a matter of time. So you got to address that. Don't let.
Kelly [00:47:13] It sit. I mean I know it's tempting and they're not generally going to act on like if you have your account over in Saudi Arabia or your account in the Netherlands or Brazil or wherever, and something goes wrong, they're not necessarily going to come after the U.S. account. But I always, always recommend to sellers that if they do have something happen that takes down their Brazil account or whatever, do something with it. Don't just pretend it's not there because it will come back to bite you at the most inopportune moment. Generally in the second week of Q4, when you're doing your sales and you have the most money to be held for the next 90 days while they decide if you're a bad actor. Please don't let that happen to you. Act sooner. I feel like that's probably the number one piece of advice I give clients in some form or fashion, which is the longer you wait to resolve, the longer it's going to take, and the worse is going to be the. As soon as you know there's a problem, deal with it. Don't wait.
Lesley [00:48:08] And Sir Frost has said, thank you Kelly. Amazon did tell me after my third call. Thank you Amazon who the other account belongs to. Good. That's so useful. Okay so just throw this out there real quick. Because we're getting around and we're getting the lightning around time. If you, if you actually know who that human is. So there's a there's a few ways you can go about this. If you were actually somehow related, if it was related to you and it was your account, sometimes you have to appeal the old account. Once you get it back up, then your new account automatically comes back up or just takes a single email saying, hey, y'all makes it. The other one is fixed, so put me back up. And if if not, if you know who it is, then you should be able to write up some viable explanation. If you have no idea who it is and you have a notarized letter, then it's time to start escalating. Yep. Okay, so I've got two more, questions that I want to hit before we leave and we're almost out of time. But first, the Hippo of Change, sponsored by the Hippo of Change. Part of the reason I do that, y'all, is we used to have a marketing manager who hated when I pulled out this intro that I love. We love you, Tina, and used it as the hippo of Change. What are you even doing? I was like, I don't know, people like my quirkiness, maybe. And if not, at least it's funny. But go before Lightning Round. Just reminding you. Today is the big launch day for Amazon Incubator. Check it out. I would love it if you'd read it. Also, since Amazon, can't seem to deliver anyone's books and has run out of a whole bunch of their nodes. We have bonuses still available instead of just for preorder. We're still in preorder, even if we didn't want to mean to pay. Even if we didn't want to be. Because, yeah. Because Amazon. Yay. So Amazon the Amazon incubator.com get your bonuses. You just enter your order number. You won't regret it. Yeah. And Sarfraz says he's going to be our new friend explaining his work and payments on your way because I've given up to do it myself. Dude, if it's causing you this much heartburn, time to let it go. You sign up, you.
Kelly [00:50:23] You sign up, Sarfraz, and I'll make you a promise. I will personally look at your stuff and set you up with the consultant who I think can best help you. And we will do everything we can. We don't have all the power in the world, but we do have a lot of smarts, and we have a lot of stamina and stick to itiveness for this. So thank you for trusting us to try to help you.
Lesley [00:50:43] Amen. If you've run out of. Energy. We've got fresh energy for you. Yeah. Okay. Two quickies. Ready? Are you aware of any recent changes in Amazon's policy related to product condition? Customer complaints. That's a tongue twister where Amazon now hits sellers much more frequently with such complaints as opposed to a year ago. From Tanya. Okay, Tanya. It feels that way in your world. Yeah. We we have this problem a lot because Amazon is millions of sellers, millions of seller accounts, and our universe is thousands of seller accounts for us at Riverbend. Right. We have a lot of clients, but it's thousands of accounts. It's not millions. And so when we think we see a trend, sometimes it's really a trend. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it just happens to be the people willing to pay for help or the people really flummoxed or, you know, it's it's hard to tell. You might have, more, more volume. Maybe you've grown your store, maybe you've added some products that are actually underperforming. Maybe you just got unlucky with some particular customers. That happens to. I would strongly encourage you to download your returns report. If you do, a merchant fulfilled. It's uglier and you have to actually scroll through it online. But if you do FBA, you can download your returns report in Excel spreadsheet and you can sort it by return reason. And a lot of times there's customer comments. You can see the most often reason for the return. And that can really help you understand also voice of the customer. Some of the data in voice of the customer is trash. And then some of it is very illuminating just in real. So like.
