So here’s a new one…
We received a image violation for an Item I thought we never carried.
After some cases & a support chat we find out that we did list the item from 2014 to 2016, when it was deleted from our inventory.
Fast Forward 8 YEARS Received Intellectual Property Complaint
I mean 8 years after its been removed from our inventory?
Just because no current seller ever updated the picture?
You can’t make this stuff up.
I have been selling on Amazon for over 20 years. Mostly books, but sometimes other items. A few summers ago, I did a great purge of thousands of old listings, many of which I would be prohibited from selling now. Are those two beer-making kits I sold in 2015 going to come back to haunt me?
I didn’t think this was possible.
I thought…
Only sellers that have the listing in their inventory (regardless of stock qty) at the time a claim is made can be hit with a violation.
Ip claims wasn’t even a thing back in 2014-2016 if I remember correctly.
All this over a picture of a bottle of some old shampoo unloaded in 2014.
So let me guess; they’ll ask you for an invoice.
Dated within the last 365 days, of course.
Not the case. There have been any number of posts in the last couple years about sellers being suspended, reinstated, and then suspended again when Amazon dug deeper into their past items.
That includes sellers that were just "testing’ by creating an ASIN to see IF they could sell an item but never actually selling or even stocking the stuff.
The MODS are leaning on the fact that creating an ASIN shows the INTENT to sell it and the intent creates the violation.
I’m going to guess with their new process for creating ASINs that there is a major house cleaning coming and thousands upon thousands of suspensions.
Back to this – which I have NOT done – and I suspect it wouldn’t help anyway because I doubt the lawyers would ever allow complete removal of the information due to legal liabilities at some point –
HOW TO PERMANENTLY REMOVE AN ASIN
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G201576560
Delete SKUs Using Inventory Loader
You can use the Inventory Loader to delete SKUs from your inventory. Deleting SKUs is different from deleting offerings. Product detail pages are created based on input from many sellers. Using the Inventory Loader to delete SKUs will remove your contributions to the descriptive product attributes that are rendered on product detail pages. This enables you to manage the item data associated with specific SKUs.
Delete both your offers and item data contributions.
Enter an “x” in the add-delete field in your Inventory Loader file. This will completely remove all data associated with your SKU.
Deactivate your offers without deleting item data contributions.
Enter a “d” in the add-delete field in your Inventory Loader file. When you delete offers by entering a “d” in the add-delete field, it sets your inventory for the SKUs to “0”. This will make those listings show as inactive.
If you submitted a category-specific inventory file originally and want to use an Inventory Loader file to delete SKUs or make other changes to your listings, you can modify an Active Listings Report. See Use Reports to Update Inventory
Reuse of SKUs
• In general, we discourage reusing SKUs for different products. Each SKU should have a one-to-one relationship with a unique ASIN.
• Assign a new SKU to each new product being sold. This will maintain previous item data contributions that are associated with a specific SKU.
• If you do reuse a SKU, first delete the active ASIN data or you will receive an error message. To remove old associations before reusing a SKU, enter an “x” in your Inventory Loader file. This is important for sellers who routinely reuse SKUs to associate previous SKUs with new ASINs.
This makes sense if you understand Amazon’s priorities.
Amazon sells no defective products. And if they did, they didn’t know. And when they do know, the seller was responsible.
There are no defective products, only defective sellers. Amazon must maintain this fiction by passing the blame, no matter how long ago.
All our discontinued items are deleted using the X.
But this wasn’t a violation when we listed it 10 years ago and deleted it 8.
Note after many posts this violation was just removed.
Amazon is amazing(ly bad). INconsistency is the only consistency!
I am now adding the following to the above ‘permanent removal’ instructions at the bottom simply because I don’t believe Amazon ever ‘deletes’ ‘everything’.
"SIDE NOTE and personal opinion - I suspect it wouldn’t help anyway because I doubt the lawyers would ever allow complete removal of the information due to legal liabilities at some point – "
