The exponential success of 3P sellers on Amazon in recent years has motivated many new businesses to pursue this selling model on the platform. However, a 3P business model does not come without its challenges. As always, high takes are always high-stakes. If you fail to follow Amazon guidelines, you’ll find yourself in trouble, risking deactivation of your Amazon Seller Account. So what does it mean to have your Amazon Seller Account deactivated? We’ll walk you through the specifics of the situation and outline what you can do to fix it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. What is 3P on Amazon?2. Why Is My Amazon Seller Account Deactivated?
3. What Drops My Account Health Rating?
4. How Do I Know If My Amazon Seller Account Is Deactivated?
5. Getting Out of Seller Central Jail – Amazon Seller Account Deactivated Reinstatement
6. VASO Group Can Help with Your Amazon Seller Account Deactivated Situation
What is 3P on Amazon?
3P is a business model where you sell your products directly to consumers on Amazon. 3P selling has been on a steady increase in the past few years, with a sales growth rate of 3 times that of 1P sellers in 2022 (Statista). In Q4 2024, this trend continues: third-party market share on Amazon grew to over 60% of total units sold. It’s clear that in this day and age, 3P is the way to go when you’re starting new on Amazon.
Why Is My Amazon Seller Account Deactivated?
All Sellers must be familiar with a metric called Account Health Rating (AHR). It looks a bit like this in your Seller Central dashboard:
For all newly opened Amazon Seller accounts, you start with an AHR of 200, and will be able to work your way up to 1000 over time as you make more sales. If your AHR drops below 200, this health bar will change to a yellow color to warn you that your account is now officially at Risk of Deactivation. An At Risk status can and will lead to your account deactivation in anywhere from 7 to 30 days.
What Drops My Account Health Rating?
By now, you probably understand that keeping a good AHR score is of utmost importance if you want to keep selling on Amazon. So what can you do to keep this number growing, and above 200 at all times?
There are 2 things you need to do to ensure a healthy AHR score:
1. Make sales regularly. A good sales cadence will routinely add credits to your rating.
2. Do not violate any Amazon policies.
For a more detailed breakdown, here are a close-up shots of the areas of performance Amazon is looking for:
Are your products defective? Are you misleading customers into buying incorrect products? Are your customers happy with what they receive? All these points contribute to your Customer Service Performance.
Are you infringing on other brands’ intellectual properties? Are you using prohibited trademarks in your copy and images? Are you selling counterfeits and fakes of authentic products? All these points contribute to your Policy Compliance.
If you are FBM, Shipping Performance is another area of performance you need to keep track of. Essentially, Amazon is seeing if you can reliably deliver your orders to customers on time.
For the majority of Amazon Sellers, the most common issues that will cause you trouble are:
- Listings policy violation
- IP infringements or other Amazon policy violations
- Product authenticity (this happens a lot with authorized 3rd parties selling name brands)
- Negative customer reviews
How Do I Know If My Amazon Seller Account Is Deactivated?
Luckily, Amazon is very transparent and communicative with you about the health rating of your Seller Account. You can receive email notifications, as well as on-screen notifications about any flagged issues as soon as you log into your Seller Dashboard. If you want an even more in-depth look of what’s going on, navigate to Performance > Account Health.
This screen will be where your issues are tallied up or “counted” to deduct from your AHR. The issue count is the number of products with the violation. Do note that since some products might have more than one violation, these counts might overlap.
Getting Out of Seller Central Jail – Amazon Seller Account Deactivated Reinstatement
Let’s tackle two scenarios. One where your account is at risk of deactivation, and one where your account has already been deactivated. Depending on the severity of your status, our recommended measures are different. However, time is of the essence in both situations; therefore, you must be ready to act quickly.
Risk of Deactivation
Identify and address any violations that Amazon has flagged on your account in a timely manner. Information about these violations can be found in your notification email, on-screen Performance Notifications, or the Account Health dashboard.
Deactivated
If your Amazon Seller Account is already deactivated, you need to submit a Plan of Action which details how you’re going to resolve your flagged violations. You will need to create one plan of action for each violation. However, if the issues are related to each other, you only need to resolve 1 to resolve the other issues.
In your Plan of Action, address these 3 to 4 points below. If your Plan of Action doesn’t contain these topics, it will be rejected, and you will need to start your appeal process over. These topics are:
- