Typically, selling your goods or products on platforms like eBay or Amazon is one of best ways of making money online.
However, there is one major issues with the Amazon seller performance program that makes honest sellers loose their businesses due to selling ban as well as removal of their vendor privileges. Indeed, this is one of the most serious problems Amazon sellers face, which in many cases destroys businesses people built over years over night. In one way or another, sellers are highly affected and make them work under constant fear of unwarranted account suspension. If you thought that, it is not a big deal, wait until you get the full explanation, unveiled herein!
It is correct that Amazon Seller Performance is put in place so that it can detect and remove any seller that violates or abuses their selling privileges. Whether you are an Amazon shareholder, customer, or quality seller, you all deserve this. Indeed, this is one of the incredible jobs of the Amazon’s seller-performance team. Actually, it is a crucial aspect of the above online platform to maintain its integrity and name.
However, in the recent past, there seems to be a rise in the number of seller suspensions. It seems the Amazon’s team entrusted with the task of performing seller performance is either sleeping on the job, or it is not doing what is right. To make matters even worse, reinstatement periods are taking longer than required! What is up with Amazon nowadays?
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Typically, getting your seller account banned on Amazon can happen overnight without any warning. Even worse most sellers are not allowed to return to sell ever again after the suspension, the truth of the matter is that the seller will be operating with worries and void of sales. At the current rate of suspension, most sellers are in a tight spot trying to catch up with lost income as well as trying their best keeping Amazon seller performance team happy.
To improve Amazon seller performance system, the following recommendations are eminent:
- 1. Offer a second chance
It is highly significant that Amazon should consider providing sellers who have had their accounts suspended in the past another opportunity to state and defend their cases. Indeed, hundreds and thousands of sellers have wrongfully lost their accounts and even given up on trying to re-open it.
- 2. Amazon needs to hire qualified and professional staff dealing with seller who had been suspended
If an extensive investigation is carried out of this department, it is unbelievable that most sellers get canned as well as severe responses while asking for more information in regards to a case in hand. Have you even seen a seller performance letter that stated nothing about the case in question?
The entire process is comparable to the game of cat and mice. Indeed, Amazon needs to sit down and discuss again the reason(s) as to why they request these letters to be written yet their representatives do not read and understand its details.
Solution to the above challenge
If it a must that sellers have to write these letters, then Amazon should invest in hiring employees who have the capacity of reading a letter in full, understand them, and write back the responses explaining vividly what they have gathered from the letters.
- 3. Phone support for Amazon Sellers
Despite the fact that numerous calls from both sellers and buyers can be quite challenging, but it is not justifiable for a customer support department not to have a phone contact.
Typically, it is in order that support representatives have to be reached in some other ways besides email. If not all cases, then phone calls are inevitable for cases that have not been responded for periods more than two weeks or for final removal cases.
- 4. All of suspension cases should be handled fair and within a reasonable time frame.
Ideally, sellers are quoted a response time of between 24 and 48 hours. However, in most cases, this has never been the reality. In fact, the average response time for most clients has risen to about seven days, yet all of them have been quoted 24 to 48 hours response time.
If merchants on Amazon shipped their orders later than the expected time, definitely, they would have had their privileges removed. In this case, the seller performance representatives should demonstrate the same to sellers or a higher level. Indeed, a seller who has been suspended is neither a criminal nor second-class citizen. Just like any other human being, they can make mistakes, and they deserve honest and quick responses.
Solution
One of the honest opinions is that the seller performance department is either understaffed or underperforming. If this is the cases, then the company should consider hiring customer care representatives. Besides that, implement the new procedures in an efficient manner and place leaders within the organization whose primary duty is to improve sellers’ response times. At the very least, honest response quotes are the absolute key to success; if it takes two weeks, then representatives should say so.
- 5. Seller Support team should be precise and accurate in their responses
Typically, seller-performance team should not be allowed to be vague with responses since this is not constructive. In other words, it should not be the work of the seller requesting to find their mistakes’ when in most cases, the problems were not either direct complaints or negative reviews. Mostly, the seller is not in a position to see the problem simply because they did not receive any formal information about the issue.
Solution
Amazon should amend their policies and include the requirement that no one can respond to canned template emails. In other words, each letter should be custom. However, the email should be precise, concise, constructive, and to the point. If there is some additional information about a particular case that a seller cannot see, then they are required to have it disclosed so that they identify and address the challenge or defend its validity.
- 6. Release funds and goods sooner than the 3 months
Lastly, most sellers rely on online selling to earn their living and 90 days grace period is an extraordinarily long and unnecessary amount of time to request inventory and funds. Although it is evident in their policies, it is a good-will issue for Amazon to consider fixing the above.
Amazon sellers, whether you have been suspended in the past or not, it is highly important that you need to join this petition as an ultimate way of seeking fair treatment for all sellers.
Remember, if you have not gone through the daunting suspension process of Amazon, it is more likely that you may be in this situation in the future, and you will require a fair opportunity to speak out your case.
Resources:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/amazon-fake-reviews-2/