When selling on Amazon, account health is everything, and even small mistakes can lead to major consequences. In this episode of Amazon Seller School, Todd Welch sits down with Leah McHugh from eCommerce Chris to discuss key issues Amazon sellers face, including account suspensions related to incorrect bundle listings, and variations, and how AI is playing a role in compliance enforcement.
Listen
Watch
Account Suspensions: The Most Common Mistakes Sellers Make
Discover how improper bundling can lead to account suspensions and why Amazon is cracking down on sellers who don’t follow their bundling guidelines. Leah shares insider tips on how to bundle correctly, avoid account suspension, and ensure your listings comply with Amazon’s strict policies.
Variation Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Incorrect variations can quickly become a problem. Whether you’re creating multiple styles of the same product or using misleading themes, Leah explains how sellers often misuse variations and what you can do to avoid trouble. Plus, learn about the FTC’s involvement in cracking down on variation abuse.
AI Tools and Seller Compliance: Can They Really Help?
AI is being used more and more in enforcement, and it’s also tempting for sellers to use AI to handle compliance tasks. But can AI help with account health and reinstatement, or is it making things worse? Leah breaks down why AI might not be the magic bullet sellers hope for.
Watch Out for Low Inventory Fees
Leah and Todd discuss Amazon’s low inventory fees, especially when Amazon’s own FBA delays are at fault. Sellers may be unaware of how these fees are applied, but Leah offers insights on how to check your account and get reimbursements if you’re charged unfairly.
Resources From This Episode
- eCommerce Chris Consulting: ecommercechris.com
- Leah McHugh Contact: Leah@ecommercechris.com
- Chris McCabe Contact: Chris@ecommercechris.com
- Amazon Bundling Policy: Amazon Bundling Guidelines
- Gatita Reimbursements: gatita.com
- FTC Guidelines on Variation Abuse: FTC.gov
Guide to Opting Out of Amazon’s AI Optimization: ecommercechris.com/AI-guide (Note: Leah promised to send this, so be sure to follow up!)
In Conclusion
To protect your Amazon account and listings, it’s vital to follow strict bundling and variation policies and be wary of relying on AI for compliance. Leah McHugh’s expertise provides sellers with practical tips to avoid the common pitfalls that can lead to costly suspensions. Stay informed, check your fees, and don’t be afraid to reach out for professional help when needed.
Transcript
[00:00:00:00 – 00:00:20:13] INTRO
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon sellers school podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e commerce empire, a side hustle, and anything in between. And now your host. Todd welch
[00:00:20:20 – 00:00:51:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
What’s going on everybody welcome to another episode of amazon seller school today I’ve got Leah McHugh with me.
She is a consultant over with e commerce chris where They help you with all of the no fun stuff Like if you have account health related issues your account get banned your products get taken down You All that stuff that gives us nightmares. So Lea, I appreciate you coming on the show. This is going to be fun.
[00:00:52:04 – 00:00:53:17] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:53:22– 00:01:06:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Absolutely. Anything, uh, uh, you want to tell us about your background, how you got into this Amazon game? I mean, how did you even learn how to do this kind of stuff? A lot of people don’t know where to start when it comes to account health stuff.
[00:01:07:01 – 00:01:41:16] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, I have been working with Amazon since.
2011. I hadn’t even bought anything on Amazon when I started working on the platform. and I started working with Chris in 2015, so I had, I had basically been running the operations, um, for a brand prior to working with him. We started working together and realized that we sort of had opposite sides of the coins of experience.
and so the rest of it was just sort of learned on the job dealing with it for. However, many years that is nine years.
[00:01:41:05– 00:01:48:23] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
All right.
Cool. So you started working doing this type of stuff in 2011 and hadn’t even purchased.
[00:01:48:17 – 00:01:52:17] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Well, I started with Amazon in 2011. Account health stuff started 2015 .
[00:01:52:00– 00:01:56:20] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Got it. Okay.
So you started selling in some way on Amazon in 2011.
[00:01:56:26– 00:02:009:11] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. So I was, I was working with brands back then. So, so managing operations and logistics for, for other brands. So Amazon was one of the channels that we sold on, but I was also, you know, doing EDI for major stores, things like that.
[00:02:08:23– 00:03:03:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. So you’re, you’re a OG in the Amazon space for sure.
We’ve been doing this a long time. So I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff, I’m sure, which. We’ll dive into some of that today. And then we’re also going to be diving into some of the crazy stuff that’s been happening more recently, like, uh, variation manipulations and even correct variations, getting taken down bundles, getting taken down for various reasons.
AI tools that we can use to help with enforcement as well. And of course the, uh, the lovely low inventory fee, we’re going to be talking about, uh, how Amazon’s kind of messing with us on that as well. So I’m, uh, definitely looking forward to this one. So why don’t we, uh, what’s the biggest one of those?
for that you guys are seeing right now in the business?
[00:03:04:09 – 00:03:17:19] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
so we’re still seeing quite a number of bundle suspensions where it’s actually the entire account being removed for bundles And also the the listing variations. We’re also seeing a number of account suspensions due to incorrect variations
[00:03:17:28 – 00:03:36:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay, well, let’s go ahead and dive into that.
So,for anybody that isn’t familiar with selling bundles and such like that, let’s start off with, you know, what typically people have been doing and go into what they’ve been doing particularly wrong and how they can fix it.
[00:03:37:03 – 00:04:18:16] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. So a bundle on Amazon is essentially when you take multiple products and you put them together under one ASIN.
they have fairly specific rules about How to decide what category the bundle goes in and how to decide The brand name for the bundle should be and what people have been doing rather than following those rules Is often brand bundling major brands together and then listing it under Their own brand or including a very small item of their own brand in the bundle and then bundling the entire bundle under their own brand And then so amazon has started suspending accounts for doing that .
