New account registration problem - Help please!

Account Health Suspended upon Arrival
1

Hello everyone on SAS, I am trying to open a account Amazon professional selling account.

I am opening it under a registered LLC…

Long story short, I did the last step of verification which was face verification after I already uploaded my drivers license and bank statement.

(Not sure if any one is familiar with what I mean by face verification but from what I know its newer because usually you have to make a apt with a live person and they will check your information on a call"

They got back to me in a couple hours and said this…

Hello,

We have reviewed the documents that you provided but were unable to complete your verification process. As a result, we are unable to activate your account.

Why is this happening?
We were unable to verify the document that you provided as a proof of identity.

To learn more about our requirements, go to “Seller Identity Verification”:

How do I resolve this situation
Within the next 30 days, upload a scanned copy of another government-issued photo identity document to Seller Central, along with all other required documents listed on the “Identity Verification” page. Make sure that you include also the documents that we already verified.

To submit the required documents or update your information, sign in to Seller Central and follow the on-screen instructions:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com
Do not attach documents to this email. For security reasons, we accept only documents uploaded to the “Identity Verification” page in Seller Central.

What happens if I do not upload the required documents?
If we do not receive the required documents within the next 30 days, your case will be closed and we will not be able to activate your account.

We’re here to help
If you have any further questions about our policies or requirements, you can contact Selling Partner Support:

The Seller Identity Verification team

To contact us again about this issue, please use the Contact Us form in Seller Central using the following link:

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

I doubled checked the information I entered, and made sure the picture were good of the DL and PDF of the bank statement info was correct and dated within the last 90 days and everything checked out.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why they were “unable to verify the document that you provided as a proof of identity.”

Or

What they are now wanting from me?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thank You

2

Welcome!

Unfortunately I am not well versed in dealing with this kind of issue, but I am fairly confident someone will come along and walk you through each step and find the hangup in your process.

Welcome to SAS.

3

@VTR Thank you, I appreciate it! I sure hope so :slight_smile:

4

I agree with @VTR. It’s a bit late in the day, likely tomorrow you will get replies from those who can help.

Welcome to SAS!

5

Step 1 would be to review every document you submitted to make sure that all the information matches. I mean all the information, and I mean matches exactly. Addresses that say “Street” in one place don’t say “St.” in another, your name doesn’t have your middle initial in one place but not another, etc. If all the information matches exactly, then I would ask what documents you provided.

6

If everything matches exactly, one of the problems could be a poor quality scan. Or if your ID document is damaged in some way (eg. it’s worn down from use), it could cause Amazon’s OCR program to reject it. Also make sure the ID edge is completely horizontal in the image. The less things that could possibly trip up Amazon’s software the better.

7

@AproZ This should solve your mystery. :arrow_double_up: :arrow_double_up: :arrow_double_up:

Triple check everything. What you need to understand is that everything on Amazon is AI.

If 1+1 doesn’t = 2, whatever the bot is trying to verify, will fail.

If you DL has your middle initial and you entered your full middle name (if that’s a thing, I don’t remember - for example only), then it will be rejected.

Street vs ST, Avenue vs Ave, having a full zip code with the last trailing digits.

It’s most certainly a data entry error on your end or just not knowing that you are dealing with a robot and that everything must precise.

Even capitalization / punctuation can throw off the process.

On all your documentation, all the addresses must match exactly to each other and what you imputed into Amazon.

8

Thank you everyone for the information. The ONLY thing that is different is some capitalization. So I will resubmit but I have one last question.

They added this in the last email…

“upload a scanned copy of another government-issued photo identity document to Seller Central, along with all other required documents listed on the “Identity Verification” page. Make sure that you include also the documents that we already verified.”
My question is do you think that my passport needs to be scanned as I have never scanned anything they have asked for just taken pictures.

Thank you

9

It’s possible, depending on the resolution and format of the picture, that it was not good enough. I suggest scanning it as requested and sending it as a .pdf.

10

It could be the lack of scanning. I just looked back (from 2018) and all of the docs we provided to Amazon for setup were scanned PDF’s. They may be easier to read by the bots.

I would go with PDF’s (Scans), and fix that capitalization, and hopefully you will be good to go.

Pls keep us updated on your progress.

Good Luck
Steve

11

Is your LLC a sole proprietor?
If so, then Amazon often will treat the application as an individual and the documents needed will have to match the individual.

How old is the LLC?
Do you have an EIN?
When did you obtain the EIN?
Have you filed taxes using the EIN?
Is the bank account for the LLC in the LLC’s name?
If the LLC’s name is on the bank account, is your name also on the bank account?
Did you provide Amazon with documentation of your ownership of the LLC?
Did you provide a utility bill in the LLC’s name? or was it in your name?
Is the credit card provided in the LLC’s name or your name?

All of the above became important with this year’s re-verification process.

As mentioned above, the quality of the images provided needs to be clear (images with a cell phone or a high quality scan).

Not necessarily true. Our Driver’s License has full middle name and we provided middle initial only.

This can be a factor but more related to the LLC’s name input. If you are trying for Brand Registry, then this is extremely important.

:arrow_up: :arrow_up: :arrow_up:

One of the big failure points was the bank statement being in the LLC’s name and Amazon needing to have your name associated with the bank account. If you need to, you may ask your bank to add your name on the account or (and this is what most have done) ask your bank to provide you with a letter on their letter head stating that your are the owner of the LLC’s bank account with the account number listed in the letter (and LLC’s name). You would then make a combined PDF of the bank statement using this letter as the first page and a complete current bank statement following to submit to Amazon.

12

Gentle reminder

123 Some Street

IS NOT THE SAME AS

123 Some St

In the Amazon world

13

Believe it or not … our address is listed one way by the city, one way by the county/state and one way by the post office.

123 Some St (city)
123 Some Ave (county/state)
123 Some (post office)
999 PO Box (post office)

Thank god our mailing address is the same … a PO Box. The PO Box is what tied everything together for us. However (for us) depending on the document, the address had the above variations along with the PO Box on the second address line.

Amazon has it’s inconsistencies even within it’s world of 1 will only equal 1 and not one.

14

Another thing is, if you’re submitting a bank generated PDF file, you may want to consider printing it out and scanning it. PDF files can have all kinds of weird encoding, which, you guessed it, will throw off whatever program is trying to parse and read it.

The default when Amazon’s bots can’t make sense of something is to reject it and kick it back to the seller to figure out how to correct it.

15

Definitely do this! Off topic but if you are asked for invoices I would do this as well.

16

Thank you for all of the information…

In regards to the LLC / business when opening the account it only asked for EIN and business name and that part is not 'red" or in question from my understanding.

The bank statement I sent in matched all my personal details.

I will try to print and scan bank statement and also scan my passport.

Thank you all

17

These are both advisable. I also suggest making sure they are color scans if possible, as black and white scans sometimes fail too. Bots be stupid.

18

Just sent print and scanned documents in, will keep everyone posted on the response I get.

Also are we sure bots are responsible for the new seller registration process? I would think an actual live person checks them…

Thank you all!

19

It is mostly OCR Machine matching.

Almost everything in Amazon is handled by a bot!

Good job on this, it should solve your issue! Works for most.

20

Yes, worked like a charm!!!

Thank you to everyone who help me!

I greatly appreciate it!