INFORM Act Pushback

Once again, Edd is out of touch here. Pushing back the law would change nothing as far as Amazon enforcement timeline.

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So instead of yelling at Amazon to get their ■■■■■■ together, let’s demand that an even more disfunctional entity reconvene to vote to delay. Yeah, that “solves” this. :roll_eyes:

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What an idiot…

I don’t see a damn thing wrong with the law.

The only thing that is wrong with this is how Amazon is going about it. Late and utterly dysfunctionally…

Same old song and dance. Stoking fear because Amazon has conditioned their sellers to :poop: their pants each time they refresh their inbox / logon to their accounts.

Congress might want to look into that aspect.

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:man_facepalming: Far worse than that. He’s an embecile…
It will all have to wait, until after Congress returns from its Fourth of July recess, a two-week vacation that leaves legislation at a standstill. Which is somewhat after the law has gone into effect…

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Laws like this are set it and forget it. Govt isn’t doing jack squat with enforcing this legislation anytime soon IMHO.

With that said, Amazon will be squarely in the bullseye when they get around to it. Lots of $ to be made potentially.

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WOW!!! Hot off the presses… Just got an email from Amazon that actually provides clear, concise directions on how to handle all of this.

Better late than never but this is REALLY LATE!!!

Hello THIS GUY,

To comply with the new US INFORM Consumers Act, and in accordance with Section 1 of the Amazon Business Solutions Agreement (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/1791) we need to verify your information. Failure to do so may result in your account being temporarily deactivated when the INFORM Consumers Act takes effect on June 27, 2023.

Visit your Account Health Dashboard (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard), which is up to date, to see any information that we may need from you. Please make sure to submit any information outstanding without delay because it can take several days for Amazon to verify the information.

Why is this happening?

The US INFORM Consumers Act is a new US federal law that takes effect on June 27, 2023 and places new obligations on online marketplaces, including Amazon, to collect and verify business information from high-volume third-party sellers who sell products in Amazon’s US store.

To learn more about the INFORM Consumers Act, please follow this link: (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GJ4JUGLSAPRM3LU7).

What steps do I need to take?

To avoid account deactivation, please visit your Account Health Dashboard (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard) to see what information is outstanding.

What happens if I don’t take the required action?
If we do not receive and fully verify the required information by June 27, 2023, the law requires us to temporarily deactivate your account until we receive this information. The law also requires us to reverify this information every time it changes.
We’re here to help.
If you have questions about this process, please contact Seller Support via https://sellercentral.amazon.com/cu/contact-us.

For more details on providing identity information, go here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/GG9T9WKTBG2NJST7

For more details on confirming banking information, go here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/GWHNLFB8G85QAZ5W

For more details on confirming or updating your phone number, go here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/GGQSHDR5BYTCWX42

For more details on confirming or updating your business address, go here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/G2CVLYZXQRXQAMAL

For more details on submitting tax information, go here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external/GX3CA5D6NHFGQPVT

Sincerely,

The Selling on Amazon team

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Surely you jest with that statement. It tells nothing more than we already know by clicking on the home page banner which leads us to the account health widget which may or may not have links to items on the account info page.

It rivals with the one we got that told us we needed to address the items listed but there were no items listed. And then the email a week later that said “oops we goofed, we sent out that prior email but we didn’t mean to. You can disregard it”. But then turn around and need us to verify our business address and the only way we knew was because we were checking on the account info page and saw under the business address and phone number link that we needed to verify. The account health page widget didn’t change to the blue link until after we had verified and set the post card in motion.

Amazon attempted to give a road map with the account health page widget but the messed up by not explaining what the circle with greyed out text meant verses having a circle with blue text link. That simple explanation up front would have been very valuable to many sellers.

We thought about doing a post on NSFE with the basic instructions on how to approach this task but decided not to as we know we would receive far too many tags than we wish to handle.

We don’t use Walmart self check out as it is not our job. Sometimes we think providing information isn’t our job but instead Amazon’s job. This is one of those times.

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Amazon is like a college frat boy. Waiting until the night before a paper is due to even figure out the topic sentence

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Not really… There are a few forum members here (including myself), that would have had no issues at all if we just had this and there’s a lot more than this in the email that’s helpful IMHO.

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Actually that’s not entirely complete. The issue, in my case was filling up recipient information after entering address - in other words an additional step unbeknownst to me and therefore most certainly unbeknownst to many sellers.

But yah if they only had all this set up from the get go

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Even though they have put up these pages after the fact, it doesn’t address the issues that existed within these processes.