[00:04:19:24 – 00:04:46:11] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, and that’s something I mean i’m guilty of doing it for sure.
It’s been a thing for a long time and I, I think overall something that’s been very beneficial to Amazon customers to be able to get those bundles. So what, what do you think has Amazon always had the exact same policy regarding bundles and why do you think they’re starting to enforce it only now?
[00:04:46:12 – 00:05:26:08] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, they have always had this policy. it’s, I think. One, they’re probably getting flack from major brands because it is usually major brands that we see being bundled under somebody else’s brand. Usually not a big brand, usually just a brand that was created to make bundles on Amazon. and so I think they’re getting a lot of pushback from a lot of these major brands.
And I also think that they are at a point now where it probably isn’t. Great for their customers that are there all of these misbranded products being sold on their website because it is somewhat misleading and people don’t necessarily understand what it is that they’re buying.
[00:05:26:15 – 00:05:55:07] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah for sure and I haven’t had any problems with any of my bundles and that’s probably because All the brands that I use if I named them now probably 99 percent of people listening have never heard of them.
So I work with smaller brands. They, a lot of them sell very well, but they’re definitely not household brands. But you’re seeing a majority of them are with big household brands that most people would know.
[00:05:55:15– 00:06:23:25] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, and we’re also seeing the majority of the account suspensions are accounts that are creating large amounts of these bundles.
so it’s usually not just, they have one or two of these listings and then a bunch of other different kinds of listings. It’s usually a large percentage of their catalog or a large number of incorrect bundles within their catalog. And to be clear, like you can make correct bundles as long as you follow their policy in terms of what the brand of the bundle is.
And, and what category it goes in.
[00:06:24:03 – 00:06:38:15] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, so, and that seems to be the key thing, right? If, if you have branded products in your package, then whatever the most expensive product is, that needs to be the brand of the bundle, correct?
[00:06:39:10– 00:07:08:05] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
And yeah, and that also dictates the category of the bundle category.
So,yeah, the most expensive is what the most expensive item is what Amazon calls the main item in the bundle.
And so, so that dictates the brand and, and the category. And I think the reason why a lot of sellers aren’t using The, the major brand as the brand is because they usually don’t have authorization from the brand and so then they can’t provide the branded UPC code that would allow them to create that bundle.
[00:07:08:06 – 00:07:13:06] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Correct. Yeah. So if you want to do it, you’re pretty much forced to do it under your own UPC.
[00:07:14:06– 00:07:27:08] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Well, or yes, letter of authorization from the brand, which some people do and create bundles that way. If you’re like working with smaller brands it would probably be easier to get authorization from to create those bundles
[00:07:27:28 – 00:08:13:21] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, for sure. And that’s typically what I do is usually get, I’m usually already partnering with them in some way, any ways to sell their products. And then I’m like, well, let’s make this bundle. And, uh, sell a lot more. And usually they’re, they’re good with that. So, but I, I don’t necessarily list it under their brand all the time.
Sometimes I do,if they’re willing to give me a UPC, but if they’re not, then I’ll just list it under, you know, my generic brand that I have set up for the bundles. But I think the odds of those ever getting taken down are, are pretty low. Because it sounds like, at least right now, Amazon is just looking at the people who are giving them some flack, the brands who are saying, Hey, we don’t want all this going on kind of thing.
[00:08:14:20– 00:08:46:11] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, it is. Still a violation of the policy though. I would recommend listing it under the correct brand. Uh, you can also request a UPC exemption for bundles. It’s usually just because if the brand is a major brand, they don’t allow exemptions for those bundles. But also just in general, any item that you’re bundling, you want to make sure that you have a letter of authorization from that brand, even if they aren’t the main brand in the bundle, because what they’re asking these sellers for are letters of authorization from every single brand that they bundle.
[00:08:46:13 – 00:09:03:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. So you’ve even seen it where, let’s say they’re with a brand and they got GTIN exemption, they created the bundle under the brand’s name and in the proper category and everything. You’re still seeing them having trouble if they don’t have that letter of authorization.
[00:09:03:08 – 00:09:21:09] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Those aren’t being flagged, but, but you should have a letter of authorization.
I mean, just in general, if you’re selling a brand, it’s good to have a letter of authorization because Amazon can ask for that at any point. What we’re seeing with the people that are suspended is that. Part of the reinstatement process is providing letters of authorizations for all of the brands that they were bundling.
[00:09:21:10 – 00:10:18:22] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. So essentially the moral of the story is make sure the branding and everything is good. If you’re doing it under the brand of a big name brand, make sure you have a letter of authorization, any brand really, get that letter of authorization, like you said, better safe than sorry. Or I mean, have you seen the listings taken down?
So let’s say I’m bundling, some Frito Lay’s chips, right? Like three different flavors, and then I grab something and put my logo on it from Alibaba that, you know, goes into the bundle that would go with that well. And the price of that is a little bit higher, right? Than the the chips and so you list it under your own brand in your own category and everything Have you seen any bundles that are set up properly that way still get taken down?
[00:10:19:23 – 00:10:33:06] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
So that wouldn’t be a violation of the bundling policy However, you are Using frito lay’s trademark in your listing So you still would need to have a letter of authorization and could be asked for a letter of authorization Okay for that bundle
[00:10:33:07– 00:10:39:26] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Just because it’s in the photos, even if you didn’t mention it You In the text.
I mean, obviously you’d want to, but I’m just wondering.
