riverside_chris_& leah_ecommercechris_stud

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey Everybody, welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions. I’m your trusty host, Chris McCabe of ecommerceChris. I’m here with Leah McHugh, [00:01:00] also thank God, with ecommerceChris. And we were talking about food safety investigations that have– I don’t know if they’ve ramped up lately. I think there’s a renewed seriousness around food safety compliance, and you’ve worked on a couple cases related to that on the compliance side.

And of course, Prime Day not that far away. Maybe there’ll be more listings flagged this month versus next when, you know, they don’t wanna take everyone’s catalog down all at once, right in June. So, what would you say sticks out from the last one or two of these that you did? And do you think they’re gonna be continuing to take food safety seriously or investigating it in meaningful ways let’s say versus last year?

Leah: Yeah. So just to clarify, food safety doesn’t only apply to foods, it applies to anything that is ingested. So dietary supplements, drug products would also fall under that [00:02:00] particular category. What we’re seeing mostly these days, and is similar to what we were seeing before, I think it’s just being ramped up a little bit.

Most of these are based on customer feedback, so a review or seller feedback that talks about the product being unsafe in some way or the product making them sick or having to go to the hospital, things like that. It is pretty much automated on Amazon’s side at this point. They’re really just flagging those keywords, which they’ve always sort of been doing.

It just, I would say, is a little bit more prevalent now across the board. But what’s interesting with this, and something that they haven’t really changed, is that they will often base this off of one complaint. It’s not that they’re seeing a series of complaints. If somebody mentions anything making them sick, that tends to be just enough to take down the listing.

And so what I’m seeing a [00:03:00] lot of are return reasons or reviews, although particularly return reasons, where it just doesn’t read like it’s real, you know? so they’re like, “I had to go to the hospital. Refund me now or I’ll call the police,” or something along those lines, and then there is never any follow-up from the customer.

The customer never contacts the manufacturer directly, never contacts the brand or the seller directly. It’s just a stray comment that they make on Amazon, and then that triggers a food safety warning, and then you have to go through the appeal process. So what I’m seeing a lot of is, and honestly I don’t know, it’s probably a little bit of both, is either customer abuse where they just want a refund or potentially a competitor putting in these fake comments in order to get a competitor taken down.

Chris: That’s what I was going to say. It’s kind of confusing that still halfway through 2026, there’s no mechanism for Amazon understanding that people are shooting at each [00:04:00] other, and that maybe one stray comment isn’t worth taking an entire listing down or threatening to take the listing down or..

Leah: It’s one of those things where, you know, I get if someone’s saying that something made them sick or something has the potential to kill somebody, I understand not wanting to wait for more than one person to mention that.

But at the same time is does make a system that is very easy to manipulate. I would say the bigger change this year is that the appeal forms Are not as flexible as they used to be Mm-hmm. You’re given a series of options to check with check boxes, and then you’re only given the opportunity to upload documentation.

There is no text box to explain anything.

Chris: Right.

Leah: So, so oftentimes if you’re disputing this, you can’t actually dispute it through the appeal button. There isn’t a, “If you believe this was incorrect, click here.” You just have to choose one of the options, or escalate it outside [00:05:00] of the appeal form.

Chris: Oh, I would say any kind of dispute appeal I work on now, we never… I don’t, I can’t remember last time there was a meaningful submission in Seller Central where they accepted it on the first try.

Leah: Well, so for these ones- there was a dispute option previously on the appeal form, and- most of these I would get removed by disputing it.

It just, it doesn’t give you that op- Sometimes it does. It depends how it comes through, right? They, they keep playing with things on Account Health. But there isn’t even the option for any sort of explanation. It’s just upload these documents.

Chris: Yeah.

Leah: Which again, I get that they are trying to automate everything, but one, it’s probably making more work for them ’cause people are going to have to submit more and more times if they don’t have the option to submit the, what they actually should be submitting in the first place.

But also It doesn’t always apply properly. So yes, I get the [00:06:00] point that if somebody says something kills them or could kill them, to be like, “Show us your HACCP plan.” Like, okay. But HACCP is kind of theoretical. Like a HACCP plan is, is what you are supposed to follow to make sure nothing goes wrong. It’s not actually proof that anything didn’t go wrong.

Chris: Agreed. They’re just trying to reduce… Well, first of all, they know-

Leah: They’re trying to automate it. They’re, it’s a system where they’re, you know, if we can just standardize this so everybody has to supply these standard documents and nothing else, then we can automate this.

