How to Appeal Amazon Related Accounts Suspensions
A large number of sellers are being caught up in Amazon's most recent round of account suspensions. Most of these account suspensions are because Amazon claims that they found your account is related to an account that may not be used to sell on their site. Sometimes these claims are justified, but during other times, they are not.
In this article, we'll explore the reasons behind these suspensions, as well as provide guidance on how to avoid and appeal an Amazon related account suspension.
Amazon Related Account Suspension
The account suspensions that have been occurring in October and November 2020 relate to Amazon deeming that the seller is associated with another seller that has a suspended account. Simply being related to another account isn't resulting in suspensions. It's being related to another account that is currently suspended.
The intent of Amazon is clear: they're trying to get rid of sellers who were suspended and used another account to operate. Unpredictably, there has been a lot of collateral damage with a large amount of sellers having their accounts suspended for seemingly no good reason.
Many of these suspensions are (right now) being done explicitly for seller's Amazon.ca selling privileges.
What Triggers Related Account Suspension
You could have your account suspended for several reasons:
- You had your Amazon account suspended and you opened another seller account, trying to get around the suspension. Your original account remains suspended.
- Amazon has deemed your account related to another account that is suspended. Amazon could consider this account related because of identical business addresses, business names, use of same wireless networks, logging into the accounts from the same computer, etc.
- You gave API access to a company who has had their API credentials revoked.
- You gave user permissions access to someone who also had a seller account that got suspended
How to Get Your Account Unsuspended
How you proceed with these account suspensions depends on the reason for the suspension.
- You must first figure out what account Amazon has deemed you related to. If you know this, proceed to the next step. If you don't know yet, call the Amazon Account Health team (go to your Amazon account health and there should be a “Call me now” button).
When you're on the phone, ask for the first three letters of the email address of the related account. The rep may or may not easily give this information to you, but with enough persistence, they should. Hopefully, this is enough of a lead to indicate what other account the related account is. - While on the phone, insist you are not related to any other accounts. Be firm and persistent. This is sometimes enough to get your account quickly reactivated.
- Once you have figured out the suspended account, the easiest thing to do is to get that seller to get their account unsuspended. If you can do this, you should be in the clear for getting your account unsuspended on the first appeal.
- It's possible your suspension may be related to a service provider you previously granted API access to. Go to your User Permissions History page and look for any history of revoked access (ideally, one with the user name matching the first three letters you were given in step 2). If you see any, this is an indication of the related account, and you can use this information in your appeal.
- If you cannot get the related account unsuspended, you need to prove you are not related to that account. Utility bills, business license information, and the usual identity verification documents are a good start.
Check out our guide on writing Amazon Plans of Actions and Appeals.
Why Are Amazon Related Account Suspension Occurring Now?
As mentioned, it's typical Amazon procedure to accumulate dirt on sellers and then suspend them in one massive swoop. For better or worse, their preferred time to do massive suspension sweeps seems to be shortly before the holidays.
There's a couple of implications for this:
- Amazon has a very clear record of your related accounts. I have viewed internal documentation about Amazon's account linking metrics they relate accounts on. It is well over twenty factors. Tread carefully knowing this information, i.e., be careful who you ask reviews from.
- Again, Amazon often does not suspend sellers when an infraction takes place. They keep the information and then act on it at one time. I see a lot of sellers using nefarious review tactics and thinking they're getting away with it because they haven't been suspended yet.
Moreover, many sellers are seeing only their Amazon.ca accounts suspended. My guess is that many sellers have had their Amazon.ca accounts suspended and then do not appeal it because Canada is a small portion of their sales. However, the suspensions are not just for Amazon.ca. While most sellers who have been falsely caught up in all of this are getting only their Amazon.ca accounts suspended, there are a lot of sellers getting their Amazon.com accounts suspended as well, normally justifiably (i.e., they knowingly opened secondary accounts because their primary accounts got suspended).
Conclusion
Amazon has been automatically reinstating many sellers even without appeals, which is good news. Many sellers are still in limbo with suspended accounts. Hopefully, the information here can help you get your account unsuspended.
Have you ever had your account suspended? What were the steps you took? Share them in the comments section below.