Kelly [00:52:36] We said and I.
Lesley [00:52:36] Love it, I would I would super encourage you because to me there are some things that we have seen tick up like this unsuitable inventory investigation that for sure is a uptick but condition and so, you know.
Kelly [00:52:51] Upset the apple cart. I'm telling you, nothing is normal when it comes to stuff. Although I agree with Leslie, I don't think that there's been any change. But consider what time of year it is. It's still January. It's still prime return season from the post post holiday stuff. So some of it may be coming from that and know that Amazon always, you know, is looking at new ways to find customer feedback that tells them what's going on with stuff. So anecdotally, probably not a change. But for you personally it could be. So I agree with everything, Leslie advised. And if you're still not sure where to look. Call us. We'll sit here with a consultant to talk, and we'll walk you through the best ways to interrogate your own inventory and your processes, so you're on target.
Lesley [00:53:34] Okay. Last question.
Kelly [00:53:36] Ready?
Lesley [00:53:37] This one's from Tamara. And Kelly is going to ask this question. Kelly's kind of. Kelly's kind of washed out. I'm sad. Oh, no. Because I'm sure. Henry. Yeah. You just have to trust me that this is Kelly asking this question for Tamara. Yeah. Maybe being in front of black helps. And there she is. And she is asking. Amazon relabeled our products at fulfillment centers, and customers complained they received the wrong products. They they place the frequently returned item warning on the listing. We requested a bin check, and they confirmed that the products in the fulfillment centers matched the product detail page. However, we can see that there was some label placed over our UPC and then removed. How do we get Amazon to remove the warning from the listing and refund us for the returns that happened because of their error, which they are now denying? Okay, I have so much anger for you right now, Tamara. Like I, I hope it I hope it just helps you to know that other people are super angry on your behalf and want to, like, smash things, because this problem Amazon sometimes has makes me absolutely livid. The worst example that I've ever seen of this will make you want to cry. There was a client who was selling an item for Ginger, reveals Hmhm. And so everything in the external packaging was neutral. And Amazon re stickered the inventory and mixed up the boys and the girls. So the pink and blue was mixed up. And, sometimes they will stick your inventory in the charge you for recycling it, even though they did it wrong. I really enjoy how in this case, when they did the bin check, they figured out what they'd done wrong and then tried to cover it up. Yeah. Oh, you said. She said fixed it. Yeah. Yeah. And then. Yes. Then if you're not watching Kelly then gave air quotes to fixed it because that's called a cover up. And this is one of those. The cover up is worse than the crime because it is.
Kelly [00:56:05] So aggravating. And you know what's worse about this to me than almost anything when it comes to these issues? Leslies how impenetrably difficult it is to get to a person or a team in an FBS structure to fix their screw up. And you're not even just talking to FBI, because I think with the detail page issue, you're probably looking at a different team. So who the heck do you talk to to try to figure this out? This is this stuff makes me irrationally angry the same way that Leslie was talking about.
Lesley [00:56:36] So it sounds like this is a private label product where they have the UPC on the package without an offensive sticker. Over at Amazon if you stickered over the UPC itself. Yep. So the biggest issue here is not necessarily the refunds, but I feel you. Tamara, because that is like a right fighting thing that I am all about. But the bigger issue is to get them to, to to remove the frequently returned item morning on the listing detail page, because that is absolutely not okay. So. Here's what I would do. First, do you really need to calculate the data? And you need to put it into percentages and things that make sense. Need before and after data here. So try and identify when you think this happened and then your return rates prior to your return rate since, or you can show it by, you know, order, like a shipment to FBA before and after.
Kelly [00:57:45] Sales numbers before and after for the proposed date, because I bet your sales numbers are down as well.
