" Suspended for Inauthentic ADIDAS yet purchased from ADIDAS directly"
"Seller for over 10+ years. My Amazon seller account is suspended for selling authentic Adidas trainers that were purchased from Adidas brand directly. "
I will guarantee (99.99%) that they have not been on Amazon for that 10 years!
I usually interpret this to mean factory outlet store.
On the topic, of how many brain cellsâŚ
anyone else hire activ8 to run their store
they are now out of business and have left me with orders that amazon needs invoices for and i have no way of sourcing anything to appeal my case
Sometimes thereâs just no point in advising. Like leading blind people part way across the freeway.
Thereâs at least ONE of these every day. âToo busyâ to run my Amazon store. SMDH.
-Ana
According to SellerRatings.com they have (almostâŚ).
It makes sense theyâve been around for a long time.
To be ungated for adidas without documentation you mustâve been grandfathered in a long long time ago.
Iâm auto-approved for almost every brand I try, but adidas is not one of them. Neither are lego, nike, or disney. Apple I canât even apply for.
And unless they just migrated to the new Forum, this was their very first post!
You know that saying about leading a horse to water?
On Amazon their version is âWe can allow someone to sell on the site but they never have to learn the rules.â
Itâs PAST time that sellers need to actually pass some test to demonstrate that they have at least a SMALL amount of knowledge of policy.
I almost feel like Amazon allows it intentionally. They let RAs operate without asking for any docs, then at some random point they accuse them of selling fakes and ask for docs, and when theyâre not provided Amazon seizes their funds and inventory, and pads their stats for their annual brand protection report.
Even a simple questionnaire type auto-approval like such:
Do you have a Letter of Authorization from Brand XYZ authorizing you to sell their products on Amazon?
YES
NO
Would give a lot of sellers the hint that maybe they need to study the policies prior to listing this item. They donât need to require that people actually submit the LOA for review (which would create a lot of work on Amazonâs end), but they should at least require them to acknowledge that they have this document if itâs ever requested.
The other crazy thing is you can get ungated with an invoice, but an invoice isnât accepted as proof of authenticity for some IP violations. Thatâs a big trap for a lot of people. Common sense would say if Amazon accepts the invoice for ungating, then thatâs acceptable as proof of authenticity or proof of whatever other issue comes up, which USED to be the case but is not so anymore.
You would think they could take the hint. However, as a higher education instructor, I see all the time where people just want to take the quick and easy road to course completion. Fewer and fewer people are willing to put in the effort to actually learn and understand. After all, we can now Google everything if we ever need to answer some question we donât know.
Amazon makes it very clear that products need to be authentic. They do not make it very clear what someone needs in order to prove that. (Until someoneâs facing suspension and Amazon demands specific documentation)
A lot of these forum posts are made by people who think buying products from walmart is fine because âwalmart wouldnât sell counterfeit products.â Itâs also possible to find outdated information online saying that receipts are acceptable proof of authenticity because that actually used to be the case.
Very true and I have mentioned that for quite a while with also noting when things started to shift that it was a trap!
Once Amazon decided to tighten the requirements I am convinced that they did NOT change the language about receipts or invoices on purpose.
Once someone sent in their receipts Amazon had hard cold proof that they were NOT sourcing properly and could use all the other âvagueâ language in their numerous rules and policies to escort those sellers to the exit.
They basically (with some assistance from Amazon) furnished the rope used to hang them and destroy their account. It happened a lot when things changed.
Amazon gives âweasel/waffleâ language a bad nameâŚ
The way they changed the policy was definitely sneaky. There was never any notice that they had new authenticity requirements, it just started showing up in appeal denial messages. âYou must provide a letter of authorization or trademark licensing agreementâ
Even now they donât specify that you need to get a letter of authorization.
Check this blog post from Oct 23 this year on Seller University
Nowhere else on the page does it say you need to obtain your own LOA
I donât blame sellers who get caught thinking that their invoice is all they need, because Amazon themselves imply in many different places that an invoice is fully sufficient for selling on Amazon.
