I had to push hard to get a responsive reply (7 messages back and forth), but here is what “Brand Registry” says about Amazon’s deliberate vandalism of my title, removing the brand name in their own “experiment”, and assuming that the difference in sales is due to their change rather than other more relevant factors:
"Note: We have reviewed your case in details and we would like to inform you that, There are experiments which may have been created automatically from the Manage Inventory page (menu > Inventory > Manage All Inventory). These experiment can be found on the Manage Experiments UI at menu > Brands > Manage Experiments.
*You can opt out of auto-experimentation by following the process: *
There is a check box below certain fields that triggers an experiment. You can opt out of future automated experiments by unchecking the box when making product listing updates on the Manage Inventory page.
Please note you cannot remove an ASIN from an active experiment. You must cancel your experiment. You can then create a new experiment with a different ASIN. To maintain statistical validity, you cannot pause and restart an experiment.
To cancel an experiment, go to the experiment details page by clicking ‘View results’ next to an experiment on the Manage Experiments home page. From the experiment details page, you can cancel your experiment. As a reminder, you are more likely to get accurate results if you let an experiment run for its full duration."
Now the above is from Brand Registry, and sure enough, if one looks at the Product Details (under “edit” for a product listing), there IS a checkbox, and it seems to be checked by default - “Create A/B experiment on product name upon listing submission. Note the winning treatment will be automatically published.”
And under Brands → Manage Experiments, one CAN halt an ongoing experiment that one did not start.
But how to keep this from STARTING in the first place? No idea. I guess we need to demand “no vandalism” on listings via the FTC, as the impact of removing one’s trademark from one’s product listing is a feeble form of “reverse passing off”, as Amazon’s brand is enhanced by presentation of my product without my brand, but insteadm with only theirs.
I can see the utility of this in the cesspool of non-brands and store names that Amazon has created, as most of them are “brands” that do not exist outside the Amazon ecosystem, and there is no possible brand loyalty for “SKYROKU” or “ZYGTRUY”. (see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html), but this is because most PRODUCTS sold on Amazon do not exist outside the Amazon ecosystem or the Alibaba/Aliexpress ecosystem - landfill-ready plastic junk of zero value, made by people that are such lowlifes, they appropriate Bacterial Culture.
But for those of us with real brands that exist outside of, and pre-date Amazon, it is frustrating to deal with this nonsense, as removing my brand name, which is also the name of the product simply can’t help sales.
