Would Your Account Survive These Compliance Questions?

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions. Chris McCabe here with Leah McHugh once again. Leah, how are you doing after last week's scintillating New York meetup where you were speaker?

Leah: Yeah. Good. I've gone from speaking in a room full of a bunch of like videos and multimedia to recording our podcast in my closet because they're testing the fire alarms today.

Chris: yeah. They're always testing the fire alarms at your place. I've noticed that and I'm sitting in front of the fireplace that I've never used. So there you go. And my books up.

Leah: I actually used my fireplace.

Chris: Ah, interesting. Speaking of setting fires, last week you ran a quiz as part of your talk for compliance, for listing policies, messaging policies. I think that went over well. I've had a lot of good feedback and for those of you who weren't in New York last week, we did kind of a smaller version of the [00:01:00] usual event that we do, but we had a lot of brands there and different speakers. One from Amazon, you, our sponsor was Swapt.

Andrew Smith was there, and Bopyo Park of Seller Visor was my co-host and also Liz Herrera talked about TikTok. So more info on that. TikTok Studios. Yeah. So more on that to come. We'll post about that a bit more, but today just wanted to talk about, what your data reflected. I don't know if you've had time to go over it.

In terms of people getting answers right versus wrong when you ask them those policy questions.

Leah: Yeah. So just to sort of clarify a little bit more about what it is that we are talking about, rather than just me talking about Amazon policies as I have been doing for 10 plus years at this point, I did a quiz where the audience basically got to test their own knowledge on Amazon policies because one thing I've learned over 10 years is that people might listen to my talks, but they don't necessarily [00:02:00] take that information away and use it. So this way it's a little bit more interactive and people get a better sense of like, oh, I was incorrect here. I didn't know what I was doing and I make a point that all of the questions in the quiz is something that I have seen an account suspended for in the last 12 months.

So these aren't theoretical policy issues. These are real policy issues that are obviously real Amazon policies, but are also real Amazon policies that Amazon is currently enforcing. So it's not just like, in theory this is incorrect. These are cases that we have worked on that we see repeatedly over the last 12 months.

Chris: I think there's more of an understanding, and at some points a reckoning on compliance can't be faked anymore. You might slide by a few times, but even if Amazon misses what you're doing wrong with your listing accuracy, product compliance, whatever it might be. Somebody's gonna report it.

Leah: So, well, what's interesting is that there's so much [00:03:00] review manipulation talk right now and people, you know, 'cause there's a lot of account suspensions for it. It has been for God, I don't know how many years at this point. People are always talking about how asking for reviews can get you in trouble.

And it's interesting because my question specifically about that only 30% of the audience got correct and the majority of the audience selected that it's okay to ask a customer to leave a review if they're happy and to contact you if they have any issues, which is absolutely a no and has been for a long time.

So I found that one kind of interesting that so many people got that one wrong.

Chris: I think I understand why. I mean, it has been like that for years. There's a couple of reasons why the brands we hear from that tell us they've had it on their product inserts for years. Some of them never really got in trouble, or maybe they got a light slap on the wrist.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So that's reason one, reason two, I think is the idea of keep buyers on Amazon [00:04:00] happy at all costs. If you have to refund them, go ahead, find out what's wrong so you can improve.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Chris: The next time around then they forget that the piece about asking for a review if they're happy, because you can ask for a review.

No one's saying that you can't ask for a review, but they consider that an acceptable way to ask for a review.

Leah: Right. And so the, so the question was, you know, which of the following is an acceptable thing to do? When asking for a review and I just found it interesting that the majority of of people answered that you could say, give us a review if you're happy, contact us if you're not happy but the question that actually got the least correct answers, which I guess is not surprising, although I feel like it's something that comes up for a lot of sellers, um, is the question.

Chris: Can I guess?

Leah: Yeah, sure.

Chris: Is it the question about you can kick off unauthorized resellers off your listing. Is that the one?

Leah: Uh, no, that was actually not the most incorrect, answered one.

[00:05:00] The most incorrectly answered, and only 4% of attendees got this one right was the one about pesticides. So the question was, if Amazon flags your ASIN as a pesticide, but it isn't a pesticide, what should you do? And so the correct answer is to check the product and the detail page for kill claims because in the United States, that is what makes a pesticide a pesticide is whether it claims to kill or mitigate pests.

So you can have the exact same product, for example, like alcohol wipes and if you're saying it's just to like clean stuff off your glasses, not a pesticide. If you say that the alcohol wipes, you know, sanitize a surface, let's say then that makes it a pesticide. So only 4% of the people in the audience got that one correct.

