Amazon Sellers’ News 11/26/19 with CJ Rosenbaum: Packaging Issues, IP Complaints from Car Companies & Amazon Giving Out Bad Advice
First breaking news story has to do with used sold as new suspensions and inauthentic suspensions, both in listing and accounts.
What we are seeing is a tremendous rise in the number of suspensions based entirely on your packaging. If you’re an Amazon seller, you need to make sure that your products, when they get to a consumer’s door, have the same exact packaging that that consumer would see if they went to a brick and mortar store. If that consumer should check that brand’s website, you want to make sure that your packaging matches identically. Now when it comes to health and beauty, for example, they change their packaging annually or sometimes even more than annually. What does a seller need to do? You need to stay on top of your packaging versus what brick and mortars are delivering. And if you’ve sent your products to FBA, and you still have inventory that’s kind of old, you need to make sure that the packaging you sent in stays up to date. If there is a change, recall that inventory. Used sold as new and inauthentic complaints have a lot to do with your packaging.
The second breaking news story has to do with intellectual property rights complaints.
Auto manufacturers not only make complaints but they also actually start lawsuits. Auto companies have a boatload of money behind them, and they can enforce their IP rights as much as they want. Over the last year, we saw Audi bring lawsuits in Chicago. We saw Volkswagen bring lawsuits in Chicago. Lately, we’re seeing complaints from Hyundai and Kia. Amazon sellers beware, you cannot take the auto industry’s logos or trademarks and make key chains out of them. You can’t take Kia’s logo and stick it on a T-shirt or a hat. You’re going to receive an IP complaint.
Third breaking news story, bad advice from Amazon.
Often sellers will spend a lot of time trying to speak with people at Amazon, and sometimes they actually do. When they pick up the phone, the people sellers are speaking with are not high-level executives. You’re speaking to seller performance, seller support, and that’s really it. Their knowledge of what goes on in the higher levels of Amazon is often wrong. We’ve seen bad advice from Amazon when a listing has been hijacked, just telling sellers to create another listing. We have also seen Amazon staff give really bad advice to sellers by simply telling them to open up a second account, to open up a stealth account, like a stealth fighter. Now if Amazon’s team simply tells you to open up a new account, that is really, really bad advice. Sellers all over the world do operate multiple accounts, sometimes dozens. In China, sometimes hundreds of accounts, but those sellers are really adept. They’re really good at separating the two businesses. If you receive advice from Amazon to open up another account, don’t blindly do it. Your accounts will get linked and both will get shut down. We’ve seen bad advice from Amazon I can’t even tell you how many times.