Taking Amazon to Arbitration: Resolving Related Account Suspensions for Amazon Sellers
Related account issues can often only be resolved at an arbitration against Amazon.
Related account suspensions are very, very difficult because Amazon doesn’t reveal to you what it is that Amazon linked to your account. It could be a similar email address, you could have logged on from shared wifi, you could have similar or even identical inventory to another seller, and then Amazon will accuse you of having more than one account, which is clearly against Amazon’s policies, unless you fit into some very, very specific categories.
When we file for an arbitration against Amazon, the award at the end of the day is unlikely to order Amazon to reinstate your account. But if your Amazon account is down for related accounts and you never had another account, arbitration is a great way of getting a fresh set of eyes to look at the issues. When you file for arbitration, after being suspended for related accounts, you’re going to have two sets of teams looking at your claims.
One, Amazon’s outside legal counsel that works for a private law firm, totally outside of Amazon. A second team of paralegals that Amazon’s lawyers work with. These are high level people. If they saw that seller support, and even the Bezos escalation team, failed to recognize that you never had another account, those teams may reinstate your account, release your money/inventory and solve the problem.
