The more I look at it, deal with it, and think about it, the more I see that the AHR system is less about getting sellers to actually maintain good account health, and more about getting sellers to acknowledge things, thus reducing the # of appeals and helping Amazon avoid liability for anything they do on their side.
So the way the system more or less works, is if you get a violation, it impacts your AHR score. If you successfully appeal it, or acknowledge it, the violation gets removed and your AHR score is restored. If your account health dips below a certain level, or you receive certain “critical” violations, a 72 hour countdown begins, and if the violations aren’t resolved by then your account gets deactivated. Given that an appeal takes at least a day or two to review, and it often takes multiple attempts to get an appeal accepted, that doesn’t really leave a lot of time to avoid account deactivation by appealing. Given this choice, a lot of sellers will take the option to just acknowledge the issue (which removes the ability to appeal it any further) to avoid a full account suspension. If it’s an IP claim, it basically means you check a box acknowledging your products are counterfeit. Then Amazon can seize and destroy your inventory without any risk of liability, because you checked a box admitting to it. It’s almost like a cop demanding you admit to a crime or else they’ll shoot you.
I guess this is Amazon’s way of reducing the number of appeals they need to review. Force sellers to cop to violations for the sake of keeping their AHR score up, then Amazon can take whatever action they want based on that since they essentially forced a confession out of the seller. And then if Amazon one day suspends the account, they can point at all the acknowledged violations and say “well, you admitted to all of these.”
AHR is a function of defects as a percentage of sales. If you sell enough stuff, you can keep a rating of 1000 without appealing a single defect.
This metric is not an encouragement for sellers to address defects. This impetus already existed, as these defects can result in seller accounts being suspended. It is also not an encouragement for sellers to admit to wrongdoing, as the only sellers who would face your hypothetical deadline and feel forced to admit wrongdoing over righting the defect would be people right on the borderline of being shut down anyway.
This metric is billed as a protection for sellers against sudden unexplained suspensions for relatively minor defects, and in practice it does work out this way, mostly. It is also an encouragement for sellers who don’t want to or can’t run a clean business to sell a large quantity of low cost items for little to no profit simply to keep the metrics up. It doesn’t even matter if a large portion of these sales are returned, since those orders are not deducted from the total sales column (as long as these returns don’t result in more defects.)
These defects can also be appealed in the same way that they could be before. Defects can still be challenged or fought to be removed; admitting to a mistake is often faster and easier, but not required. Defects can also be challenged or admitted to long before the Account Health metric dips below 200, meaning that your 72 hour deadline would only kick in if a seller was borderline to begin with, either as a result of low sales or high defects. Keep in mind, also, that dropping below 200 does not put one’s account at risk, it simply removes Amazon’s promise that they will try to work things out with the seller before suspending them. A seller with a clean record and low sales would still have the same opportunity to appeal the defect that they had before this metric existed.
The scenario you describe would impact a tiny fraction of sellers and only a fraction on those sellers would choose to admit to legal wrongdoing over defending their account. In short, the number of appeals this takes off Amazon’s plate and the amount of legal cover it gives them is negligible at most and arguably non-existent.
Yes, if you sell enough stuff, you can keep a high AHR without addressing anything. However, there are tons of sellers who don’t sell a lot of volume, and a single defect of any kind will put their account at risk immediately. And that constant reminder that they’re at risk is pressure to resolve the complaint, even if that means acknowledging something they didn’t do. There are also certain things, such as an infringement claim, that will instantly drop the AHR to 0 and starts a 72 hour countdown. Infringement claims are not uncommon on Amazon.
Let’s say someone files a bogus infringement claim against you, 72 hours starts for account deactivation. You have all the documents required to appeal, you submit it, 2 days pass and they kick you back the standard form letter requesting the same documents again. Are you going to submit another appeal, then wait for your account to be suspended, and then have to appeal for the entire account, or are you going to just acknowledge the violation?
And you do have a good point, they encourage people to sell tons of cheap items (which still generates tons of fees for Amazon) to pad their score if they have issues with their other products.
I have had bogus infringement claims against me. One of the infringement claims took almost 4 months to resolve. My account did not immediately drop into a 72 hour countdown. At no point did Amazon indicate my account was at risk, much less give me a hard deadline.
I am curious where you came up with this information. Was this from personal experience, or something Amazon said?
If you receive an infringement claim where the complainant does a test buy, that will drop the AHR score to 0 immediately. I helped someone with a case like this recently. They submitted an appeal and it was rejected. When they spoke to account health support, they actually told him that if he acknowledges the complaint it will stop the account from being deactivated, and that was basically the only option because if an appeal is still being reviewed, the account will still be deactivated when the 72 hours is up from the original infringement notice. So of course, they acknowledged it, and the violation is now gone and AHR is back to normal. As the violation is gone, there is no further appeal allowed.