  • Not being able to select individual and being stuck on business (or vice versa) when doing identity verification.
  • Not being able to select USA when doing tax verification.
  • Deposit Method verification issues with not being able to use DBA or LLC names even when they are listed next to legal entity name during legal entity verification.
  • No one knew about the +1 on the phone number or the phone number formatting … and SMS to hard line business phones wasn’t allowing for verifcation (until the call option was added).
  • And the business addresses were being changed out by Amazon to personal info or bogus state initials as the business name.
  • Not letting anyone know what greyed out text meant when they knew.

Sorry … but we can not give Amazon an at a boy for that email. It is a compilation of corrections to issues Amazon created and basically corrected from info in threads on NSFE. If the issues like we listed above hadn’t existed, the process would have been fairly straight forward. All of those links in that email would not have helped anyone with the underlying issues within each of those verification processes.

Even on the Business Address one that you have the image posted above, item #1 wasn’t happening nor did it happen for us to know that we needed to verify our business address. The Account Health widget had our business address as a circle with greyed out text (no blue link). We found out by checking the business address and phone number link on the account info page … twice a day for over 2 weeks. One day it just popped up in there. The info provided in your image of the link above still would not have done us any good.

If the processes were in place and working from the beginning, then an email with that info might have been a good resource. But now, we see it as a band-aid and some of the underlying issues still exist.

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We reverified the 2nd week in March-3 months later, sellers still having hissy-fits, having reverified some info(or all), multiple times. We had to reverify our phone/address for a second time YESTERDAY!! (As token of regard(?), we received two cards w/ two separate codes).

TPTB have sent us an e-mail every other day, telling us they’ll hold our disbursements if we don’t reverify. The notifications/notices/treats/demands have disappeared twice, then reappeared, then disappeared again…
Yesterday, when we checked Account Info, as we do daily, a banner was back, demanding we input our phone, then later our extra code but nothing on SC.

Would have welcomed the email @ASV_Vites received.

When we completed ours in March, thought it was just TPTB reverifying long-timers information, which I thought a wise move. The ACT hadn’t been mentioned and those complaining on the NSFE were mostly the “mature” sellers who hadn’t migrated to this forum. At least a month before a poster mentioned the ACT. AMZ is so—up!!

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INFORM Consumers Act takes effect on June 27th. Is your business ready?
Federal Trade Commission Gov - Business Blog - June 8th

Not sure what’s going on with Walmart, but eBay is handling this differently.

“We’re building an exception process for you to certify that you’re eligible for an exception to sharing your full physical address under the law. This process will be available prior to the INFORM Consumers Act going into effect.”

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For eBay sellers, check your email (June 14th) for the exception notice/link.

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I welcome the law.

I do not welcome Amazon’s implementation of enforcement of any law. It is always robotic and idiotic.

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The law includes a limited exception for high-volume third party sellers that operate only out of their homes. In that case, the online marketplace must disclose the country and, if applicable, the state where the seller lives and provide consumers with a phone number, email address, or other means of electronic messaging where consumers can contact the seller. If the seller’s only phone number is a personal phone, the online marketplace must provide an email address or other form of electronic messaging where consumers can contact the seller. Online marketplaces may have to suspend high volume third-party sellers if they make false statements in an effort to qualify for that limited exception or if the sellers don’t respond to consumers within what the law calls a “reasonable time frame.”

eBay doesn’t tell the whole story, such as they are still required to collect & verify and consumers still can get addresses just by asking. Or that not responding quickly to a consumer will get you suspended. At least according to the FTC ( Informing Businesses about the INFORM Consumers Act | Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov))

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Thanks for posting this.

This law is so far out of bounds it is sickening.

Amazon and Walmart are beyond the scope of the law by publishing the home addresses of sellers who work out of their homes.

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Shouldn’t Etsy be doing this as well then? I haven’t really seen much of anyone talking about it on Etsy.

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It doesn’t help that Amazon’s employees are morons. BTW, it appears from my lurking in the shrubberies of the “Official” NSFE (Yes, the sacrifices I endure for you my fellow Sellers…) that Scammers are taking advantage of the Amazon/Inform implementation ■■■■-up.

Worse the mods can’t even catch a non-Amazon phishing email address (NSFE forum mods are only half the problem with NSFE), nor explain that spoiler, Mexico is not governed by the US.

For those paying attention, the actual sender email address was seller-notification@amazon.mx.com, which is NOT an Amazon domain. Mod Atlas couldn’t even get the domain right (typing amazon.com.mx) and doesn’t stress that it wasn’t from Amazon and to NOT click any links, etc. implying it was just spam. Not a phishing (or other nefarious and malicious) email.

Fortunately, Sellers can thank @Pepper_Thine_Angus & Company for this site, and be aware of naughty phishing emails trying to take advantage of Amazon’s poor implementation of the INFORM Act.

– Amazon

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WOW, That is low for scammers. But also low for Amazon mods not to catch that

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