[00:10:40:20 – 00:10:45:24] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. Yeah. So the photos as well. So, I mean, also if people receive it and they has their trademark.
[00:10:45:29– 00:11:17:15] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep. Okay. And then, so one thing, you know, after this all started going down, I reread the, the bundling, policy again, just to make sure I knew and understood it well.
And one thing that is not clear in there is that It doesn’t have any clarification about if the products in your bundle are all generic. It almost makes it sound like you can’t make a bundle if all the products are generic in the product.
[00:11:17:16 – 00:11:21:19] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, it does. It does specify that you can’t. Bundle generic products.
[00:11:21:23 – 00:11:29:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
So even if everything’s generic, but then I guess you could create your own product with a brand, right? And bundle those generic products.
[00:11:29:15 – 00:11:40:24] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Well, so no, no item within a bundle is supposed to be generic because Amazon’s concern is that it could. confuse customers into thinking that those generic products were part of whatever the brand was.
[00:11:41:17 – 00:11:51:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
So what really concerns me with that is like they’re, they’re totally kind of taken away the whole like gift basket industry, essentially.
[00:11:51:00 – 00:11:53:06] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Oh, well, so a gift basket isn’t necessarily a bundle.
[00:11:53:19 – 00:12:08:13] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Well, wouldn’t they, wouldn’t they consider it a bundle because you might have like sausages from different brands and crackers and chips and dip and stuff, and they’re all different brands, and you’re going to lift it under, you know, Todd’s gifts or whatever.
And so,
[00:12:08:14 – 00:12:43:08] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
well, so that’s if, if they’re under different brands, if you’re bundling a bunch of items together, and then so for a gift basket, generally gift baskets don’t have branded items. And then generally gifts, gift boxes, baskets are branded under whatever the basket brand is. And then the rest of the items are generic or branded under that initial brand.
So the gift baskets are treated slightly differently because bundled items are, are generally considered items that, that are sold. Separately as well as within the bundle, whereas a gift gift basket, a lot of times those items aren’t sold individually. They’re only sold in the gift basket.
[00:12:43:09 – 00:13:10:25] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. Yeah. I mean, that would make sense.
but you know, like I’ve bought gift baskets for people and they’ll have like, you know, branded sausages and crackers and cheese and all those things put together. And. but then, you know, it’s selling under the, the brand of whoever made the gift basket. so essentially though, that, that would be a violation of the, the bundling policy of Amazon came across that.
[00:13:11:24 – 00:13:27:05] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Potentially. If the brand of the gift basket has an item of under its own brand of greater value than the items within the gift basket
then that would be totally fine. but again, you would. Want to have letters of authorization from all of the brands that are within the basket.
[00:13:27:08 – 00:13:39:14] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. it definitely makes it’s hard to do bundles for sure, but essentially just get that letter of authorization and work with smaller brands and you’re, you’re probably be good.
[00:13:40:04 – 00:14:11:24] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, I mean, I think they were just trying to clean up the catalog. I think a lot of places have taught that you can create your own bundle as a way to make a listing that no other seller can sell on. So essentially Amazon has a whole bunch of mostly duplicate bundles just under different people’s names.
brands that they’ve made up to do this. So, so rather than having millions of listings that are kind of the same, this makes it so they’re better bundles that, that can be sold by multiple sellers or even, you know, the major brands themselves.
[00:14:12:06 – 00:16:12:27] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean any bundle that I create, I always try to make sure that it’s something Pretty much unique.
If there’s a million copies of it out there, I’m not even going to look at creating it anyway, so I try to create more unique things, smaller brands, have the authorization, uh, ideally listed under the brand’s, trademark, if they’re willing to give you a UPC, and if not, try to get that GTN exemption, I guess, and that’d be the best way moving forward if you want to keep doing bundles.
Yep, exactly. Yep, for sure. Okay, very good. so one of the other things that we were talking about was, uh, and I’ve had some troubles with this as well as variation manipulation and variations getting broken up.
Now mine weren’t variation Manipulation, in my opinion, I thought it was a legit variation and helpful to the customer.
So I’m curious, yeah, well, for example, like I was selling these mounts for boats, right, and you got one mount that doesn’t have a GPS, the other one’s exactly the same, but it does have a GPS. One has a 25 degree angle. The other is a zero degree angle. So yeah, you put those in a variation so people can click and select which one.
What variation theme were you using for those? Yeah. The only one that really worked for it was a style variation. kind of, not really. You know, different style, different angle, GPS. No, that’s a, that was the closest one that I could come up with. And. When they’re broken up, it makes it extremely hard for the customers to figure out exactly uh, what they’re looking for and come across the right thing.
So in my mind, it made a lot more sense. And we’ve since had a case and we’re good now, but what are you guys seeing at this point in terms of variations with people getting broken up?
[00:16:14:00 – 00:18:39:25] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. So like I said, most sellers are creating variations that they think are better for the customers. the main thing to keep in mind is that Amazon is extremely literal.
And when they when they give those variation themes. So whatever the variation theme is, it, the products can only vary specifically by that. and it needs to be the same for each one as well. So, so your example where one has a GPS, one doesn’t, and then one has a different angle and one has a different angle, you know, they are, I guess, technically varying by styles, but they’re varying in different ways from each other.
so, so you need to make sure that you are, Very literally using the variation theme available and the variation themes available are different for every item type keyword. So, so you also need to be looking at what available variations there are for your product, because a lot of times people put them in a wrong category when there is actually a variation theme that would work for the variations that they’re creating.
so if, if you’re using a size variation size, specifically, refers to like dimensions or small, medium, large size doesn’t refer to quantity. If, if quantity is, is how your products vary, then, then you should be using item package quantity or quantity depending on the category. and so, so we do see people get in trouble a lot for the stuff like that, where they actually could have used the correct variation.
