After working up the morning orders, printing our packing slips and pick sheets we continued to work through the day as we have for 10 or 12 years.
The following message comes up.
Invalid Charge Method
Your access to Seller Central is currently restricted due to an invalid charge method. Register a valid charge method for your seller account and restore full access to Seller Central by clicking ‘Update Charge Method’. Please note that it can take up to 48 hours to validate your charge method after updating. For more information, visit our Help Pages.
Contacted our card company that is assigned to pay the Amazon .com .ca and .mx accounts to see if something was wrong. They said it had a fraud alert for a $1.19 charge from Amazon Mexico.
They cleared it, went in and added the same card back again to .com, .mx and .ca still no joy. Though I have not waited 48 hours, and as we know can not since I need to ship today.
So I did change to another card, the original Bank Card, that we used years ago that is a debit card. Set all accounts to that card. DID NOT set a card for brazil, it was attached to the card that had the fraud issue.
So frustrating that Amazon caused the Fraud with the small charge from Mexico. After working for years. Though I understand the big issue with fraud on credit cards lately.
I did find that “Help” still works on the screen that was showing “Invalid Charge Method” I did have them call me. Very poor English, vey loud room with excessive background noise. I did write out clearly and had to ask her three times to read it.
What I sent them when I opened the call;
I am getting the following error
Invalid Charge Method
Your access to Seller Central is currently restricted due to an invalid charge method. Register a valid charge method for your seller account and restore full access to Seller Central by clicking ‘Update Charge Method’. Please note that it can take up to 48 hours to validate your charge method after updating. For more information, visit our Help Pages.
I contacted the credit card company and they had put a fraud alert on the card since Amazon Mexico tried to charge $1.19 to the card.
I talked with them, talked with the fraud department and they cleared it. Problem still exists.
I reentered the card, same card. Problem still exists.
I entered another card. Problem still exists. I DID not and WILL not enter a card for .br We stopped doing business with Brazil on our own websites 8 years ago due to fraud.
We can not access our orders to ship them, we can not access our account. I don’t even think I can access Seller Support to review this case.
Thank you in advance.
She did transfer the call. However, waiting for them to pick up, I tired again to enter Seller Central. It did refresh. Thought I would share should others run into this.
I really hate the fact Amazon keeps trying to push people to do business in other countries. Doing business in other countries is a pain.
Not to mention, like you said, BR is a VERY high fraud country.
Someone should write a guide (in brazilian of course) on how to scam Amazon and distribute it to everyone there, so that Amazon gets nothing but fraud orders so they have to shut down their operations there. Amazon’s business model really doesn’t work there since it would be BR’s law enforcement that’s running the refund scams.
Beyond the normal “PITA” aspect of dealing with exporting and international shipping, some (probably most) of us sell items that face extra restrictions in some countries. While most of us here are savvy enough to check, I suspect many sellers are not aware of things like not selling playing cards in Brazil, or books of various subjects being restricted in many countries.
Great that Amazon allows us to sell in other marketplaces, but it should 100% be “opt-in” only.
The biggest problem is Amazon will take action against you for breaking laws unknown to you. If it was merely the threat of legal action that would be OK since it would be nearly impossible to get an enforceable judgement against you in a US court.
There are mixed results when it comes to using a debit card. Although it may have worked in the past, that may not be the case now. In addition, there was a time recently where those with Master Card credit cards were having issues with validation. The solution was to use a Visa credit card.
What we went through was deposit method not being on CA and MX. It generated a warning that future distributions would not happen. We added our deposit method to both of those marketplaces and it went away. At that time, we checked the credit card and found that it was associated with all four marketplaces … .com CA MX and BR. Brazil does not have a deposit method but does have a warning widget on the seller central home page for that marketplace. We have not added it and it has not (up to now at lease) caused any issues with the day to day on .com (which is the only marketplace we use).
Last but least … when adding a new credit card, there are reports that is is best to do it on the buyer side of your account first … wait 24 hours and then add it to the seller side. We have not experienced this but others have.
