Hello,

I am writing here because I am desperate. Amazon suspended our account for review manipulation on the 26th of April. This happened right after a buyer reached out to us saying they ordered one of our products and weren’t been able to access it for 3 days because it got delivered to their neighbor instead who is rarely home. This was an FBA issue, but being the new sellers that we are, we wanted to take this opportunity to go above and beyond for our customer, even though this wasn’t our problem. We wanted to refund them but also give them £10 on top so they could buy the product again if they wanted, this time hopefully having it delivered to their home instead. Before we went ahead and did that we asked the Amazon chat support if this was fine and we wouldn’t be breaking any rules, to which they replied it was fine and completely up to us. An hour after issuing the refund with £10 on top, our account got suspended. We were also given a warning for review manipulation a week before that. A cousin of the CEO bought all of our products and left positive reviews with images which Amazon quickly removed. We did not realize how strict Amazon would be about that and this is something we apologized to Amazon for in our Plan of Action.

Coming to the suspension email and our plan of action, you can find those below:

Suspension email:

Hello,

Your Amazon seller account remains temporarily deactivated. Your listings have been removed. Funds will not be transferred to you but will be held in your account while we work with you to address this issue. Please ship any open orders to avoid further impact to your account.

Why is this happening?
To help you identify specific areas of improvement, we encourage you to review the “Misuse of ratings, feedback, or reviews,” “Misuse of sales rank,” and “Misuse of Search and Browse” sections of the “Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions” page.

How do I reactivate my account?
To reactivate your account, please send a plan of action that explains:
– The root cause(s) of the Sales Rank & Search and Browse violation;
– The actions you have taken to resolve the policy violation; and
– The steps you have taken to prevent this violation in the future.

How do I send the required information?
If you want to appeal this decision, click the Appeal button next to this message on the Performance Notifications page in Seller Central.

What happens if I do not send the requested information?
If you do not send an acceptable plan within 17 days, you may not be eligible to sell on Amazon anymore. If you have funds in your account, they will be available after any amounts paid for A-to-z claims or chargebacks on your orders have been deducted. This usually takes about 90 days, but funds may be held longer.

You can see your balance and settlement information in the Payments section of Seller Central. If you have questions about those, please send an email to payments-investigate@amazon.co.uk. If you have any FBA inventory remaining in our fulfillment centers, you will receive an email in 30 days with instruction on how to remove it.

You can view your account performance or select Account Health on the home screen of the Amazon Seller app on your iOS or Android device. The Account Health dashboard shows how well your account is performing against the performance metrics and policies required to sell on Amazon.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.co.uk

Our Plan of Action:

Amazon Account Name: [name of the account]

Reason for Suspension: Manipulating product reviews

Dear Amazon Seller Performance Team,

Here is the information you requested:

The names, email addresses, physical addresses, and/or phone numbers of any third parties involved in this activity

Here is the contact information for our relative that was involved in this activity:
[relative name]
[relative email address]

Copies of all written communications with third parties involved in this activity

All communication was performed through a phone call with this relative of the CEO of the company. There is no written communication. The CEO mentioned his products and talked about the business he is in.

Evidence of payments made to any third parties involved in this activity

There were no payments made to this relative for this act. This was done as a favor.

A description of how we learned about the third parties and how we each conducted activities

On 04.16.2019 and 04.18.2019 an Amazon customer and a relative of our CEO by the name of [relative name] ([relative email]) left reviews for ASIN’s [ASIN1] and [ASIN2]. There’s no written form of communication between us and him regarding the review manipulation and neither did we pay him for it.
He bought these items on Amazon and left positive reviews with pictures.
On 04.26.2019 we refunded the customer for order ID 026-0419147-1872356 after they claimed that the product was not delivered to them.
We wanted to issue a full refund and add 10 pounds on top so they could buy the product again if they wanted, this time hopefully having it delivered to their home.
Before we went ahead and issued the refund, we asked Amazon chat support if this was allowed, to which they responded, yes, it was up to us.
We went ahead and issued the refund and added 10 pounds on top. An hour later, our account got suspended.
We have attached our conversation with this Amazon Seller Support agent (see attached images).

The root cause(s) of the Sales Rank & Search and Browse violation

· On 04.16.2019 and 04.18.2019 an Amazon customer and a relative of our CEO by the name of [relative name] ([relative email]) left reviews for ASIN’s [ASIN1] and [ASIN2]. There’s no written form of communication between us and him regarding the review manipulation and neither did we pay him for it.

o He bought these items on Amazon and left positive reviews with pictures.

· On 04.26.2019 we refunded the customer for order ID 026-0419147-1872356 after they claimed that the product was not delivered to them.

o We wanted to issue a full refund and add 10 pounds on top so they could buy the product again if they wanted, this time hopefully having it delivered to their home.

o Before we went ahead and issued the refund, we asked Amazon chat support if this was allowed, to which they responded, yes, it was up to us.

o We went ahead and issued the refund and added 10 pounds on top. An hour later, our account got suspended.

o We have attached our conversation with this Amazon Seller Support agent (see attached images).