It was available to them. They just didn’t realize. but what we mostly see people get in trouble for is just, Incorrectly using variation. So they’ve decided that they want these listings all together on one detail page. And so they just pick any variation theme, uh, color seems to be a popular one for some reason.
and then just put, yeah. And then just put completely different information into the color attribute or color and something else into the color attribute. Yeah. and so that, that technically is actually two violations because you’re, you’re misusing variations and you’re also misusing the attribute for whatever attribute you’re using for the theme.
So, so you really need to look at it very literally rather than how you would like the products to look. put together because that’s how Amazon looks at it. and they do get it wrong. I have seen ASINs broken up that did genuinely vary by the theme used, but I haven’t seen that many mistakes on that one.
It is usually the seller that has created incorrect variations in my experience.
[00:18:40:18 – 00:19:21:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. Probably a really good example. I just thought of another one that I had broken up that we had to put back together. And so it was a fishing lure and the fishing lure varied by theme. Because it’s a fishing lure, the color names were like pumpkin, watermelon and bass and shad and basically names of like different fish.
And then as a fisherman, you know, the colors of those fish. And so Amazon broke that up. So in cases like that. How are you advising people to try to get that fixed if they are confident that it’s the correct variation?
[00:19:22:07 – 00:19:59:12] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
So that is usually where we see Amazon make mistakes, where it’s a color name. Like, like, Makeup has a similar thing where they’ll use some Fun name instead of the actual color.
generally speaking that can be appealed. a safer way would be to just use a generic color name rather, rather than the fun name in the listing, which I understand for makeup probably is not great because people are probably searching for the actual color name. and so, so it is, it is appealable, but if it’s not something where people are specifically going to be searching for that fun name, I would recommend just using a more generic color name or a more obvious color name.
[00:19:59:20 – 00:20:25:04] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. If you’re, if you can in like fishing, watermelon pumpkin is like one of the most popular colors for any base. So people search for that all the time. And so is it typically a case in that case where they want to reuse the names that they have? And it is correct. Is it just a simple seller support ticket that you’re doing or are you having to go above that?
[00:20:26:00 – 00:20:42:12] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Support can’t like green light variations. you would need to appeal it with the seller performance team or, or the category manager if you have access to your category manager because usually the way they are policed are different Determined by the category manager.
[00:20:42:26 – 00:20:46:17] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. So you’d have to escalate it to seller performance? You said,
[00:20:47:22 – 00:21:03:20] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
yeah, well, so they’ve broken up your listings. You’re already have a dialogue with seller performance. They’ll, they’ll give you an appeal form. and they do now give you the option to dispute if you, if you can prove that it is a valid variation.
Okay. so you would need to, you would need to Dispute it via the appeal form that they give you.
[00:21:03:26 – 00:21:04:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
All right. Yeah. And just work through that process. Hopefully you get somebody that knows what you’re talking about. In my case, somebody that knows something about fishing, but probably not.
[00:21:15:06 – 00:21:18:02] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Well, or you just have to, you know, doc, show it to them. Explain it clearly in a way that they would understand.
[00:21:08:05 – 00:21:29:11] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
On the product too, that’s probably helpful, right? If it says watermelon, pumpkin, shad, shrimp. And all that stuff.
[00:21:30:03 – 00:21:38:12] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yes, but also, you know, if that could also refer to shape, right? Yeah. So, so being able to show that they are in fact the colors that they’re referring to.
[00:21:38:29 – 00:21:49:15] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Okay. Very good. anything else with variations that you’ve been, been seeing or that people should watch out for anything that’s maybe triggering it more than something else?
[00:21:50:18– 00:22:46:00] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I think the main trigger is the FTC. so because, you know, when you create a variation family that merges the reviews the FTC actually, I think it was last year. The FTC actually sued a supplement seller for creating, for merging reviews incorrectly on Amazon to inflate the review count. and so I believe that’s why we’re seeing greater enforcement around variations because they do affect reviews and ratings for the products, at least.
To the, what, what customers can see. So, so it is important to make sure that they are correct. And it’s also important to not, you know, I’ll often see sellers. Put in a listing that has nothing to do with that particular variation family. They just don’t have any stock of it anymore, but they want to use those reviews for other products.
That is exactly what the FTC sued somebody for. So I would recommend not doing that. Yeah. and that’s exactly what Amazon is looking for people using this to try to inflate reviews and inflate sales.
[00:22:46:03 – 00:23:20:29] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. Yeah. And that is annoying as a customer, I’ve seen that, you know, you’re looking at a product and it’s like, Oh, 4.7, a thousand reviews. And then you click to the reviews and I’m like, that’s not the product I’m looking at. And then you go to the variations and there’s like 20 different products, different products that have nothing to do with each other together. So yeah, that I, I definitely get for sure. And then I, you know, the legitimate ones that a lot of times are, you Caught up in that.
As I said, uh, the other day, uh, Amazon doesn’t operate with a scalpel. They operate with a sledgehammer. So you get a lot of collateral damage.
[00:23:21:18– 00:24:05:16] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Most of this enforcement is, is mostly automated. the, the investigation afterwards is, is a real person, but a lot of, a lot of the enforcement that they’re doing are keyword based.
and it’s their algorithms that are searching through for these, or their, their AI. Now their AI can analyze images if they think that they look like they vary. in more ways than you’re saying. it’s more of an automated flag, which is why you’ll see these mistakes rather than an actual person reviewing it.