Thanks @Lost_My_Marbles it did take our company debit MasterCard for .mx, .com and .ca it just took 30 min to kick in.
Just got the following email from Amazon Brazil
Prezado(a) parceiro(a) de vendas da Amazon,
Não foi possível verificar a forma de cobrança que você forneceu para sua conta de vendedor. Isso pode ter ocorrido pelos seguintes motivos:
Número do cartão, data de validade ou número CVV inválidos.
Nome do titular do cartão, endereço de cobrança ou CEP incorretos.
O cartão é um cartão pré-pago.
A Amazon não consegue cobrar o cartão.
A conta não tem uma forma de cobrança atribuída.
A autenticação multifator precisa ser concluída (quando necessário).
Para fins de cobrança e segurança, os vendedores da Amazon devem manter uma forma de cobrança válida registrada. O pagamento será suspenso até que você atualize sua conta com uma forma de cobrança válida. Quando sua forma de cobrança tiver sido atualizada e verificada, o pagamento será iniciado na próxima data de liquidação. Para obter mais informações, acesse a página de perguntas frequentes [aqui] (link removed)
Se você acredita que as informações da forma de cobrança eram válidas e foram inseridas corretamente, entre em contato com seu banco ou instituição financeira para obter ajuda.
Agradecemos por vender na Amazon.
Amazon Brasil
Google Translate
Dear Amazon Sales Partner,
We were unable to verify the billing method you provided for your seller account. This may have occurred for the following reasons:
Invalid card number, expiration date or CVV number.
Incorrect cardholder name, billing address or zip code.
The card is a prepaid card.
Amazon is unable to charge the card.
The account does not have a billing method assigned.
Multi-factor authentication needs to be completed (when necessary).
For billing and security purposes, Amazon sellers must maintain a valid billing method on file. Payment will be suspended until you update your account with a valid billing method. Once your billing method has been updated and verified, payment will begin on the next settlement date. For more information, visit the FAQ page here. (Link Removed)
If you believe the billing method information was valid and entered correctly, please contact your bank or financial institution for assistance.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.
Amazon Brazil
So why Amazon, do you try to communicate to me in Portuguese when I want nothing to do with Brazil?
That is basically the same email we got for the credit card thing for CA and MX. Once we added our credit card to those marketplaces, the warning went away. We never added to BR but it is there.
Check the account to see if this is the issue. If it is, just add it.
Agree, except the only country I can not access is Brazil as in, access on Seller Central. Due to the CC issue.
Again agree, when and if I can access it.
However, I have a concern about the FBA ship out of country option that we opted into. I do not want them sending ANYTHING to Brazil ever.
My fear is vacation mode will not stop that from happening.
Agree, that is what scared the crap out of me when it happened. Except it was mixed with our CC company, seeing the Amazon .MX $1.19 as fraud. So the credit card was instantly invalid when Amazon presented that silly little bill. The moment the company thought it was fraud.
In this page. Global Dashboard, Store Status I see we have MX and CA on vacation. (We did sell in CA, pre Covid, when Canada Post could not make deliveries, we were taking hits to our seller account and shut down)
The page has the warning about “Limited Access due to charge methods” assigned to Brazil.
I also see the US .com as active. Good…
Yet I see Brazil and Poland as active!
So I went to this page. Vacation Settings
And have turned Poland and Brazil to On Vacation. It did let me though the charge method is still an issue.
I put all of Europe on vacation too, so why does Amazon feel they can put us in a market that we do not want to be in?
It did work, refresh and all are now inactive except for the US. Though since we are in the FBA international fulfillment program, I still fear items could be sent to Brazil.
Regardless, hope the event is helpful to other sellers that may not even know this is going on.
Just like they used all of us to grow the .com marketplace, they now want to use us to fulfill their international ambitions - whether we like it or not. I wonder how many native sellers they sign up in these other marketplaces?
Is this a story about being placed in stocks or about animals?
Just to confirm, the $1.19 from .mx is Amazon’s attempt to validate the credit card on file, correct?
And in cases where this does not trigger a fraud alert with the bank, this charge should be reversed after validation, as with the $00.01 charge on .com?