The most common incorrect answer was to take Amazon's pesticide test to get the ASIN in reinstated. Which actually is the worst thing you could do because that just tells Amazon that, yes, my product is a pesticide, you [00:06:00] are correct. And then once you take that test, they are then going to come back and want your EPA information, either registration or establishment number, depending on the type of pesticide, which you're not gonna have if the product is not a pesticide and that's something that we've had a lot of people come to us over the years, they're like, well, I did the test and it didn't fix the problem. The test is if your product is a pesticide. If your product is not a pesticide, you should not be doing a test. You are making your life harder by doing the test because you're just confirming to Amazon that yes, this product is a pesticide.

Also, if you're not based in the US, you won't be allowed to sell it even if you take the test anyway.

Chris: So , it's unfortunate that 4% got that correct.

Leah: By far, the most incorrectly answered question.

Chris: Yes.

Leah: Everything else was about 30% got it right Ish. But that one was like no one.

Chris: The reason I said this whole notion of reporting unauthorized resellers of your brand is because there's so much misinformation there has been forever. And then there's all these attorneys who call themselves Amazon attorneys, running around, [00:07:00] putting out more misinformation just so they can, you know, net a few more clients.

Leah: Yeah, so the unauthorized reseller question also, they got about a 30% correct response rate. But interestingly with that one, because most of the questions there was sort of one answer, one incorrect answer that seemed to be the most popular incorrect answer, whereas with the unauthorized seller question, they were actually, the answers were almost completely evenly split between the options. So the question was if an unauthorized seller starts selling on your ASIN, what should you do? The correct answer was do a test buy. But then the answers for the incorrect answers were fairly evenly split between Send them a cease and desist through buyer seller messaging. Please don't do that, immediately report them as selling counterfeit items, again, don't do that, or report them for trademark infringement. And the reason those three answers are incorrect is because you don't have any proof of infringement or counterfeit. If an unauthorized seller starts selling on your asin, you need to do a test buy to confirm whether [00:08:00] it's counterfeit.

And then if it is counterfeit, then yes, you can report them for selling counterfeit items but until you actually have proof that it's counterfeit, you are just submitting a false report to brand registry and doing so can actually get your entire brand registry revoked for that brand.

And also you'll be flagged as abusive and will not be able to access brand registry for any future brands they'll just immediately deny you as being abusive. And then sending a cease and desist letter through buyer seller messaging, you shouldn't be sending anything through buyer seller messaging other than information to a buyer about their order.

Chris: Right.

Leah: And also you're sending a baseless cease and desist, which is its own thing.

Chris: But I mean, I think a lot of the cease and desist sent through buyer seller messaging get ignored. You know, it's just kind of like deleted mentally.

Leah: Well, I mean, it's not effective, but also you're risking your account.

I mean, Amazon does suspend for misuse of buyer seller messaging. So it's a combination of it's not gonna do anything. And also you're just risking your account. So what is the point?

Chris: [00:09:00] Yeah. The other interesting thing I was thinking of while listening to you on Thursday night was this idea that brand registry was a be all, end all when they set it up and it was gonna keep all these other people off your listing.

Leah: Well, in fairness, Amazon did sort of present it like that and then.

Chris: I don't know.

Leah: I remember sitting in the talk in Boost in New Orleans and sweating. Because we were in that giant warehouse, but I remember them saying all of these amazing things that brand registry was going to do, and then they released it and it did not do those things.

Chris: Okay. I will go back to my Amazon Boost. Was the before Amazon Accelerate?

Leah: I'm sorry, accelerate. It wasn't, was it Accelerate?

Chris: No, it was called, it was called Amazon Boost.

It was Boost. Boost, but I would go back to my pictures of the presentation to see. I don't think they let them say that it was the same as gating.

Leah: I don't think you were there.

Chris: They wouldn't said that.

Leah: I think I was in that talk myself.

Chris: I don't know. I got [00:10:00] lost in that.

Leah: They were basically like you get to choose who sells your products and you know, no one will be able to edit your listing except for you and like all of these like amazing things.

Chris: Right.

Leah: And then like none of it came to fruition.

Chris: Right.

Leah: They just made you re-enroll in Brand registry.

Chris: Most of our listeners were not present for Boost. It was quite a while ago now. And it was before Accelerate. But that is a piece of Amazon history. You're right about that and it was in New Orleans, which was my first and only time in New Orleans.

Leah: So New Orleans in summer in a building that didn't have its own air conditioning.

Chris: Okay. New Orleans is better in May or when, whenever the had, Hey, at

Leah: least the food's

Chris: good best. But yeah,

Leah: I'll take New Orleans and summer over Las Vegas.

Chris: Anyway, yes, extraordinary Cajun food was the order of the day.

Um. Anyway, those were my, so those are the three things, the three questions I remember the most, the review manipulation stuff, authorized or not resellers, what brand registry was originally set up to do, and then you, and [00:11:00] then the pesticide question, but there was also another listing question that you asked.