Which- I understand that’s what they’re trying to do, but also it’s counter intuitive. Like a certificate of analysis that shows that there’s no contaminants, that’s pretty good proof that there’s nothing wrong. A HACCP plan or your cGMP, again, yes, C- at least with the cGMP, it’s been checked, it’s been verified by a third party that you were doing things correctly. But that still isn’t proof that nothing went wrong.

Chris: I [00:07:00] wanna go a step further with it. I think they got to the point where they realized why so many appeals were being auto-rejected or almost like bot rejected by humans. It’s because, A, they didn’t have any quality assurance going through to figure out how do we stop our employees from auto-rejecting stuff for no reason.

But B, like, they just, they decided the reason, the best way to attack that wasn’t to retrain everyone or to fire everyone or whatever. It was to make it so that there’s less written text for them to read. Because the reason they were rejecting so many appeals was because sometimes appeals had to get into details, and sometimes details add to the length.

And it takes attention and time. Not just your time. You can spend time skimming a bunch of written material and not absorb any of it, but you have to pay attention.

And their employees were motivated, are motivated to get through whatever the task is as quickly as [00:08:00] possible, no matter what, come hell or high water.

And in a world like that, your only approach is to reduce the amount of text you ask from the sellers. And they started by not asking for plans of action anymore, but now I guess we’re going to a universe where they’re not gonna ask for much of any written

Leah: explanation. Well, so compliance was never really asking for a plan of action, but sometimes- there does need to be an explanation about what’s going on. there’s this assumption that- At most, people are maybe one entity away from their manufacturer, and that’s- not always the case. So if you’re having to explain the relationship between this person whose CGMP you’re submitting and, and the brand of product that you’re selling unless that is very easy to see in the documentation, that often does require some sort of written ex- explanation as to, as to who the certificate belongs to and how they relate to the product in question. [00:09:00] and so, so that’s, we’re seeing, or I have seen cases get hung up on that, where there’s nuance that can’t be submitted through just uploading documents for some AI to review because once again even if you’re uploading a letter explaining the relationship, that’s not that standardized, “Here’s the plan. Here’s, here’s this documentation that you asked for. A computer can read it, all good to go.” There are these not yes, no documentation items that need to be submitted, and from what I’ve seen, their AI is not that good.

Yeah, it’s not that good. And I’m sure there are still humans involved. Historically, you know, if you listen to this podcast, you know what we think about how that usually goes.

Chris: Yeah.

Leah: But it’s just, it’s, it’s making it more specific in terms of what they’re asking for, which in some cases is good because it means, okay, well, this is all I have to submit.

Great. Don’t have to think about this. That’s what they’re asking for. But also [00:10:00] there are cases where the documentation they’re asking for just doesn’t really apply. Yeah. Um, or can’t be provided for a specific product because it literally doesn’t apply to that product.

Chris: I just, what bothers me the most is that it’ll be like a one, single one-star review from a buyer who’s never left a review on any other product, which was just the account was just created obviously for the purposes of leaving one bad review which says, “This product almost killed me.” And it’s so obvious what’s going on. It’s so transparent.

The idea that that would be the initial flag, which sure, if they wanna just look at your product testing documentation and you have it and you send it and that’s it, great.

Or they just wanna put you through some, some initial basic paces around this is, you know, a complaint we got. We’re just checking it out. But in situations like that, they should err on the side not [00:11:00] that the buyer’s legitimate, but err on the side of this is a one-off complaint that is not indicative of a broader pattern for the seller.

Leah: Right. But I also, I do understand from Amazon’s side. Like, if somebody writes something that’s saying that something made them sick or something killed them or they had to be hospitalized-

Something

Leah: killed them … if they don’t take… Well, you know. This killed my niece or whatever. Um- ‘

Chris: Cause the people who die consuming these products, they don’t leave a lot of reviews, so.

Leah: Well, you know what I mean.

Chris: Yeah.

Leah: But I, I see it from their point of view because if someone were to write that and then Amazon did nothing and then it turns out that that was a legitimate case, that would not look very good for them.

Chris: They, they can take action- … but the action doesn’t always have to result in a restricted ASIN or the threat.

I understand the ASIN doesn’t always go down right away, but there’s at least a looming threat that if they don’t like what you send in, which they often don’t More times than not, they reject your appeal than accept it.

Leah: Right.