· We did not study and fully comprehend Amazon’s policies when it comes to manipulating sales and reviews.

· We should have researched the following in Amazon Seller Central:

o “Misuse of Ratings, Feedback, or Reviews,” “Misuse of Sales Rank,” and “Misuse of Search and Browse” policies.

The actions we have taken to resolve the policy violation

Since this occurrence we had our relative remove all manipulated feedback they have left.
There will be no more manipulated reviews or feedback on our account again.
We have supplied Amazon with the conversation we had with the Amazon chat representative regarding the other order.
Our company now completely understands Amazon’s “Misuse of Ratings, Feedback, or Reviews,” “Misuse of Sales Rank,” and “Misuse of Search and Browse” policies and will enact them completely moving forward.
We have ensured there will never be any more relatives, employees or customers manipulating any reviews on our account.
The following includes a detailed plan of the steps our business has taken to correct this Review Manipulation issue Amazon raised.

The steps we have taken to prevent this violation in the future

1. Re-read and studied Amazon’s Seller Agreement, Terms of Service, and Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions

We have come to realize that our biggest mistake was not fully studying and comprehending Amazon’s Seller Agreement, Terms of Service and Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions.
This led to our relative wrongfully providing us manipulated reviews.
We have since fully read and studied these policies.
We also read “Anti-Manipulation Policy for Customer Reviews” in the Amazon Help Center.
We understand that this error is extremely serious, so we have enacted a new system to fix this issue and make sure it never happens again.
The main reason this blunder occurred was because of our company’s oversight of Amazon’s policies.
So, in response to this suspension, we have re-read every one of Amazon’s policies and better understand why our relatives cannot purchase our product to leave a positive review.
Here’s our plan to avoid future mistakes like this:

1. Initiate an employee workshop centered around Amazon’s Seller University, Seller Agreement, TOS, and Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions so every employee can understand Amazon’s policies when it comes to providing manipulated reviews.

2. We have also hired a legal adviser and professional Amazon Seller Account consultant to guarantee that we will strictly adhere to all applicable laws and strictly abide by all of Amazon policies.

3. We have communicated to our relatives that supporting our business by leaving positive reviews on our products is against Amazon’s policies and should never happen again.

4. Never participate in any form of sales, feedback or review manipulation again

After completing step 1 we have realized how wrong we were in committing this sales manipulation act.
We will NEVER participate in any form of manipulation on any of Amazon platforms again.
All of our sales, feedback and reviews will be earned in a policy abiding way and we will never offer customers more money than the refund.
No family members, close friends, or employees of a seller on Amazon will write reviews for our items or negative reviews for items sold by competitors.
If any 3rd party offers us a manipulated product sales ranking or feedback service we will immediately reject their offer.

3. Ask Amazon to remove any reviews or feedback currently on our account that they deem necessary

We ask Amazon to retract any reviews they deem necessary if these customers do not remove it themselves. We are unsure if these reviews were manipulated but we are fine with Amazon removing it.
This is an extreme effort we are taking as a company to show Amazon that we are very serious about being trusted partners moving forward.
Our company sincerely believes that by wiping clean our Amazon account of any misleading reviews, it will help us as we strive towards our goal of being the most virtuous and ethical sellers we can be.

4. Work towards getting honest and fair sales, feedback and reviews

· As a company we need to work on getting fair and honest sales rankings.

· We will address this issue by working to resolve customer issues quickly and by actively seeking more positive feedback and reviews. Once our account is reinstated, we plan to:

o Keep negative reviews and feedback low by addressing all issues and concerns within a 24-hour timeframe with the buyer.

o Initiate a customer feedback program that will encourage more positive feedback and make it easy for customers to reach out to us through Amazon’s system, return their product and/or ask for a refund.

o As per Amazon’s policy, we will only send one email requesting feedback.

o Have negative feedback removed that is against Amazon’s policies (manipulated product reviews, etc.)

Thank you again for this opportunity to appeal our account suspension and regain Amazon’s trust. We look forward to hearing back from you.

The first Plan of Action we sent was just regarding the £10 extra we gave to the customer, and that immediately got rejected, after which we added the incident with the cousin and made the Plan of Action above. That also got rejected. We resent this asking Amazon to please review, since we supplied everything they asked for. We also made the plan of action a lot more concise and just stuck to the root cause, the actions we have taken,and future prevention. It has been 4 days now and there has been no reply from Amazon besides the acknowledgement email.

We are quite desperate at this point. Sending an email to jeff@amazon is the last resort. Anyone experienced something similar? Any tips or someone we can talk to regarding this? We have read and gone through all of Amazon’s TOS and compliance documents and all our relatives and employees have been communicated about how strict Amazon is regarding review manipulation. Never again. We just want our account back at this point.

Any help would be much appreciated.