If your Amazon sellers’ account was suspended because of a Used Sold as New complaint, the root cause can be difficult to identify. In most cases, this type of complaint has nothing to do with the authenticity of the item, rather it is likely the result of a customer receiving a damaged or improperly packaged product. As a suspended Amazon seller, you need to know how to address this problem quickly.

When your Amazon sellers’ account is suspended for Used Sold as New, Amazon does not provide extra time or leniency when you submit a Plan of Action to reinstate your sellers’ account. Suspended sellers have 17 days to provide a Plan of Action.

As with all Amazon seller account suspensions, it is the Amazon seller’s burden to properly identify the root cause of the suspension and address it in a Plan of Action. Failing to identify the root causes in your first Plan of Action will result in a prolonged Amazon appeal process.  The longer your Amazon sellers’ account is suspended, the more money the seller loses.

Occasionally Amazon’s Seller Performance Team will mistakenly identify a “used sold as new” customer complaint as an authenticity issue rather than a damaged or improperly packaged product issue.

Amazon’s Customer Complaint “Used Sold as New”

A recent client of ours had difficulty identifying the root cause of his Amazon sellers’ account suspension. There was a “used sold as new” complaint when the product delivered was clearly new and in the original packaging.

Each failed Plan of Action submitted by the client before he retained us prolonged his Amazon appeal process. It is also believed that each time you submit a new Plan of Action, it becomes harder to obtain reinstatement of your selling privileges. In this case, Seller Performance continuously rejected the Plans of Action the seller drafted. The suspended seller then retained our law firm.

When dealing with a vague customer complaint, it is important that an Amazon seller is honest in identifying how their storage or shipment process will be improved to prevent any possible damage to their products that could lead a customer to complain that the product was Used Sold as New.

If the suspended Amazon seller truly believes the cause of the issue was entirely out of their hands, they should provide invoices from their manufacturer as well as quality assurance from that manufacturer. The suspended seller should describe all of the efforts taken to protect Amazon’s customers. Most important, suspended Amazon sellers should describe improvements they will implement to improve the customer experience. Even if your products arrive in perfect condition, we can all find ways to improve.

Even if your product arrives in perfect condition and you do not believe the complaint is valid, give Amazon what it wants. Describe for Amazon how your business practices will get even better.

When we drafted our Plan of Action for this suspended Amazon seller, we included several preventative measures that could correct possible causes of the customer’s complaint.

Our Plan of Action for this suspended Amazon seller focused on

• Inventory control
• Quality assurance
• Product testing
• Product authenticity, and
• We provided detailed invoices from the authorized manufacturer to demonstrate that no actual authenticity issue existed.

In addition to sending a Plan of Action to Seller Performance, our law firm sent escalation letters to Amazon’s legal team pointing out the reasonable efforts made by our client along with the unreasonable number of attempts they made to reinstate their account.

These efforts were successful in reinstating our client’s selling privileges.

The Takeaway for Amazon Sellers

An Amazon Seller should be precise when identifying the root cause of a customer’s complaint. If a customer leaves a vague complaint on an Amazon Seller’s listing, the suspended Amazon seller should respond to the performance notification with a persuasive Plan of Action including all possible root causes of the issue, along with all corrective actions taken for each alleged cause.

If an Amazon Seller is unable to successfully reinstate their account following a customer complaint that a product is “Used Sold as New”, the Amazon Seller should contact a law firm focused on Amazon sellers and seller account suspensions to assist them.

About Amazon Sellers’ Lawyer

Amazon Sellers Lawyer is a team comprised of unique individuals with extensive knowledge and backgrounds. They are dedicated to defending the rights of e-commerce entrepreneurs and sellers across all platforms. Founded in 1994 by CJ Rosenbaum, the firm is now emerging as an industry leader as evidenced by its receipt of the Bitbond Best E-commerce Site of 2017 award. Whether a seller is facing an Intellectual Property issue, their funds are being held, or they simply need assistance with a suspension and reinstatement, the team at Amazon Sellers Lawyer has the knowledge and experience to serve sellers day and night, all around the world. 

By: C.J. Rosenbaum, Esq. & Travis J. Stockman

CJ Rosenbaum is a founder of and Travis is a paralegal at Rosenbaum Famularo, P.C.,
the Intellectual Property Law Firm behind AmazonSellersLawyer.com