This recently happened with my Amazon.com.mx account – which I have never sold anything on, it was created along with an Amazon.ca account when I created my Amazon.com account. I was able to get my account reactivated about 10 days after submitting a second appeal.
I submitted a first appeal with some basic business documents simply saying this was an error and I don’t have any related accounts. That was rejected within a few hours. After some more research on the Amazon Seller Forums I found a link for how to get a call from the the Account Health team based in the US – https://sellercentral.amazon.com/cu/contact-us/cmn/SAFETY . The person I spoke to there was very helpful. He gave me the first three letters of the related account name (which I did not recognize) and suggested the problem was probably my 3PL that I had granted limited user permissions to. He recommended including information about that in my second appeal and making it clear they were just a service provider and had no ownership or control of my account.
My second appeal stated that I did not have any related accounts but I did provide limited user permissions to a 3PL. I included screenshots from my account showing they had only limited user permissions to create shipments. I included an invoice from them for prep/shipping services showing they were a service provider and that their name and address were different. I also resent my business documents showing my business name, address, etc. which were completely different.
Sorry to hear! Hopefully you got it back OK.
Did you get it back?
THANK YOU SO MUCH for providing that link!!! I’ve been trying to get Amazon Seller Support to call me for two weeks, and this is the only link that actually worked! Thank you again!!! You’re a blessing!
Glad to hear it helped :)
Hello,
What is that link that helped, I’m in a similar situation.
Michael shared the link on his comment :)
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Thanks, Kimmy. I’m glad to hear that our content is in your morning routine and that you gain knowledge with it.
Hi Dave, hope you can help me out here. I receive this message from Amazon, which is the same account with a different name on Amazon and Amazon.ca. Does that trigger the related account?
“You have a separate account Fear0***********pparel which was enforced for violating one of our policies. As a result, you may no longer use the Fear0 Footwear/Apparel Selling account to sell on Amazon.com.”
I thought amazon.com and amazon.ca are considered the same account, not a separate account?
Dan
Hi Guys, I have the same scenario with my client hi account linked to another client account that is suspended even though we do not provide service to them for over 6 months.
I have provided a separation agreement document and stated the obvious but Amazon has rejected it, any advice.
Hi,
I have a question. Few days back amazon deactivated my wife’s account with section 3 due to dropshipping policy. I had done 75 fbm orders in proper way (bought from retailer send to my warehouse changed the boxes and used amazon shipping labels) already sent appeal and it is in progress.
Today amazon deactivated my personal account due to linked account issue. That’s due to same internet. I live in Germany and its not possible to install two internet’s in one house.
I suspected two reasons for this issue:
1. Same warehouse for my FBA INVENTORY. I and my wife uses same shipping address for my inventory to be received by the Fulfillment centers.
2. Same internet.
We both have different LLC’s different bank accounts (charge and deposit) and different LLC Registered address.
Now I should directly appeal for my current account or wait for my wife’s account get activated? Since my wife’s account get deactivated due to alleged dropshipping reasons (which is actually not true at all) and read that it’s difficult to reactive now a days?
My personal account is almost 1.5 years old account total FBA sales (~1 lack 20k dollars sale).
Need your help here.
Thanks in advance.
Adnan Javed
Hi guys any advice how can I reinstate my acct. due to related to other acct.
I send them my plan of action that if I reactivate both of the I will actually close the one account.
Because I dont need two accts. I was just mistakenly made it .
And also what are documents are needed to reinstate?
Please help
Hi Rutchel, unfortunately I don’t have a ton to add aside from whats in this article.
Our account named “Mobyli” has been “deactivated in accordance with section 3 of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement” due to some linkage found with another account.
“You have a separate account SUBHAN TRADERS LLC STORES which was enforced for violating one of our policies.”
We have looked everywhere but cannot find this SUBHAN TRADERS anywhere on Amazon or even on the internet. Everywhere we found this name it was a local business with nothing to do with Amazon.
We have had the Account Health team call us back, but they always gave the same generic reasons that are available on different blogs posts and Seller forums posts.
We have never given account access to anyone except one single VA, and he has never heard of this SUBHAN TRADERS.
We have used 3PL services once in last year, could it be the common link? Will the Account Health team actually tell us if we talk on phone again?
Any approaches you can suggest? Any suggestions at all are welcome.