Hi all, I’m praying that someone out there will be able to help me with what I feel are some quite basic queries regarding the verification of my account and what I am / am not supposed to be able to do or see at this current point in time. I have become exasperated with speaking with Amazon Seller Support, the Account Verification team, Brand Registry team and my Dedicated Account Manager via E-Mail, live phone chat and typed support chat, and have been forced to try here as a last resort. (Note: This is going to take a while to read through, I do apologise but you need the detail in order to understand my concerns.)

First a bit of background. I’m completely new to selling on Amazon. Last year I developed a new card game called UFO Wave. As I wanted to retain ownership of this card game I created my own company Paradigm Games. I launched the game on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. This was successful and the game was manufactured. It was delivered from China and I have received many copies of it in boxes currently in storage. As I live in the UK I decided that the best website to attempt to sell the game would be Amazon.co.uk. I will only be shipping games to a UK based Amazon warehouse, I have no intention of sending any abroad. I assume that this means that it will only exist on Amazon.co.uk but that’s fine as long as people from other countries can still go there and buy it.

I believe I have set up a new business account with a professional plan, for which I have already been billed £30. I created the account on 6th November. I was annoyed that the name of my company had already been taken by someone else so I opted for Paradigm Games UK instead. I have not received any E-Mails from Amazon stating that this disparity between my account name and brand name is an issue.

I believe I have set the account all up correctly. In order to prove my bank account for the company I had to send through a bank statement. I am no longer being prompted for any further documents. All of the pages under Account Details seem to be fully completed as required.

My Account Status currently says Information Provided. Your account is under €15,000 disbursement limit. My Current Status of Listings says Active (Listings available for sale on Amazon). Under My Services section it has Sell On Amazon Professional (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.com.be, Amazon.fr, Amazon.nl, Amazon.it, Amazon.se, Amazon.pl). Amazon Payments Europe Agreement accepted. Amazon Services Europe Business Solutions Agreement accepted. Amazon Payments Europe Acceptable Use Policy accepted. For Fulfilment By Amazon it says Registered (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.com.be, Amazon.fr, Amazon.nl, Amazon.it, Amazon.se, Amazon.pl). For Amazon Business it says Registered (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it)

The Deposit Methods screen shows that I have got only Amazon.co.uk set as an Assigned Marketplace (I assume this is fine). Account Verification states Verified with a green tick. In the Manage Deposit Methods I can see my Bank Account Number. It has a Status of Active and Account Verificaiton Status of Verified.

The Charge Methods screen shows that my Visa Debit/Credit card is assigned to all marketplaces including Amazon.co.uk. I assumed that it needed to be done for people in other countries to purchase my products from amazon.co.uk. It seemed to let me with no complaints. On Manage Charge Methods my card is listed and has the Status of Active.

The Business and Contact Information section on the Identity Information screen shows my company name with Sole Proprietor under it, which is correct as I own the company and have no staff working for me. It states “Successfully submitted all mandatory details” at the bottom with a green tick. The Primary Contact section on the same page has my full name and company Email address and again has this message with a green tick.

On the Display Name screen I can see display names for all the different marketplaces I signed up for on the Charge Methods screen incluiding of course amazon.co.uk

I have not yet touched any of the screens in the Shipping and Returns or Tax Information pages as I plan to use Amazon FBA, I assume I don’t need to mess with these.

I created two listings for my products (the game and an optional play mat) over a week ago. I believe I have filled in all fields correctly. When I tried using Paradigm Games as the Brand Name on my products it asked me to confirm this by sending in a photograph of one of the products with the brand name on, which I did. I then received an email back saying this had been accepted and I could use Paradigm Games as a brand name. I find it utterly bizarre that this is completely seperate to “Brand Registration” but whatever. I set the Start Sales date for the current date, and added loads of search terms for the products.

At the moment both the products have a status of “Inactive (Out of Stock)” alongside them in my Inventory. They both hace SKU numbers which Amazon appears to have auto-generated and these have the status New. Both products also have ASIN numbers. All mandatory fields have been filled in and there are no complaints or red tabs when I go to Edit them.

When I created the listings I was surprised to find that I could not create a detailed product page with loads of images, videos etc like I’ve seen on many products for sale on the site. Amazon Seller Central left me completely in the dark about this, but reading online I found out that some (maybe all of this) becomes active by going through the Brand Registration process. So went to Brands under Account Details and enrolled Paradigm Games as a brand. It asked me to upload the trademark certificate which I did. Then suddenly I hit a brick wall. It stated that the registration was on hold because my account was not yet fully verified.

I was confused by this as there was no indication that any documents were still required by Amazon and everything under Account Details looked absolutely fine. So I contacted Seller Central and they told me to check my Account Status by entering the words into the search box on the front screen and then click the orange Continue button in the search results on the right. When I did I received a message stating that my account is still pending verification.

I became further confused when I went to amazon.co.uk and attempted to search for my products and neither were coming up in the results. I reached out to my dedicated Account Manager and he stated that this was because Amazon had not yet received my stock. However I can find loads of pages on Amazon that say Unavailale out of stock.

So at last onto my queries regarding what is going on at present:

• My account status says “Information received” at the moment not “Validated” or “Verified” (or something similar). Is this normal for a new account even if all of the required documents have been sent and all the sections under Account Details look correct?

• What wording will the status change to when it gets sorted out?

• Roughly how long should I expect this to take?

• Is the Account Status of “Pending Verification” when I search for Account Status and click Continue appearing for the same reason?

• Am I able to send my products to Amazon and sell them on Amazon.co.uk right now even though the above has not taken place?

• Are my listed products currently not appearing on Amazon.co.uk when I search for them because they currently have the status “Inactive (Out Of Stock)”

• If so why are there lots of pages of products on Amazon.co.uk which state “Unavailable out of stock” on them, why are these still showing? Is it because they have sold well so Amazon has chosen not to set them back to Inactive when their stock ran out?

• Will the status automatically change to Active once they receive my products and then I’ll be able to find them (I don’t necessarily expect them to be at the top of the returned items)?

• Do I have to wait until my account is fully validated before my brand registration will complete? In other words I’ll have to start selling without any videos until Amazon can get it sorted out?

• I want my products to be able to be found and purchased by anyone visiting Amazon.co.uk, whether they live in the UK or abroad. I do not intend on sending any actual products abroad. Did I need to have signed up for all those other Marketplaces on the Charge Methods screen or did I just need to choose Amazon.co.uk? If they aren’t needed would it be fine to go back in there and remove them?

• I assume it doesn’t matter that my brand is Paradigm Games but my Seller Account Name is Paradigm Games UK?

• When I hover over the white box with Paradigm Games UK in at the top of the main screen it’s listing a load of different countries. Do these countries correspond to the marketplaces I signed up for on the Charge Methods screen under Account Details i.e. if I’d only selected Amazon.co.uk it would only show United Kingdom here?

• A few of the countries, not including United Kingdom, have Pending Registration in brackets alongside them. What does this mean, and could this be affecting my Account Status at present or is this completely unrelated?

If you know the answer to any of the above for definate please can you assist? I’ve been having 10 days of mixed messages from Seller Central Support and I need some clarity on what’s going on with my account. Any help greatly appreciated.

David Hodrien