The person who filed the complaint was unknown to the brand owner who actually makes that product, and the trademark asserted is not present on the product. But whoever filed the complaint apparently did a test buy and then submitted a complaint, and the fact they did a test buy made Amazon take it that much more seriously. Pure black hat, but due to the fact that 72 hours was not enough time to properly appeal it, he was forced to acknowledge that his products were indeed a violation, Amazon is now holding the inventory for that product and will “dispose” of it at some point. As he was the brand’s authorized seller on Amazon, that ASIN is now down and the competitor has been eliminated without any chance of appeal.
So apparently Amazon doesn’t account for the fact that someone doing a test buy doesn’t necessarily mean their complaint is valid, or that they’re lying. It’s only a matter of time before the black hats make this their new standard strategy.
The available evidence suggests that this is already in play, and has been since @ least Q3 of 2020 (when some of the earliest reports of having been impacted in this way began to ramp up on the OSFE).
I agree with @maintak; this is an important question for @GGX, having posted some interesting thoughts.
It’s important for all of us to distinguish between opinion, theories, and facts, when posting on SAS–as we have recently seen.
It’s important to be clear about a source for these claims.
Personally, I’m not convinced that there’s more behind Amazon’s varied account health initiatives than appearing to address complaints and claiming plausible deniability, when it comes to liability–but this is just my opinion.
Well the experience I posted above supports your theory 100%, when it comes to counterfeit-with-test-buy claims.
In what world is acknowledging that your products violated Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting policy an acceptable thing to continue selling on the platform? They basically pressure the seller into accepting responsibility for it by pointing the suspension gun at their heads if they don’t. And when account health services also tells the seller (I was listening in on the call) that acknowledging it is a way to avoid having the account deactivated immediately, it becomes pretty clear that all Amazon wants is some kind of resolution to the issue so they can wash their hands of it.
Either
A) The seller gets a retraction, or submits a valid appeal within the 72 hour timeframe (good luck with that, if the appeal isn’t reviewed prior to the 72 hours being up, the suspension will happen)
or
B) The seller checks boxes attesting to the fact their products are counterfeit, violation (and any chance of further appeal) is removed, threat of immediate suspension is taken away, Amazon gets to wash their hands of any liability since the listing is now permanently blocked for that seller, and they get to seize/destroy any FBA inventory and add it to their PR numbers of how many fake units they successfully seized that year. And again, now Amazon has no potential liability here (for seizing inventory) because they forced the seller to admit fault.
To be fair, just because an Amazon rep tells a seller something doesn’t mean it’s either true or Amazon’s actual position. Support reps have been known to give incorrect information on a regular and ongoing basis, to the point that their advice runs the gamut from just “useless” to “sellers have gotten suspended because they followed this advice.” I have even seen a few examples of Support reps telling sellers to do things which are unambiguously illegal. Basically, a sample size greater than 1 would be needed to indicate this is actually Amazon’s intent, rather than just some nonsense a Support rep spouted off on a call.
This was not my experience. I am curious what the state of their account was before the claim that resulted in such a significant threat and short deadline.
Did you receive a counterfeit with or without test buy infringement complaint?
WITH a test buy will have “impact” of “critical” which means deactivation if it’s unresolved for 72 hours. Their account had a AHR of around 350 prior to the claim, it dropped to 0 until the violation was acknowledged, and is now back to 350 again.
From my experience with the account health system, acknowledging violations does indeed remove them and any impact they had. For things like false expired customer complaints, doing this seems relatively harmless and it does get rid of them. Acknowledging a counterfeit complaint seems risky, but it’s the lesser evil vs having the account suspended.
For further research and information, I can reinforce and confirm 100% with the situation above. For the first time ever, I received a “Counterfeit” complaint (the one with a test buy). Dealt with the “Couterfeit without a test buy” many times over the years, aka, competitor takedown.
My situation tracked identical to the one GGX stated above. Received the complaint, account went “Critical” with 2 emails from Amazon. One stated the complaint as usual, stating account pending deactivation if not resolved in 72 hours. Second email was the “Account Health Assurance” your account has dropped to “Unhealthy”, one of our Account Health Specialists will call you within 24 hours to discuss ways to improve and correct your account.
AHR went from 300 to 0 about 3-4 hours after complaint, Red and Yellow warning banners all over Seller Central. After reading this thread, and then speaking with Account Health Specialist, I also RELUCTANTLY “acknowledged” the complaint as it does appear the lesser of the evils as stated above.
Complaint was removed in minutes, AHR took about 4-6 hours to go back to original 300.
So there is another example that tracks the exact same to give you guys a better idea of how this apparently works. The was in March of 2024.
