Amazon Sellers’ News 10/9/19: Intellectual Property Trends Amazon Sellers Need To Know & How to Avoid Inauthentic Suspensions
Used sold as new suspensions, whether it’s a listing or an account, come from two main sources – either your packaging is obsolete and the consumer is receiving something different than he or she would have received at the store, or your products are being returned by Amazon consumers and they’re going back into your inventory.
You can opt-out of returns going back into your inventory. Amazon staff at the warehouse do not have enough time to look at products carefully to make sure they should go back into inventory. The more it becomes automated, the robots don’t have that capability.
Inauthentics are still the number one cause of listing suspensions and account suspensions. You need to know before you send in your invoices what information should be on your invoices and what information should not be on your invoices. Every single spot in that invoice should be filled in. If there’s no space for handwriting, don’t write anything by hand. If there’s a signature line, someone should have signed it, and don’t cross out anything. Last but not least, make sure all the information on that invoice matches your account as closely as possible.
Experienced sellers with multiple accounts are getting caught. Returning sellers are getting caught because they’re opening up new accounts rather than getting their old account reinstated, and new sellers are getting caught under business verification problems. If you’ve had a prior account and now you’re opening another account or another dozen accounts, or if you’re in China, hundreds of accounts, you have to make sure there is absolutely no link between any of the accounts.
The Ninth Circuit in California decided that the Domino’s Pizza website was not ADA compliant. The images were too difficult for people with vision problems to read them and described to them. Domino’s lost that case. Domino’s asked the United States Supreme Court to review the decision and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear it. What does this mean to Amazon Sellers? Well, Amazon is located within the Ninth Circuit. Amazon may be compelled to alter the website a bit to make the pictures match more of a verbal description that could be rendered to people with vision problems.
Tomorrow, 12:30 PM, Seller Labs is having an incredible online summit for Amazon sellers. Check it out. Talking about Amazon’s growing control over sellers, and more importantly, what you can do about it.
Next week, the sourcing trip to India is going to be huge. Check out indiasourcingtrip.com even if you are not going to India. Because if you are a private label seller, you need to start sourcing products outside of China.
eCom Chicago, Schaumburg, Illinois is a great event for Amazon sellers. You will hear from fantastic speakers from this office and also sellers at eCom Chicago are incredibly open about sharing information between each other of what’s working and helping to sell products.
Also at the end of the month, October 27, 28 and 29, Global Sources in Hong Kong.
Copyright complaints are increasing for about a month and a half now. Copyright complaints when it comes to Amazon sellers have to do with verbiage, copying and pasting someone else’s words or images, copying and pasting someone else’s pictures. You cannot use somebody else’s pictures when you’re creating a listing. You need to create your own. They have to be Amazon compliant. They can’t enforce their map pricing, so they make a counterfeit complaint against you even though you’re selling 100% genuine products. The leverage you have when a brand makes a false counterfeit complaint is against the complainant, against the brand or against the other sellers who are trying to take you out. That is your leverage. That is the person or company that has created a lawsuit against themselves.
