@Cooper_Amazon - Back in January I lost my house and work space in a flood, so for obvious reasons, I had to update my address on file with Amazon. It took some time to navigate the complex bureaucracy that someone in my position must face, before I was prepared to provide Amazon with a new permanent address, but I was finally able to do so on April 24th. After updating my address Amazon informed me that it would need to verify the new address and to expect a post card with a code to be delivered on or about May 3rd. All seems reasonable and normal, until this morning, when I received the following email:

"Your Amazon seller account has been temporarily suspended and your listings have been removed. Please continue to ship open orders and respond to buyer inquiries to avoid further impact to your account.Why is this happening? We recently requested that you provide information to us, as required by the new US INFORM Consumers Act and in accordance with Section 1 of the Amazon Business Solutions Agreement (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/1791). Since our record shows that you have not submitted the required information for verification, or the information you submitted could not be verified, your Amazon seller account has been temporarily suspended and your listings have been removed. Please continue to ship open orders and respond to buyer inquiries to avoid further impact to your account."

First, this email is factually inaccurate. Amazon is not currently waiting for me to provide it the required verification information, rather I am waiting for Amazon to provide me with the required information. Amazon can have no reasonable expectation that I provide it with this information until after May 3rd, the date it expects I will have the information in my possession. Further, Amazon can have no reasonable expectation that I provide it with this information, when its own tracking tools show that Amazon has just begun the process of dispatching the information but said information has not left its possession and is not yet on its way to me.

Second, the US INFORM Act gives Amazon 10 days to verify the information provide to it by a seller. It has been 4 days since I changed my address, so there are still 6 more days before Amazon (not the seller) would fail to be in compliance with the requirements of The Act. Also, the Act puts the responsibility for verification on the shoulders of the marketplace (Amazon) and not the seller, so the statement "We recently requested that you provide information to us, as required by the new US INFORM Consumers Act..." is a misrepresentation of The Act. Failure of the seller to participate in the verification process may be a violation of Amazon's policies, but it is not a violation of The Act itself.

Third, Section 1 of the Amazon Business Solutions Agreement states in pertinent part "As part of the application, or at any time during the term of this Agreement, you must provide us with your (or your business') legal name, address, phone number and e-mail address, as well as any other information we may request." In my current situation, I fail to see how I am in non-compliance with Section 1. I have provided Amazon with valid and accurate information, I have done so in a timely manner, and I have complied with all requests for information I have received from Amazon. Currently there is one pending request for information Amazon has sent me, however Amazon has set the expectation that the earliest that information could be due is May 3rd, although it does not explicitly state this to be the deadline for when the seller must comply with the information request.

I have complete and total respect for the need and requirements of the US INFORM Act and I am fully on board with participating in the verification process. What I don't agree with or respect is the action Amazon took this morning, nor that the response from Amazon Support has effectively been the equivalent of "that sucks, but don't worry, we are well aware of this issue, however we haven't fixed it, so I guess you just have to wait."