That has been the desire/end point since the inception of the AHD (Account Health Dashboard), something I helped work on with Amazon back in 201?. I have an image saved somewhere, but it might not have gotten moved off the old laptop,
Later the removal of access via the [email protected] email furthered that.
Finally in 2024 Amazon seemingly finalized this with a constant loop for Inauthentic and most RIPv’s requesting and denying invoices with no option to submit an appeal.
Minor issues can be resolved much easier through the “acceptance” method.
The AHR, from my point, is just about presenting sellers a closer look at what’s been going on all along. The bigger you are, the less things hurt the account.
i.e. …
Amazon has alwayslong seized inventory from sellers for RIPv’s and Authenticity Complaints. they don’t need any excuse to do something.
We just received 6!
Every time I submitted a Manufacturer Direct Invoice it was getting rejected with the same canned response.
So I just had an EYE OPENING call with an account health guy.
So three reasons he mentioned blew my mind.
The manufacturer is in Canada and the bill was in USD the review team couldn’t figure out why.
*What??? Its a major manufacturer and I’m sure they bill using the currency of the country being sold to.
The invoice showed 2%30 Net 31.
The “TEAM” thought this was a proforma invoice since it had a future pay date. The Invoice says “INVOICE” and they never heard of company having TERMS? What???
So now I need to provide statement from the BANK showing it was paid.
They didn’t understand that we receive Physical Invoices with the order so we can check the order in to our warehouse. He kept mentioning sending the email confirmation that it was paid.
I tried to explain it doesn’t work that way and we are not talking alibaba. We’re talking Johnson & Johnson, The Wella Corp, Conair. Were not ordering online thru their retail stores.
Just shows that the review “TEAM” doesn’t really know what they are looking at.
Tips: If your invoice has terms cover it or from a different country cover up all the prices. Don’t let anything peek thru.
We ARE the manufacturer, and the levels of nonsense Amazon imposes by sheer force of persistent stupidity forced us the make changes for them, including:
If a manufacturer, the document provided must be labeled “Packing List”. Nothing else. NOT “Bill of Lading”, which is what every single other company on the planet has always used.
Not just carton count, sizes, and weight, but count of products in each carton, despite each being identical.
Addresses!!! Agggh!!! Addresses!!! No, not the warehouse address, but the CORPORATE OFFICE address must be used. They can’t grock that a company might not have both in the same location.
But, once you get them to admit the tiny trivial nature of the actual problem that they have with your “proof of ownership” (which for me is kinda easy to prove, as my over-arching branding is my surname, like the “Smuckers” jelly folks, so I can whip out my drivers license to prove ownership), the trivial changes are easy to make.
But forever, you have a defective document format, good only for Amazon, as they have forced your round company peg into the square hole they created by an succession of errors and poor choices.
For many years, I ran a large R&D division of a major corporation, so my primary job was to be a “good listener” to overpaid, naive, and self-center geeks and nerds who had so little life experience they were terrified at the thought of actually asking that cute girl in purchasing out on a date. So, I was mostly a cub scout troop leader, with a little psychiatrist mixed in, as I bought them the fanciest toys on the planet to play with, and I wanted them to do what they were good at, and find out new things.
So, let me say that Amazon’s choices are a lot like those of someone who has been drinking heavily for years, and is now explaining why they needed to be bailed out of jail by corporate security at 4am on a Sunday morning on 12 assault charges, half of them filed by police officers themselves. THEY don’t even know what happened, or why, and they likely never will.
Ok so they removed some (3) and violations but not others (3) so I called back today.
I got a guy that was extremely difficult to understand. Very heavy accent.
New information: They want to see as many invoices as it takes to cover 365 days worth of your sales I figured our last 2 was good enough, but the 365 is new news to me which is fine.
He said the invoice Quantities didn’t cover what we sold on Amazon in 365 days. I checked and it was ZERO for these two items. I wish I could believe they actually LOOK at the QTY SOLD but apparently not.
Kept asking if I was sure. I’m sure as sure can be.
We got “disconnected” when I asked what was wrong with the 3rd invoice.
After being on hold for 1 hour and then getting hung up on - expletives followed. The amount of time already spent is ridiculous.
I’m going back to my old ways of keep uploading Invoices until I get someone that actually understands what they are looking at.
The logic is that if you list it, even if you never sell it, you are claiming to have it on hand and therefore have inventory whose authenticity you need to defend.
It shouldn’t be that hard for Amazon to update the message to something that simply points out exactly what sellers need to submit other than.
An invoice to indicate that your products are original and are not duplicates or copies thereby infringing on the intellectual property.
I see “An invoice”
Should be
please provide invoices for the last 365 days if the listing has been active for over 1 year. Else provide invoice(s) that show the quantity purchased is greater than or equal to the quantity listed on Amazon since the day added to your inventory on Amazon. If your invoice has terms please provide proof of payment.
