10 year account is at risk of suspension. Millions in sales annually. This new DD+7 nonsense means they’re holding over $200,000 of my money.
Managed to get the order number that flagged my account. Surprise, the label was purchased through Amazon’s Buy Shipping. Submitted photos of item being packaged. Screenshot showing carrier first scan originated in my zip code. Photos of inventory in warehouse. Invoices for product.
Have appealed twice so far and both times have been rejected.
We are moving to a different city in a few months due to our warehouse lease expiring. We’re in contract on a house in that city and scheduled to close on the 30th of this month. Need all the funds from that DD+7 balance to help with closing costs and the down payment. New warehouse build in new city scheduled to break ground on May 1.
The timing on this absurd allegation could not be better. It is potentially going to ruin EVERYTHING.
How do I get through to the boneheads at Amazon that we are not guilty of this crime?
When you get an Amazon account to this level, you should be paying for an extra insurance policy at Amazon (Strategic Account Services), AKA SAS, ironically the same acronym used for this forum. You get an escalation team and an actual person you can talk to and email whenever you want.
They make problems like this go away pretty fast.
Pay to play - Mafia Vig so Amazon can take even more.
But the alternative is ■■■■ like this. It’s not cheap but it has saved us more than handful of times over the last few years. Can actually sleep some nights.
You may want to post this situation on the Amazon forum and see if a Mod takes your case. The escalation folks on the forum are likely the same as SAS, and it’s free, if you get lucky.
If you do your own fulfillment in-house, then what is different about THIS order?
Was there some enclosure that might have been mistaken for “evidence” that the package was not shipped directly from you to the customer? I’ve had FedEx and UPS occasionally damage cartons, repack in a new box, and deliver the damaged box inside a new box, which can look weird to the customer - might this have happened? Any “tracking exceptions” on that order?
I hate to say it, but you may be the victim of a competitor who has gone to the trouble to hire “sock puppets”, who each order your product, and then make the complaint that it was drop-shipped, working for a fee paid by your competitor. They are told lies like “this is a QA check”, we are auditing Amazon’s internal controls as an outside auditor, and so on. No one is told that they are committing overt sabotage.
Definitely open a case in the forums and keep sending that appeal back. You can endlessly do it, just FYI - this came from a phone call from the escalation team after I faced a wrongful flag that went nowhere a few years ago.
The plus side is at risk of suspension isn’t suspended, just another way to make our hair turn gray prematurely.
You know, I know that you have had SAS with good results for long time, but I inherently disagree with the concept of SAS as insurance. It’s short from Amazon’s fearmongering its sellers.
I understand that even a very healthy account that’s moving long 7 if not 8 digits is a drop in the bucket to Amazon’s eyes. And while I’m full survival-of-the-fittest minded, and believe that there shouldn’t be such a thing as “too big to fail”, I think is ridiculous to have the extra “tax” of (that) SAS.
Is like the nonsense of having to pay a D&B number (preferably a higher subscription so that your ranking is “up to date”), to be on RangeMe to apply to sell in most stores, then having to pay DoT for the right to be registered for Hazmat, don’t get me started on any layer of taxes, and so on so forth. How many non-adding-value parasites do real businesses need to subsidize for no other reason that that they exist?
Amazon sells millions an hour, so sure, even very good accounts are disposable, but only so many times. Is no consolation to OP, whom I wish of course success in this current mess, but an account that is moving $200k in DD7 volume should be deserving (not entitled, deserving) of a certain protection (benefit of the doubt), if nothing else, just out of track record.
I hate the AHR ranking that starts the “green” in 200. I find it offensive that it says: “you’re 200/1000, you’re in perfect health” because of the implied mediocrity of saying that 200/1000 is “excellent”, but I can come to terms with the concept of a bigger account having earned up to 800 points of leniency. In all fairness, it helped me 2 years ago when an accused me of IP infringement even though I sell my own USPTO-protected brand (long story, Amazon sent me a friendly message telling me in how much I was, my AHR was red, and it got “fixed” with an email that said “sorry, our bad” and no repercussions to the low-life that tried to f-me). Hopefully OP will be in a similar situation without having to fork money that he shouldn’t have to be bullied into spending.
You’re 100% right. But that is life on Amazon whether you like it or not. Need to connect reality. Doesn’t mean it’s right.
Just got a threat on our account this week bc someone left a review that our product put them in the hospital with a reaction that could not happen with the ingredients within. Likely fake.
Believe me, we aren’t rolling in dough. We do what we need to do to survive within this ■■■■ - hole marketplace. But it does pay my bills. And it’s not a lot of work at this point. And we don’t live in fear anymore. You can’t put a price on that.
To be honest, this sounds like a job for convicted felon Ed Rosenburg and his ASGTG team of bribed insiders to look into, so you can write your appeal to get past the bot. After all, he still stands by his claim that everyone does it.
I once had a person telling me that a flammable product had caused a multimillion dollar machine to catch on fire. And somehow of course it was my fault that he bought the $2 product that says flammable everywhere instead of the $5 product that says non-flammable everywhere. (ALS have my doubts of the currency of the multimillion dollar machine… likely Zimbabwean dollars?) don’t known don’t care. Point is I fee your pain and share the indignation.
Current inflation theater that we are having, dough is scarcer than facts. I’m curious as to how much prices of everything will bounce. Some of our raw materials have tripled and some of our items should have double prices, but I haven’t been able to guess how much to increase. I hope that they’ll normalize at some point, nothing as fun as having to increase prices weekly across platforms
In the instance shared above, they didn’t just make it go away because I paid them to.
It’s just another conduit to have a conversation with (IN ENGLISH), who actually understands the category and business in general. The information, documentation, and certifications, along with internal contacts are always handed over.
LIke if you sell 500,000 units of something, there might just be a correlation not causation case here or there (IF IT’S EVEN LEGIT).
Could these things be solved without SAS? Maybe, but not always. Every Amazon seller has a chance of getting caught in Amazon’s web like the OP here.
100% accurate but the really important things always get handled.
We do have our suspicions of something like that. We had similar happen in the past and had to sue the competing seller to get it to stop. Amazon was, of course, no help.
If a competitor is responsible for this, I’d sure like to know HOW they did it. Years back, I tried ordering from and reporting several drop shipping competitors but got nowhere with it.
I won’t post on the other forum unless I’m insanely desperate (i.e. suspended).
Does anyone know how some sellers are able to post on there somewhat anonymously (searching their store name on the 3rd party site turns up no results)?
accused me of IP infringement even though I sell my own USPTO-protected brand (long story, Amazon sent me a friendly message telling me in how much 
I was, my AHR was red, and it got “fixed” with an email that said “sorry, our bad” and no repercussions to the low-life that tried to f-me). Hopefully OP will be in a similar situation without having to fork money that he shouldn’t have to be bullied into spending.