But like I said, once you get to the appeal stage, it is an actual person reviewing your appeal. and so, so that’s where you can present. the information, but you just need to make sure that you are actually following the variation theme that they’ve set out.
[00:24:05:18 – 00:24:17:05] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep. Well, that’s good. At least there, it sounds like the seller for performance team at least has a good idea on what’s going on and they, they can be helpful then in your experience so far.
[00:24:17:15– 00:24:48:16] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I mean, they’ve, they’ve done a lot of these at this point. I mean, in general, they don’t, you know, the cell performance team isn’t exactly Totally versed in how Amazon’s catalog works. so, you know, showing them a flat file or showing them a processing report isn’t going to do anything. but, you know, they are human beings who can look at a product and see that, yes, it only varies by.
Color or size or whatever, whatever you’re saying that it does vary by, whereas AI can get confused more easily.
[00:24:48:15 – 00:25:19:06] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, for sure. Yeah it’s AI is definitely very helpful in a lot of things, but it does get things wrong a lot as well. And it’s, you know, it’s learning still in its early stages.
So we’ll see where it goes from here. It’ll get better and better over time, which, uh, hopefully will help the good guys and hurt. The bad guys who are doing it just to manipulate the system and help those who are just trying to help their customers and provide a better shopping experience.
[00:25:19:18– 00:25:55:13] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, we’ve also seen Amazon use their AI to try to improve variations.
unfortunately, the examples I have seen of that have not been great, um, where they actually will break up somebody’s variation family to create. One that their system thinks is a better variation family, um, and is often completely incorrect. I have yet to see them actually enforce against a seller for the incorrectly created AI variations.
But it is very difficult to, it is very difficult to fix them though, because it’s, That they their internal team has a higher level of attribution than a seller.
[00:25:53:25 – 00:25:56:13] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Was it on a brand registered?
[00:25:56:28– 00:26:27:18] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Oh yeah. These are large brands. Amazon’s internal teams have the highest level of attribution well above brand registry.
and even above brand registry would be vendor. So that was actually a way we’d saw a lot of listing abuse happening was somebody with a vendor account. Or somebody who maybe bought a vendor account would mess up people’s variations and mess up people’s listings using Vendor Central because Vendor Central has higher levels of contribution than Brand Registry does.
So then the brand has to fight to try to get it corrected.
[00:26:27:29 – 00:26:53:28] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. And I think the, the more the AI Gets involved in things. It’s giving a lot of people nightmares in that, you know, some of these brands, they spend countless man hours honing their listings, right? And then the idea that AI can just come in and be like, poof, now you got a new listing because I think this is better probably will drive a lot of people crazy if they see that happen.
[00:26:54:15 – 00:27:06:13] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And you can opt out of it in Seller Central. It’s not. Guaranteed to fully opt you out of it, but it does stop the system from automatically optimizing your listings for you.
[00:27:08:10 – 00:27:12:17] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
I heard something about that. Is there a specific place in Seller Central you go to do that?
[00:27:12:28– 00:27:18:14] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
There’s like, I can, I can send it to you.
There’s multiple steps, so it’s hard to explain, you know,
[00:27:18:21 – 00:27:34:22] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. Yeah. That’d be cool. If you’re willing to share that, we can throw it in the show notes. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. Excellent. So if anybody wants that, check out the show notes and you can get the instructions on how to opt out of AI, even though AI might override your opt out of AI.
[00:27:35:15– 00:27:43:11] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I’m having that problem with Google right now. I’ve opted out of their search. result summary and I still always get the search result summary.
[00:27:42:28 – 00:28:52:04] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yes, I’m having that trouble with, I forget what it’s called, but you can subscribe to get, uh, like results sent to you on certain keywords. And I unsubscribe multiple times every week and it just keeps sending them.
I don’t want to delete it because I do want to be able to click over there and see the results, but maybe I delete it and recreate it. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it’s going to be an interesting world moving forward as AI takes over more and more things and, uh, just kind of guesses and thinks it’s guessing right.
And a lot of times it’s going to get stuff wrong until it’s maybe eventually it’ll get there. Um, but for now it gets a lot of things wrong. Yeah, for sure. All right, cool. So what else do we have? We’ve got, uh, the low inventory fees on the slowly received shipments, which was something that was brought up early when these low inventory fees came out.
Like how is Amazon going to handle that if it’s their own fault that the stock didn’t get received in? So it sounds like you guys have been seeing some of that.
[00:28:53:13 – 00:29:29:13] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, and it’s not. All accounts, but we have definitely seen some accounts getting charged low inventory fees when their inventory has been waiting to be checked in into FBA for weeks.
Um, so just something that I think that it’s good for sellers to be aware of because they may not even realize that they’re being charged these fees and they would absolutely be. able to get a reimbursement on them. So definitely want to check your low inventory fees and see when they were being applied and whether you had inventory waiting to be checked into FBA during that time, especially now.
Cause they’re getting slower as we go further and further into Q4, right? They’re busy and then everything takes longer.
[00:29:30:02 – 00:29:45:29] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. It’s been pretty horrible for me the last couple of weeks. It’s like, I’ve got these pallets that have been. Delivered for like two weeks now and they’re just sitting there even UPI been delivered for a week or two and it’s still just sitting there.
[00:29:46:13 – 00:29:52:19] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, everybody’s experiencing long check in times. Yeah. I mean, it happens every Q4, right?
[00:29:53:03 – 00:30:20:03] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, for sure. So is there any, do you know of any easy way I guess, to look into that to see if, The long term storage fees and match them up to particular shipments that took forever to receive in, or is that just something you kind of got to figure out some spreadsheet magic or something like that?
