How to Protect Your Amazon Account Before Prime Day 2026

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions. I’m here with Leah McHugh. We’re both of ecommerceChris. We’re both here to talk pre-Prime Day, I guess. Not Prime Day Prime Day, but pre-Prime Day prep. Is that too many Ps?

, as of this recording at least, we’re soon to meet with a bunch of brands and sellers and agency owners and maybe some service providers in New York at our meetup for a Prime Day wrap session, prep session.

But for the moment, we’re gonna keep it kind of short and sweet and talk about some, I guess, a month ahead of Prime Day mistakes we see people making. I can start with some of the time-wasting, I guess I’m seeing. People waiting for replies from Amazon cases, and then they’re very disappointed when they get the response and it says the same thing.[00:01:00]

Leah: Especially when it takes them, like, a month to get a response.

Chris: Well, you can afford to make some mistakes with things in May, and you c- that you can’t get away with in June when you’re close. Now Prime Days are in June now, of course. It’s been moved up. But I guess I’m struggling to understand why the waiting on a process which probably isn’t gonna work.

Amazon’s obviously not investing that much time, effort, energy, money, resources into training support reps, making sure account health reps give you better answers to things when they’re advising you on how to appeal, when to appeal, what to appeal.

Leah: Well, in fairness to sellers, Amazon is making it harder for them to do anything other than through the cases.

Chris: Right. But we’ve talked a lot about escalate early and often, a year or two. Don’t waste time on these channels, and don’t waste time waiting. I mean, that’s the biggest mistake, right? Because that’s why we get these rush emergency cases, which is fine. We do that every year. [00:02:00] But most of the time, you can comment on your compliance work that you’re doing.

Most of the stuff I see could’ve been at least shown to us earlier, addressed earlier, reviewed earlier- Yeah, of course … instead of like, “I opened three appeals, three cases with Amazon, and I’m still waiting to hear from them.” And I’m like, “Well, what are you waiting for?” And I look at it. Long story short, it’s like you’re not really waiting for anything.

They’ve either already answered it with the same generic mush or they’re going to any moment now answer you with a bunch of generic mush. So I don’t get the waiting.

Leah: I don’t know. I think we see both, right? With, there are the people who have worked with us before who now just come to us as soon as they get something, and then there are the people who haven’t worked with us before.

So then they try it and go back and forth for a few months before they come to us.

Chris: And like if you have an agency running your brand, there’s a little bit of a back and forth. They’re having email threads and calls before they bring us in, in a lot of cases. And I understand that because their agency is running their account and they wanna take a crack at it.

But- you know, doing [00:03:00] that at one time a year versus another, two different things, I think. This year, this Prime Day, a lot of, I don’t know, smaller brands or seven-figure brands, even six-figure brands have a lot at stake. They have to really milk it this time out, you can guarantee fees are gonna be raised next year.

No one’s indicated anything about fees staying the same or a lack of fees going up next year. You have to anticipate that. You have to anticipate ads costs this year being higher than last year.

Leah: Also anticipate a competitor maybe trying to knock you out just before Prime Day.

Chris: That’s my next point.

Yeah. I was gonna jump to that, but I just wanted to see if you had any kind of, you know, I know you’re gonna be talking to people about this in New York soon, but tips and tricks on the compliance side for is it just get your docs in order and make sure they’re handy and up to date in case Amazon asks?

Is that like your number one?

Leah: Yeah. That’s certainly the biggest one. Something that I’ve been [00:04:00] seeing more recently, sort of interestingly, is a lot of times for compliance you have to submit images of the packaging as well. And I’ve been seeing a number of people lately, they’re submitting the images correctly, but they’re submitting images that are such low resolution that the full label isn’t actually readable when you zoom in to try to read it. So a simple thing and something that is sort of confusing because doesn’t everybody just have really high resolution cameras on their phones now?

Chris: I don’t know.

Leah: But make sure that whatever images you’re submitting as part of compliance are actually… Everything in the image needs to be readable. And whether that’s lighting or resolution or just how you’re taking the photograph, you need to make sure that that’s readable because that’s an immediate reason for them not to look at anything else that you’ve submitted and just reject the entire thing. And then you’re back to square one and back to waiting however long for them to re-review information. And they’re not gonna tell you these aren’t high enough resolution images, they’re just gonna send you a generic rejection.

So you need to make sure that everything you’re submitting is readable and this is actually what they’re asking for. Same thing if Amazon’s asking you for [00:05:00] real world photos of the product. They’re not gonna accept a render of the packaging.

And I see them ask for both, so you need to make sure that you’re actually looking at the instructions.

Sometimes they want to see a render of the entire packaging, but then most of the time they want to see real world, unedited images, like literally just in front of a kitchen counter in your hand photos to prove that it really is what the packaging looks like.

Chris: I have seen many appeal rejections for account verification suspensions where the docs were blurry like passport photos.

Those continue to be, and sometimes that’s the only snag if they hadn’t sent in blurry photos. I mean, you’re talking about the compliance version, but it’s the same problem where,

Leah: Well, and the same thing. If you’re sending docs that have been scanned, you need to make sure that the docs are fully readable as well. Most lab tests get emailed at this point, so it’s just a PDF, but if you are submitting photocopies or scanned copies of something [00:06:00] then you need to make sure that that’s completely readable, and also unaltered. As I would like to think that that would go without saying, but don’t alter docs. I think I’ve said this before but that’s fraud, and Amazon does not like when sellers commit fraud against them.

