Well, the hammer finally fell on my Canadian account, deactivated yesterday. Looking for advice on the attempts to reactivate. Better to reply to my latest case which says “Work in Progress” or open new case(s)?
Should I just send documents yet again, or include verbiage to bullet point why each of the requirements is included? I know back in the day, it was though to keep PoAs super simple. I’ve done both ways actually with this end result, but will keep on plugging away for the 18 days I supposedly have to appeal. With the tariff nonsense killing my US sales, this was currently almost 80% of the business.
I know there is likely not a way to trigger a human to review, and I’ve had two phone calls. I also had a forum mod tell me I was 100% compliant, got the email that said so, and two days later the threat emails began again. Now here we are.
Anything to be done outside Amazon? Or does the ToS basically give them the power to give and take whatever/whenevery they choose?
Anything to be lost by cancelling the order that is sitting there, on the chance that they will likely hold on to my money?
This nine week saga is getting very old. Any advice and/or commiseration appreciated.
I so wish that I had some tips to offer you! I am a very small Amazon seller and so far have escaped dealing with any of these sort of painful problems (knock on wood) - I wouldn’t have a clue what to do. I have been working fairly aggressively to get my listings added to eBay, Biblio and Abe because I believe things will only continue to get worse on Amazon and want to limit my exposure. I’m pretty sure you sell on other marketplaces as well… is Canada your primary Amazon market? Do you have a significant sales volume there?
I just wanted to reach out to you as a fellow book seller and wish you a successful resolution to this problem. I hope that some of the other more savvy sellers here will be able to chime in with some concrete suggestions for you!
Thanks so much Gamis! I don’t have much hope of getting it back up and running. Sadly, Amazon Canada was about 80% of my sales, especially after the tariff nonsense.
The latest think I saw in the forums was someone stating that the PDF files sent to Amazon.ca are somehow not being read, thus the notice that says “since you have not replied with the correct documents…” No one knows, what works for one doesn’t work for others. I have done every single thing that anyone reported worked for them. My latest attempt was to re-send my Business Summary as a jpg file. But since my US side is undergoing verification, I cannot do it via the portal, I just attached it to the latest case, which claims to be Work in Progress, even after deactivation.
I do list on ABE books, but in the past few years it has been slowing down. Both Biblio and Alibris are about one sale per month.
When I posted here, I didn’t expect any solutions, just looking for commiseration. There are so few Canadians here. The forum is filled with accounts going down, with a few successes in between. For fun I sent an email to the Office of the Finance Minister, asking them to tell Amazon to accept the info since sellers are complying with the regulations, and Amazon is hurting businesses across the country. I seriously doubt it will even be read with any comprehension, but it felt like another windmill had been tilted at. Nothing much else to do at this point.
I’m glad you have avoided this so far. I did for decades! Pretty good run. Fingers crossed for you!
The one suggestion I can make is to load up a bunch of your listings on eBay if you are not already selling there… book sales seem to be on the rise on eBay - October was my best month ever, and exceeded my Amazon sales for the first time (even though I have twice as many listings on AZ); I recall Lake recently making a similar comment.
Keep us posted on how you are doing!
Did you try sending in the items as an image (jpg)?
Today I was able to submit the JPG via the portal. (It was previously unavailable due to the Inform one attempting verification). Within an hour I was reactivated!! woot woot! That is two of us now that have gotten through due to this being the issue (that have posted). I’ve let the mod know who was attempting to help me, hoping they will pass on the info to others, Or in a dream world, convey somehow to Amazon to pin a banner in the forums saying to at least try this. Sure couldn’t hurt.
Thanks for the commiseration, it truly does help.
Tomorrow I will attempt to get a better photo of my driver’s license and see if that helps the USA account go through, the current one is a tad fuzzy.
CONGRATULATIONS!!! Thanks for sharing - GOOD news is always balm for all of us stressed out sellers!
Amazon and PDF’s have a long and complicated history. It is ALWAYS recommended to print out PDF’s, and re-scan them either as JPG’s or PDF’s created by your printer.
GREAT!
Yesterday I finally passed through the Inform Act portal for my USA account. I only had to submit my bank statement three times, and the drivers license four. 
At least they didn’t ask for any body parts.
we were deactivated in Canada because they did not accept our business documents.
(same documents we sent to Amazon US and Mexico).
Seems “something” didn’t match up for them, I sent the multiple documents they requested with names, business information and addresses matching almost to the letter. We cannot figure out what they did not accept or why. And there was no explanation or response.
It was a very small part of our business - after several attempts I let it go.
Seems you’re facing a more serious issue and I wish I had some helpful information but I can say their communication is horrible at best.
Hoping you find a way to openly communicate with them and get reactivated.
I’m sorry to hear of legit sellers getting deactivated. Glad it wasn’t a big part of your business, but still, when you put in the work and get slammed for no reason, it’s just a big pith off.
What finally got my Canada account back was sending the same document I had before, but as a JPG instead of a PDF. The account was back up and running within an hour. My USA account seemed to eventually be happy with my PDFs, they just kept changing their mind. One day “identity” was fine but “depost method” was not. I resubmit, two days later, it’s reversed. Etc. etc… So I am all good once again, though US sales have dried up due to confusion about tariffs.