Leah: So there were a number listing questions. A lot of them were visual though, so it's a little bit hard to Okay talk about, well, do you want just pick your favorite? I would show, I would show an example of a listing and then the audience had to identify what was a violation in the listing. And, I always like to use Amazon brands listings as my examples, right, of incorrect listings because they make a lot of mistakes and it pisses sellers off.

Chris: Maybe a one, one or two out of those last five that you mentioned. Is there anything there?

Leah: It's just hard. Could, so there was one where they had changed the brand name, so it had changed from, I forget what to Amazon Basics. Not only did they change the brand name on an existing asin, which is a violation of detailed page rules, they also had it in the title, that the product was formally an old brand. And the same as most of the questions about half, about 30% of the audience got it correct.

But yeah, that's something that I, [00:12:00] I still, so it is still sometimes possible to push a brand name change through, but unless it is an alias of the brand. So it's close enough to the original brand that Amazon mm-hmm Accepted as an alias in brand registry. That is a violation of detail page rules. The policy very explicitly states that if you rebrand a product, you need to create a new asin. And so we hear about this a lot because it is technically possible to sometimes push those changes through, but it does put the account at risk and it puts a listing at risk as well. And in terms of you, you, you're at risk of listing suspension, you're at risk of account suspension, but you're also just at risk of Amazon reverting the change at some point.

So you're then, instead of having years to rebuild the new ASIN with the new brand, you're then it gets reverted back to the old one, and then you're back to square one and you have all of this lost time that you could have been spent on the rebranded ASIN instead of the old one.

Chris: I want to talk about that next week.

I [00:13:00] want to focus on that topic because we both noticed a post seven to 10 days ago, which got almost no engagement, but it was, it was definitely an interesting thing to say. That. Oh, by the way, I found a way to change brand names on Amazon. Oh yeah, it is. Without relaunching the ASINS.

Leah: I mean, let's be honest, the Amazon catalog system is a Frankenstein's monster.

Chris: Yeah.

Leah: So there's always ways to figure out how to bypass restrictions, but that doesn't mean it's just because you are able to get it done doesn't mean that it's policy compliant. And doesn't mean that you won't get in trouble later, even if support does it for you. That's another thing that I hear.

Well, the catalog team did it for me, so it must be okay.

They definitely do things that they're not supposed to do. And that is on you. That is not on them as far as Amazon's enforcement teams are concerned.

Chris: Yeah. In case anyone misunderstood or believed that post last week, we should do an episode on that topic next week because that [00:14:00] can spread like wildfire.

If people misunderstand it, misapply it, and then they get invasive mean, you've seen how many people

Leah: I hate to add to the confusion. There's also Amazon account reps who will do it for you. That doesn't really help clarify what is, it's not allowed.

Chris: I know, but amazonians have made mistakes, amending listing content, filing tickets under the wrong basis.

I mean, that's been going on for a long time, so I'm not surprised. I sit in on how many SAS core calls a week where something is said, and I'm like, that's not true. I mean, I have to be diplomatic about it.

Leah: But I understand from a seller's perspective, if they have existing listings with tons of reviews and tons of sales history, of course they're gonna wanna keep that rather than creating a whole new asin. And then on top of that. They have their paid account rep internal to Amazon being like, yeah, that's totally fine to do. We'll do that for you. Take care of it.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Leah: So I understand from a seller's perspective why they would wanna take that at face value, because of course they would prefer to use the existing ASIN and not [00:15:00] create a new one.

Chris: Right.

Leah: The issue is sometimes it doesn't cause problems, and sometimes it does. It depends on a number of factors. Amazon is inconsistent in their enforcement, as I have been saying for 10 years.

Chris: Mm-hmm. It'll stay that way for sure. Well, so we know what we're talking about next week. If you heard Leah present this in New York last week.

Then you know what we're talking about today. If not, follow up with any questions on any of these topics and ask them to her, not to me since she was the one speaking. Hopefully we'll have you talk on a future event in New York. It doesn't have to be the very next one, but as your schedule, as your travel schedule allows between Europe, Asia, Africa, USA, australia. But, these are important topics to kick around because we usually see other people talking about these issues in the wrong way. And it's kind of frightening because Amazon's kind of [00:16:00] catching up to the fastball now and starting to hit back on some of these things. I know they were, you know, their guard was down for years, but it doesn't seem that way now.

Leah: So I like when it's our meetup or our event, because I don't end up contradicting one of the other speakers.

Chris: Yeah. That helps, that helps.

Leah: It's other events. They're like, do all of these things and I'm like, all of those things are illegal.

Chris: Yeah. That's one reason we can still do our own. And New York seems to be our happy place for those of you in the northeast or east coast.

There will be more of those. Otherwise you're planning to head out to the Prosper Show soon. We will talk to you there. Thanks Leah.

Leah: Thanks. Bye.