Bamboo Bot Gone Crazy

Selling on Amazon Listings and Variations
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So my credit card expired yesterday, causing an alert and then pretty much all my bamboo listings removed, even though I know they are all in compliance.

To start, here is my first issue.

My actual product listings are fine, but the bot removed my Parent listing, breaking apart the children. When I go to Fix Issue there is no issue to fix, and I can’t edit the listing without this error showing:

This SKU has an inconsistent product classification with the ASIN. Please submit a feed to update this SKU to match the ASIN product classification.

This is problem 1. Why would my parent asin get yanked but all the children, with the same info, are fine?

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This is what happens when the Relationship is removed and the Parent stands alone.

I have no idea unless when they were created they had info in them that is different than what the children have.

You should be able to fix with a file upload of all parents (although you might be able to leave them out I would still include them with updated info), or at least the children with their Variation Data fields (specifically the field for parent SKU).

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I’m going to try that.

I had a call with account health and he told me to do a call with Listing Issue and ask them to ensure the AISN can still be edited and NOT to mention it was removed for violation, as supposedly they can’t see that.

Most the times they will unlock it at least for updates, so then my file upload can actually create changes. He said if I mention it was in violation they immediately forward me onto a violation person who will tell me I need to edit the listing, which starts that vicious loop.

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Well, at least that’s good info. Not sure it was worth having all your listings yanked, though. :grimacing:

Any updates since yesterday?

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the hammer has dropped. Here’s where I’m at…

6 Listings Removed emails. 14 ASINs and 4 parents have been yanked, leaving 4 children under 1 parent all in compliance.

Frustrating, considering I worked with SAS for about 3 months to dial in these listings to be in compliance for the very thing I’ve been pulled for.

Had a call from Account Health, and the guy put me on hold for about 10 minutes to see what was going on with a select 4 children (one family) and why they got pulled.

His theory:

  1. one of my images still had “100% Bamboo Viscose” in graphic text, instead of “Viscose Derived from Bamboo”

So that could be it.

  1. I state that “bamboo grows like a weed” in my description portion, and the bot might have thought I was just declaring the fabric “bamboo” instead of actually discussing how bamboo grows, getting all the listings pulled.

Would hope it’s just the 2nd theory, as that would mean I wouldn’t need to edit anything, just appeal it as a mistake. Besides, of course I can’t edit anything, all the listings are locked and any time I try to do any edits with an update I instantly get another LIsting(s) Removed email and I see the edits didn’t go through anyway.

So going to be handling this slowly, one at a time. Last time I rushed with my pillowcases and did the old trick of deleting and re-submiting with the edits to get around the locks, and now those listings are stuck in Limbo.

and while amazon swears you need “Viscose derived from” or your instantly removed… there are still a number of high-volume sellers that are oddly unaffected by such regulation:

https://www.amazon.com/Shilucheng-Pockets-Friendly-Comforterble-Hypoallergenic/dp/B093PJ6KZG/

| was warned specifically that I couldn’t say “Bamboo-derived”, as that was blacklisted, but it seems that’s not entirely universal.

If the bot is so uptight about a little text in an image, I’m impressed it overlooked titles that were out of compliance.

Right now 2/3rds of my inventory is offline on Amazon. Any wagers I get half them back before end of April?

ps. my wife, who also works with the company, sees this as the final sign to move on, so we are going to clearance all remaining inventory once back up – I have about $160,000 at cost – and close our doors for good. There will be no Wooflinen after 2024.

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Your storefront has 5 listings. Your other sets of linen show up in individual searches, and have titles like “Modern 100% Viscose Derived from Bamboo Sheets” etc.

Marilyn

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yep, those 4 are children that got separated when the parent ASIN was removed. Not sure how that is possible, as the parent contained only the limited required data, but the same data as the children.

yep, and 14 listings removed, plus 5 parents

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Phase 1:

I tried to update my removed Parent ASIN through File Upload. I downloaded a Category File and, to my surprise, Amazon keeps Removed Listings on the file now.

I picked through it with a fine-tooth comb and I only have two theories on why the parent was pulled and not the children, as this is the only two differences it had:

  1. In search terms, I had the word “bamboo”, which I’m allowed to have, in the search terms for the parent but not the children. Think the bot may have gotten confused.

  2. In the fabric attribute, and this is an important attribute that is checked by the bot, I had “100% Viscose Derived from Bamboo” for the parent, and “100% Viscose derived from bamboo” for the children.

That’s it. One of those two things got my parent yanked. Maybe the bot doesn’t like capital letters.

Now, the strange part:

I did a file upload the the ASIN of the parent, same MSKU, as the product identifier, and instead of updating the restricted parent, Amazon created a new parent with a new ASIN and put all the children under that.

I guess this works, but now I still have to appeal the removed parent that no longer has children.

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Got a cool update of sorts…

So I was experiencing the same stupid issues as always. No matter if I update (Edit Page) the listing from the dashboard, or through file upload, doing UPDATE, the changes will appear in the input fields but never go live, making an appeal insanely hard.

With 4 child ASINs, I’ve seen the same thing. So I re-downloaded the category template, and instead of using Open Office I actually used Excel. First, Excel is so bad. It lags with every cell edit and change. Hate Excel, it adds at least an hour over Open Office Calc working on the cells.

But I digress…

The first time I did the file upload it was declared a “Inventory Files for Specific Categories/ Listing Loader File”, and those changes would submit without issue, but wouldn’t go through to Live or the active content (and amazon doesn’t care how hard you try, they just care about what’s live)

With the restart and using excel, I uploaded the same data again (though the template had changed so I couldn’t just do a copy/paste, lame) and it declared the upload a “Multi-Marketplace Listing Templates” and once again said records submitted successfully.