[00:30:20:10 – 00:30:29:25] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. You have to look at your fees reports and then look at your, your shipment reports and figure it out. I don’t know if any of the reimbursement companies will do that for you.
[00:30:30:00 – 00:30:33:18] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay, yeah, that was gonna be my next question if you have any that are doing that yet.
[00:30:33:28 – 00:30:37:07] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, don’t do reimbursements, so.
[00:30:36:27 – 00:30:45:24] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, I would guess that they’re on it trying to figure it out if they haven’t already, so.
[00:30:44:06 – 00:30:51:09] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I would definitely speak to Gatita about that as well. Even if they don’t offer it as a service, they probably know the best way to put that data together.
[00:30:51:17 – 00:31:01:15] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s going to be a big thing. I mean, Amazon’s like, no, we promise that won’t happen, but everybody knew. Those gonna happen.
[00:31:00:00 – 00:31:02:00] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
There’s always errors.
[00:31:02:10 – 00:31:38:12] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Amazon’s not that good at its own systems and it doesn’t have any, uh, uh, reason to be perfect at its own systems. So they put it back on you. Exactly. Very good. And, uh, the last thing that we had wanted to talk about was the, the AI tool enforcement for compliance. So is that becoming a big thing that people are doing and you’re seeing them run into issues with it, or are they being successful with it?
Are you guys utilizing it? what are your, what are you seeing with AI for that?
[00:31:38:19 – 00:31:40:22] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Which AI tool?
[00:31:40:26 – 00:31:51:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
There’s a few. so any of them, I guess. ChatGPT is obviously the biggest, but then you’ve got Claude and Bard and Grok and all those different ones.
[00:31:51:06 – 00:31:52:13] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
For product compliance?
[00:31:52:17 – 00:32:10:23] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, so, for like writing LOAs and such to, you know, to get a product back up or if your account is taken down.
Are you seeing any success with AI writing those kinds of things or helping with account health stuff?
[00:32:11:15 – 00:32:25:17] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
No, to be, to be perfectly blunt. I mean, you definitely don’t want to use AI to, Make or manipulate documents. if Amazon’s asking you for letters of authorization, you need to get real letters of authorization.
[00:32:26:08 – 00:32:28:28] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Not LOA. the wrong acronym.
[00:32:28:28 – 00:32:29:23] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Oh, POA? POA.
[00:32:30:05 – 00:32:31:24] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Plan of action.
[00:32:31:00 – 00:32:41:29] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Oh, yeah. No, no, they do not work well. No.
I’ve been asked this before, if I’m worried that it’s going to affect what we do and no.
[00:32:42:06 – 00:33:08:22] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
it can be helpful in a lot of things, uh, writing emails and stuff like that. But what I have noticed that if you’re someone who’s in the space and you’re up on, on all the new stuff going on and you ask chat GPT to write you something like that, it’s, Typically out of date in a lot of ways it’s referencing like old information and not necessarily helpful information anymore.
[00:33:09:14 – 00:33:48:04] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
It’s also just too generic. I mean, a POA isn’t just regurgitating information to Amazon. They’re, they’re looking for very specific information about the issue that they’ve suspended you for. So, so just giving them a generic plan of action. For the investigator that just gives them an excuse to only read a few lines and then deny it, which is great for them because they’re, they’re measured on speed.
So the faster they can reject your appeal, the better it is for them. and in my experience, most sellers are not great at identifying the root cause themselves and AI can’t do that for you.
[00:33:48:16 – 00:34:06:24] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, yeah, AI is good at rewriting what you’ve already created and you know is good and you tell it to make it better.
It’s very good at that. but more advanced things, it’s not necessarily that good at just generating it itself. So definitely, yeah, don’t, don’t rely on it.
[00:34:07:11 – 00:34:13:19] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
It also has a tendency to make stuff up when it doesn’t have a lot to say, um, which you also definitely don’t want in your plan of action.
[00:34:13:26 – 00:34:33:23] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. I’ve definitely caught it doing that as well, like having it writing phishing articles and stuff and then you read through it and it’s like 90, 95 percent perfect.
But then it’s like, eh, that’s not correct. Where the heck did you get that kind of information? So yeah, you definitely got to watch out for that kind of stuff.
[00:34:34:09 – 00:34:43:18] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I would also be very surprised if Amazon wasn’t using some sort of tool to identify when AI is being used. They are the, they are the second largest data company in the world, so.
[00:34:43:25 – 00:35:20:08] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure there’s ones that are better, but I’ve seen those ones that are available online that, you know, detect AI and the, the detection rate is very low. The, the accurate detection rate, whether there’s something better, you know, that companies like Amazon and such are using behind the scenes.
Maybe, probably it’s hard to say for sure, but if you, if you teach it right and you know what to say to it, like to not use certain words that they often overuse, you can trick those AI detection systems pretty quickly.
[00:35:20:22– 00:35:40:05] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, I just, you know, I see enough of other people’s appeals that I can usually fairly accurately identify who wrote it.
and I don’t look at them all day, every day, whereas Amazon’s investigators are looking at these all day, every day. I, I’m, I’m pretty sure they can detect when something is wrong. is not being properly written.
[00:35:40:11 – 00:36:4:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Sure. Absolutely. Now, when it comes to that, let’s dive into it more since we’re talking about it.
So if someone gets their brand registry suspended or their account suspended or an ASIN taken down, by the time do they come to you? I’m going to guess they’ve probably already tried things themselves. Not always. So not always. Are there certain things though that people definitely should not do before they contact someone like you that can make the situation even worse.