Chris: The [00:12:00] implication is one comment, which of course just invites a bunch of people to attack their competitors with one stray comment Even if they don’t have an organized mass attack, they can just try to do one.

Leah: Well, and so another thing that I’ve been seeing, not specifically for food safety, but just in terms of general documentation review- is that it seems that there are some cues that I’m not sure if they’re not being checked properly, but I have seen– I’ve– We’ve had people come to us where their documentation review, it takes them three to four weeks to even get a response on that.

That’s- Which Especially when it’s basic documentation review and they have the exact documents that Amazon is asking for. There’s no reason for it to be taking that long, and often what we see is that it still doesn’t get reviewed properly, so then it gets rejected because something is missing even though that something was included in the submission.

And now you’ve reset that clock and, and potentially you’re waiting another four weeks to get it reviewed. And I’m not sure. It seems [00:13:00] like sometimes it’s a glitch internally where those queues are just going into purgatory. And then other times it just seems like the teams are behind potentially.

But again, if, if you’re being attacked and someone makes a fake complaint, and then your- Yeah … ASIN is down for four weeks while you wait for Amazon to review your documentation, you- that’s not a good place to be.

Chris: Prime Day is for about, as we record now, about four weeks away now. So if it happened today, you wouldn’t… plus your sales rank would plummet between now and Prime Day. But I mean, the answer is usually it’s somebody locked that to themselves. It’s assigned to somebody who hasn’t been working it. Right. And no one came along and took it from them.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So yeah, that’s a mistake. Yeah, that shouldn’t be happening. Yes, it does happen. Fortunately, that’s not the norm.

Leah: Well, and I’m also seeing things where, you know, you talk to account health, like, “Why is this taking so long?” And then they’re like- Yeah … “Oh, submit it through a case [00:14:00] instead, and it’ll get routed to the right team.” And then you submit it through a case, and it’s like, you have to submit it through the portal.

Chris: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the best, quickest ways to get something reviewed.

Leah: Well, it also just seems that they keep changing their internal SOP, so nobody really knows which way you’re supposed to be submitting it. So there is that confusion of… And sometimes y- when you’re submitting a case, it is just because they didn’t transfer it to the right team, and if you submit it again, you can get it transmitted to the right team. But then, then there are other things where they will only accept it if it’s through the portal, but then the portal seems to not be working properly or not being reviewed.

Chris: Yeah.

Leah: Or like you said, gets locked to somebody who’s out of office for weeks at a time.

Chris: I don’t know. I’ve already said a couple times, I think this is gonna be a uniquely interesting Prime Day just because of all the things we’ve seen going on, some of it not related to compliance investigations, like the price matching stuff that they decided to ramp up in spring, which made a lot of waves. People saying we lost the buy box [00:15:00] because some idiot created a Temu version of our- listing, which is half the price

Leah: Well, and honestly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of that ’cause that’s such an easy way to get somebody to lose a buy box. And I hate saying these things on the podcast ’cause I’m like, I’m giving people ideas. Yeah. But

Chris: Those ideas are out there. It’s the same- Right … every time we discuss product review manipulation. Every technique or process or product or service that we’ve talked about, it’s out in the world already.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Um, and a lot of people, I think, I mean, maybe we can close on this point. A lot of people don’t understand that the month before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the month before Prime Day is when there’s a, like, a flurry of ramped-up enforcement knowing- Mm … that they’re gonna go, go lax or go light on the, on the sales holiday itself.

And I don’t think Amazon would ever be like, “Oh, we don’t, we’re not backing off of account suspensions during Prime Day. We’re still going to suspend people if it’s a worthy case.” But, I mean, experience has shown us that it, it’s usually three, [00:16:00] four weeks … before, and now Prime Day is more like a week, not a day.

So I mean, this applies even more. So, all right. Well, thanks for talking me through this. I know we’re gonna have other case study examples and, and compliance conversations with you. And Leah McHugh, she knows her stuff, so if you have compliance questions, examples, problems, you wanna complain, you need, you need a shoulder to cry on, uh, just make sure- Yeah, sorry.

Leah: This was mostly a complaining episode.

Chris: Just make sure you reach out to Leah, and if you forget to CC me, it just means I don’t- … you know, need to deal with it too, so. Anyway, thanks for listening in. Thanks everybody. I know it’s a crazy time, crazy time of year. Follow up with us and let us know if you have questions or comments.

See you next time.