Chris: They don’t. They don’t. They do not.

Leah: They do not take that lightly.

Chris: Especially when it’s… Well, let’s jump to the competitor abuse or competitor reporting topic because competitors are getting better at reporting each other, getting better at motivating Amazon to take action.

There’s like stupid sloppy ways of reporting, and then there’s useful ways of reporting to people who actually handle abuse- and prevent it. But, in terms of if there’s anything non-compliant, like unsubstantiated claims in your listing, if there’s anything non-compliant in your detail page, like the listing title, any kind of extra language that you’re trying to fluff up your listing so it sells better during Prime Day, most savvy competitors are watching every single thing you do. So if you or your staff [00:07:00] or your agency or your service or whatever is trying to pump these in late, late in the day, scrutinize that from a compliance standpoint.

Leah: No, I see that all the time. Particularly with things like supplements or cosmetics, they have a tendency to want to make claims that they’re not allowed to make. So with supplements often there’s disease claims and drug claims often put into the hidden keywords, which Amazon still can flag.

And then also, I see a lot of products that aren’t really intended for children, but for an SEO purpose, somebody adds language or photos that imply that the product’s for children, and then that gets flagged as a children’s product, and Amazon wants to see children’s product testing from you. Or even just the word bamboo can get you flagged for the Textiles Act because you’re not allowed to call fabric bamboo- unless it’s, you can say it’s derived from bamboo. But so I see a lot of things get flagged because somebody decided to add keywords.

Even something [00:08:00] as simple as somebody else’s trademark being added to a listing for search volume, or the one that’s very popular right now, now is GLP-1 being added to listings, and these are, well, if you’re using someone else’s trademark in your listing, that’s obviously a IP violation.

Pretty easy to report and pretty easy to get Amazon to take action on. And then if you’re making any sort of claims that you’re legally not allowed to make about your product, that’s just gonna get you flagged for a compliance review. If Amazon thinks that your product is marketing itself as a drug, they’re gonna wanna see documentation that shows that this is a drug registered with the FDA, approved, et cetera.

Chris: And competitors will try to get you flagged for false compliance reviews. We can maybe spend the last couple minutes just talking about, you are going to start in May into June, you’re gonna start getting orders from people who say, “This wasn’t as you described it on the detail page.

This wasn’t the right condition.” “This made me sick.” “It made me sick.” “This is fake,” even though you’re selling your own brand. Just be prepared for these now. Mentally compose an appeal [00:09:00] if you’re not going to physically write one, because that’s going to happen any time you’re approaching a peak sales period.

And don’t flounder around is this just a crazy buyer? Is it Amazon, picking out some weird complaint and overemphasizing it? Is it an attacker? Figure out what’s going on quickly, right? I mean, you can usually tell. There’s usually telltale signs, and there’s indications that people are trying to buy from you in a short time period and leave similar damning comments over and over to try to get the listing taken down.

So don’t be caught off guard from that. I mean, this is extremely common. Don’t misinterpret messages from a buyer where they try to make it look like you’re dealing with them offline or trying to compensate them offline for a review. I mean, those are setups, right? Yeah. They’re trying to frame you.

They’re buying from you to try to frame you for breaking policies because they’re trying to get your account suspended right before Prime Day. So just look alive out there. I know I talk about this kind of thing a lot Abuse has proliferated, gotten worse, [00:10:00] become more nuanced. Sometimes more sophisticated stuff shows up that we haven’t seen before.

But don’t get stuck, like analysis paralysis. Like react with some strategy and be ready for abuse reporting and appeals that cite the fact that something’s rotten here, something doesn’t make sense.

Leah: Yeah. And I would also recommend documenting things internally. So if you see something, maybe not a big thing, but it’s just something weird that happens to your listing or to your account, document that.

Don’t necessarily have to report every single little thing that happens on your account, but document it. Because if a pattern emerges from all of these little things that then turns into a much bigger, more difficult to fix thing, then that documentation helps you show the pattern and show that this is likely some sort of an attack or abuse on your account or listing.

Chris: Yeah. Very succinct. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Yes. Well, if you listen in on this one before Thursday night, May [00:11:00] 14th comes and goes, you’ll be seeing us, potentially in New York if you’re in the northeast area. Pennsylvania, Connecticut. It’s the tri-state area, but people are coming from New England. We’ve had people… We also do a meetup in Boston, but we’ve had people from multiple states for every meetup, I think, that we’ve done, mostly New York City, so if you’re around Midtown Manhattan.

And if not, if this pre-Prime Day strategy conversation interests you or if you’ve got some specific concerns, just reach out to us at ecommerceChris. We’re gonna be, guns blazing on this whole topic for the next five, six weeks, right?

Leah: Yeah. So. You and I both look like we’re guns blazing.

Chris: We’re ready. Yeah.

Leah: We’re like, “Woo.”

Chris: We’re ready to meet with people and talk about it in person sooner than later. So, thanks for listening in, and we’ll catch you hopefully very soon.