[00:36:14:12– 00:37:54:00] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yes, absolutely. So first of all, like I had mentioned previously, don’t fake documentation if you don’t have it. That takes a suspension to a permanent deactivation because you’ve now committed fraud as far as Amazon’s concerned. Also don’t manipulate documents. So if, if your document doesn’t have what is needed from Amazon for Amazon, don’t add it yourself.
I mean, certainly if it’s an invoice and some information is missing from it, you can certainly ask your supplier to add whatever the missing information is. but if you add it yourself, it will. Very likely get, get flagged as manipulation. And then there’s just nothing we can do to help you at that point.
I would also make sure that you’re reading whatever checkboxes you’re checking off before you check them off. Um, we saw a lot of ASINs. Be we were able to fix it, but it was a lot harder to fix because they had already checked off a box Saying that they understand the violation and and they agree that they committed it when they hadn’t committed They just thought they could check the boxes off and everything would be fine It makes it that much more difficult for us to fix something if you admit to something that you didn’t do um, or if you lie um, also if if they try to If you if you have people’s emails within amazon and you just try to spam as many people internally as you can You We can’t unburn those bridges.
So sometimes people are just too far gone for us to help. We get less of that now. We used to get a lot more of it. I think people have learned to You only get so many shots at this, so we do get a lot of people who come straight to us, and then some people give it, you know, a try themselves, and then realize that they should be working with somebody else for it.
[00:37:54:10 – 00:38:11:13] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, so basically, take a step back, take a breath, figure out. Your plan before you move forward. Don’t just click a bunch of boxes and be like, dang, you Amazon, you guys are idiots. This is not correct. And cause that ain’t going to help at all.
[00:38:11:15– 00:38:45:05] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
It just, it makes it, if Amazon’s already decided that they don’t need to take you seriously, it, it makes it a lot More difficult to get them to read anything you submit after that. So you just need to, a lot of sellers think that the first thing that they need to do is appeal. That should not be the first thing that you do. The first thing that you do is look into what it is that Amazon is accusing you of figure out if that is even correct.
and then make the plan from there and then appeal. I understand the knee jerk reaction to just want to fix it, but that’s usually where the most damage happens.
[00:38:45:21– 00:39:07:03] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Especially if you know that Amazon is in the wrong on it, because that you’re just getting driven crazy. And that does happen fairly often where, you know, it’s a false flag or whatever.
And so you just want to yell at someone over at Amazon for being stupid and yeah, you got to be business person and be professional.
[00:39:07:06 – 00:39:24:13] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Unprofessional language is in and of itself. a reason for Amazon to suspend an account.
[00:39:24:23– 00:39:49:27] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
I have actually seen accounts suspended because people were unkind to Amazon teams or spamming Amazon teams.
So, so you don’t want to give them yet another reason to not reinstate your account. Yeah. And that’s why I have my employees do most of the seller support tickets. If I do have to, then I jump over to chat GPT and I write my angry letter there and tell it to write this nicely for seller support for me.
And then it gives me a nice reply back, but yeah it can be frustrating sometimes, but you gotta, you gotta make sure you’re always professional and do it properly.
[00:39:50:11 – 00:40:00:10] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And you can be forceful. I mean, I don’t, I’m not saying you have to agree with anything they tell you and you don’t have to.
You don’t have to. You can absolutely push back. You just have to do it in a respectful manner.
[00:40:00:18 – 00:40:23:18] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Exactly. And if it’s something that’s super critical, uh, like your most popular ASIN or your whole account is taken down or brand registry, then. Think twice maybe about doing it yourself and instead reach out to professionals like you guys and make sure that it’s done correctly the first time especially if your livelihoods on the line
[00:40:24:16 – 00:40:31:29] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, it’s kind of it’s always surprising to me how comfortable people are playing roulette when it’s their entire account.
[00:40:32:12 – 00:40:57:08] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. For some reason, Amazon makes people feel that way because I think a lot of people still don’t see it as like a real business. It’s like, you know, a side gig kind of thing and a hustle. And it’s just, it’s not really that anymore. And Amazon is trying to make sure it’s not that they want professionals, real businesses, real brands on their platform.
[00:40:57:16 – 00:41:50:26] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And a lot of those things, you know, if they, if they suspend your account and you don’t get it reinstated, or they suspend your brand from brand registry and you don’t get it reinstated, that also blocks you from ever registering another brand through brand registry. And it also any, any account that you try to create after you have a suspended account that you don’t get reinstated is likely to get related to that account and then immediately get reinstated for being sorry, immediately get suspended for being related to that suspended account.
So, so it isn’t just a. Throw away type thing. It also affects all of your future business with Amazon. And I, I don’t, a lot of people don’t necessarily understand that with brand registry. If, if one brand gets removed from brand registry, you’re marked as abusive and any brand you try to add, or if somebody tries to add you as a user to their brand, you will, that will also get marked as abusive.
[00:41:51:10 – 00:42:01:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, I’ve seen that they can cascade from your brand registry to other people’s brand registry if you just happen to be a user in their account.
[00:42:02:05 – 00:42:33:26] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Absolutely. So it’s very important to one, fix problems, but to also make sure that you have very clear documentation for anybody that accesses any of your accounts.
And so if it’s an employee, you need to have very clear employment. Letters, termination letters, removing their account access when, when they are terminated, or if they are terminated and same with any contractors that you’re using, you need to be able to provide any sort of contract to show that relationship to Amazon.
If they ever do decide to relate any abuse because of a user on your account.
[00:42:34:10 – 00:42:46:27] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep. Yeah. Documentation backup, whatever you say, at least like email chains and stuff for termination and things like that. But if official letters are, would be even. Better.