Lesley [00:57:51] Absolutely. And return rates. There's some data here. And then, there's two things you can do. First, you have to put this all on the record. And so I think you need to open a case that you try and get to the FBA team that's got all this data in it, and that is not going to get you anything, and it's not going to win anything. It's not going to fix your problem. But we always have to start with getting your case on the record. It needs to be in a case of the case ID needs to be very well written and presented, and you need to show how this is hurting buyer experience. It is hurting selection at Amazon because people are immediately deleting this from their selection instead of what they will buy. And it is hurting Amazon because their sales are lower. So you need to don't even talk about you. It's hurting buyers selection and Amazon's profit. So then and I hate saying this Tamara because this sounds self-promoting but it's just is what it is. The only way you're going to get this fix is to go to people at Amazon who manage brands, who take care of brands and who take care of sellers, who own brands. So I would really love if you give us a shot at this one, because we have escalation contacts in those areas. That as you all can imagine, we don't really give those out publicly because, then they would get flooded with emails and they wouldn't answer anyone and they would deprecate their email and we would never solve a problem. So. I think that's the only way to solve this. And if you have the right data set and a persuasively written letter, I think there's a chance of getting that removed. One barrier you're going to have over time is that this was done by a computer. So even though this was done based on some rate of something somewhere, it was a number that put that frequently returned item up there. It's not a human. Even when you solve this, it can come back. Yeah. So you're gonna have to fight it until that rate is fixed, which that rate being fixed could take 90 days, 180 days of not having this ridiculousness. Yeah.
Kelly [01:00:02] But at the same time.
Lesley [01:00:03] I just went on and on. No, not at all. No.
Kelly [01:00:06] All that was valuable in my opinion. I mean, Tamra will be the judge of that, obviously, but I thought it was valuable. And she's right. I mean, persistence again. And sometimes having to go back and knock heads about it again can be required. Although I do think that there's a better than, better than 50% chance here that we could get that fixed. The refunds are going to be a little bit tougher, but there's an argument to be made there as well. But I absolutely think there's a way forward to get that label removed from the case. And.
Lesley [01:00:33] So there is a concept in art of the deal that I love, where it's basic negotiating skills and it's talking about how you make your asks really big. But that is not what you actually have to have. You need to understand when you go into a negotiation what you need versus what you want. What you need is to get frequently returned item removed from that listing. What you want is to get some money out of them just for the, admit what you did, man. Admit it, admit it. Take it out of someone's hide. But.
Kelly [01:01:08] Pound of flesh, man.
Lesley [01:01:10] Right. And so that's the kind of thing where, yes, you make all the assets, because that is how they were like. Well, we can at least make them happy by fixing this one thing. That's kind of how you're trying to get in their head. You're manipulating them by asking for this. But then you know in your heart what you've got to get removed. Is that frequently returned items. So yeah.
Kelly [01:01:30] I totally agree with that.
Lesley [01:01:31] Sure about this one. Yeah.
Kelly [01:01:33] But that don't give up on that one. Let us help you. I think that this is something that we can we can use our expertise and our, our knowledge of how to construct that argument convincingly. It's like like I tell people we're Amazon whisperers, we speak the language, we know how to have that conversation. That's our greatest strength and that. And then we're going to tell you the truth, we'll always be honest with you about what your situation is and what we think we can do to help or what we can't do. But bottom line, you're going to get honest, very high integrity help from us. That's going to move the needle more often than not.
Lesley [01:02:05] So something very similar we've worked on before is getting the not returnable, removed from listings when that was in a category that was not supposed to be not returnable, because when you say not returnable, then no one wants to buy. It's bad. Sale killer. Okay. Well, Kelly, thank you, thank you, thank you, as always. Yes. And thank you, everyone for joining us. One last plug Amazon incubator available today until our friends from a real publishing house. You all and you know, like real distribution from Simon and Schuster. And it's a great book and I, I really I really want it to be helpful to sellers to meet your goals. Not that you have to have a great, green Lamborghini, or buy a system that works for everybody or pay $5,000 for my coaching, but pay 25 bucks for a book and let it help you set goals and strategies to get where you want to be in 2024. So I hope some of you will check it out. And thank you so much for joining us today on Happy Hour. Hey.