Not only did this document work in updating the listings, they immediately went from Removed Listings back to Active. No appeal needed.

Going to try the same for next 4 ASINs.

Wanted to post this change publicly so I can refer to it when this issue no doubt arises again :slight_smile:

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Lightning only strikes once.

Check this out. I’m submitting 1 parent and 4 children, they all have the EXACT SAME INFORMATION.

The file upload goes through, and the parent gets accepted, while the Children do not, for :

error 90003836

Amazon requires all products offered in our store to comply with relevant laws and for information on detail pages to be accurate. Amazon policy prohibits Sellers on Amazon to add inaccurate, misleading, or abusive content to ASINs. The offer on your ASIN has been removed because one or more elements of your product listing contributions contain illegal, misleading or abusive content or claims. To reinstate your offer on this product, please remove any marketing content, claims, and images that do not comply with Amazon’s policies, other applicable requirements, verify that your contributions comply with all applicable laws, and resubmit your offer. For more information on Amazon’s policies for selling partners, please refer to the help page on: Detail Page Policy أمازون Seller Code of Conduct أمازون

I have tried uploading with all images removed, with all special features removed, and nothing is working.

Stuck again.

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wow. so for these 4 children, you know what got them removed? It didn’t have to do with bamboo as the email said, I had “silk” in the list of words in the search terms attribute.

After removing all search terms on upload I no longer got the errors, save for not having the required search terms attribute, so went back and picked it apart.

Bamboo is sometimes known as a cheap silk alternative or “art silk”, so had silk in the terms.

That was it, got rid of “silk” in a place customers couldn’t even see it and the listings were updated and re-instated.

The solution, for these 4 at least.

4 more to go!

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I never would have guessed in a million years, the scrutiny this type of product is subject to.

Meanwhile, what Amazon allows sellers to get away with, even if clearly pointed out with FDA regs cited in my world is astonishing.

These aren’t products you snuggle up with to get a good night’s sleep. They are things people put inside their body.

SMH.

Hope you can resolve this once and for all.

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To be fair, I would be more picky about buying bedding products and a few other categories (MOST notably, any kind of lotion/skin care product) than food/food supplements.

Granted, for sheets I wouldn’t be super picky because I would wash them prior to use, but for things like pillows, or a down comforter, you want to make sure you’re getting a quality manufacturer because you can’t wash those products. I would consume a supplement from a sketchy manufacturer before buying a pillow from a sketchy manufacturer, simply because the probability of getting an adverse reaction from a supplement is way lower than the probability of getting a rash or something from a crappy pillow.

Anyone who’s ever eaten fast food has put worse in their bodies than anything in any of the FDA violating supplement brands on Amazon. You have to remember that supplements aren’t drugs, they’re considered food.

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My Pillow Patriot GIF - My Pillow Patriot Lindell GIFs

I just had to…

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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Gosh dang it. Thought this one would be easy. Trying to reconnect LIsting Removed parent SKU to the children that are now active. When I try, I get this error:

The SKU [ YX-4RNZ-4L44] is a variation Parent in one or more marketplaces and a variation Child in another marketplace(s). A SKU needs to have the same Parentage in all marketplaces. Please resubmit the SKU with the correct ‘Parentage’ to ensure it is consistent across all marketplaces. You can read more about Parent/Child relationships at: أمازون

I’ve gone to every marketplace there is, this SKU exists in none of them save for US

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So, the Parent ASIN itself, which was apparently ‘manually yanked,’ displays no results in any of Amazon’s current 21 Global Marketplaces (the 22nd, Amazon.cn, is a special case) when you utilize the RAV (“Amazonese” for “Report a violation”) Tool functionality (link, Seller Central/Brand Registry) to search for it?

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Yes, checked them all. Zero results on the parent ASIN

by yanked, it got listing removed due to Bamboo Textile. So doing an update I know is in compliance and this is the error stopping it.

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This is maddening. Amazon’s inability to communicate clearly–and possibly not even caring to do so–actively hampers sales and leads to wasted work for small business owners, every day.

And to be clear, you did do what you are guilty of (“silk”), but not intentionally, and when you were trying in good faith to remedy your accidental error, Amazon couldn’t be bothered to give you the correct (but still minimum) info to do so.

These are the games that Amazon plays with legitimate, honest 3P Sellers. The ones they (allegedly) want to keep. The ones who are actually trying to follow the ever-evolving rules.

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Well, it’s probably a shot in the dark, but if you’d like me to confirm that I find the same results (using a pristine VM [“Virtual Machine”] based-iteration that hasn’t any possibility of an LSO [“Local Storage Object”] artefact muddying the waters), and are willing to supply all 5 ASINs in question for me to check, I’m willing to run some tests.

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Preaching to the choir!

However, nothing beats my “hypoallergenic” fiasco. I had multiple tickets trying to figure out why I couldn’t get my listings back. They gave zero clue, but the listings were pulled due to “hypoallergenic” claims.

I fixed them, and they then alluded it could be something else, but wouldn’t say what. I opened repeat tickets over the course of weeks and still couldn’t get the listings back. Finally, a Seller Support person promised me that the exact term “hypoallergenic” still existed and I’d need to find it.

I went through source code of my A+ pages and my listings, there was nothing. Thought a stray keyword for an image maybe or an image filename.

Nothing.

Then, one day, I noticed that they auto-generated Spanish version of my A+ content and it had “hypoallergenic” still in English. When I updated my A+ to remove the term, the Spanish version does not auto-update, and I didn’t even know it existed.

I then deleted the automated Spanish translations, then re-submitted the listings and they were accepted.

The dude knew where it was, he just couldn’t say where.

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