[00:42:47:07– 00:42:50:08] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. Legal documents are always the best.
[00:42:50:18 – 00:43:09:07] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. For sure.
In the, in the case that I seen it worked with the email chain that showed the termination of the employee that was doing the abusive behavior. And so that was able to clear that up and get things restored. You know, it’s not an easy process.
[00:43:10:03– 00:43:47:10] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And, and it can work with things like that. But what we tend to find with most of Amazon’s enforcement teams is as they do more of these types of enforcements, their requirements to provide proof get higher.
so you’ll see similarly with like test reports for product co. Yeah. Now Amazon will only accept test reports from specific labs for some products, um, and Amazon actually does call labs now and verify that documentation because so many people were submitting fake docs. So, so, so the longer that they are enforcing something, usually the, the higher the standard for the documentation becomes.
[00:43:47:19 – 00:43:56:25] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Absolutely. All right. Well, very good. Any other major issues that you’ve seen crop up at as of late that people should be aware of?
[00:43:57:00 – 00:44:14:17] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I mean, so the, the listing compliance stuff is, is the main one that we’ve really seen spike. I mean, certainly we see all kinds of suspensions all the time.
But those are the two big spikes that we’ve seen this year. everything else is pretty much kind of the usual amount of those types of suspensions.
[00:44:15:07– 00:44:22:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
And with the listing compliance, you’re talking about like not having the proper documentation and stuff like that for products.
[00:44:22:27– 00:44:25:21] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
I meant the bundles and the variations.
[00:44:25:00– 00:44:26:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Oh, the bundles. Okay, gotcha.
[00:44:26:22 – 00:44:35:19] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
The documentation stuff they’ve been doing for a while now. They’re doing that in the regular amounts that we see. Those are the two spikes that we’ve seen.
[00:44:35:24 – 00:44:55:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. Very good. Yeah. And that’s the way Amazon works. You know, in the next few months, it could be something totally different.
Like right now with the, it’s with the vendor central accounts getting shut down. Exactly. I’m actually curious, have you had anybody reach out to you? Trying to appeal that decision.
[00:44:55:20 – 00:45:08:27] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Well, they’re not really offering an appeal path. We have had people reach out. We don’t work on the vendor side. Okay. So, um, we, not something that we would work on, but it will be interesting to see because a lot of the vendors have never done seller before.
[00:45:09:10 – 00:45:19:06] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep. Yeah, there’s a lot of people sweating, I’m sure we don’t, I don’t really have an idea on how many accounts or how big of accounts they’re closing down, but
[00:45:19:12 – 00:45:32:15] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem to be a specific size. I’ve seen very large ones and I’ve seen relatively small ones. It doesn’t seem to be based on sales velocity as far as I can tell.
I mean, I’ve only seen a small sampling, but
[00:45:33:03 – 00:45:37:16] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Perhaps they’re looking at like an internal profitability metric or something. Hard to say.
[00:45:39:08 – 00:45:58:06] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
It’s interesting because we’ve also seen them enforce, um, the clause in the vendor contract that says that they can stop you from selling 3p if you have a 1p agreement with them.
We’ve seen them enforce that a lot this year, which is interesting to me to do before they sell. Start kicking people out of one piece.
[00:45:58:16 – 00:46:05:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. That would be, that would be really interesting if like they enforced that and then they kicked them out of one B.
[00:46:06:04 – 00:46:28:26] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And I’m curious to see, because I do know a number of brands that are selling both.
If they try to list some products that they sell to vendor as a seller, the system won’t let them list those products. And I’m curious to see the people that have been removed from vendor, whether those restrictions are lifted. Yeah. Or not. I’m assuming that some won’t be because there’s always technical glitches.
[00:46:29:10 – 00:46:43:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. I mean, you would hope so, but Amazon’s so big that one team doesn’t talk to the other. So it’s extremely possible that that could happen for sure. And yeah, that wouldn’t be a fun one to have to deal with seller support.
[00:46:43:46 – 00:46:53:20] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. And also, you know, vendor has a higher level of contribution. So now you don’t have access to vendor anymore.
It’s going to be very difficult to Edit your listings as a seller.
[00:46:54:00 – 00:47:19:14] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. And in a, in a case like that it’s probably going to be a tough row with seller support because they’re going to be like, well, You’re gonna have to go talk to vendor central and while my vendor central is down So that’s probably a case where they should definitely reach out to someone like you guys To see if you can work up the chain Contact email in turn or contact amazon people internally higher up and get that fixed.
[00:47:20:16 – 00:47:34:23] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, we’ve escalated a lot of issues like that.
As I mentioned earlier, vendor was a very popular way of, of messing with people’s listings. so, so we have worked a lot on removing vendor contributions from listings over the years.
[00:47:35:06– 00:47:42:14] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Very good. All right. Very good. So if people need your guys’s help, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?
[00:47:42:26 – 00:47:59:23] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah, so they can go to our website, e commerce, chris. com. We have a contact form there. They can fill it out or their. Free to email me or Chris directly. I’m Leah, L E A H @ e commerce, chris. com. And Chris is Chris at e commerce, chris. com. And we are on all of the social media platforms.
[00:47:59:26– 00:48:04:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Okay. Excellent.
Leah. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been great.
[00:48:04:15 – 00:48:06:24] LEAH MCHUGH| CONSULTANT AT E-COMMERCE CHRIS
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a good conversation.
[00:48:07:03 – 00:48:07:26] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Have a great one.
[00:48:08:28 – 00:48:23:02] OUTRO
This has been another episode of the Amazon seller school podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller, and always remember success is yours if you take it.
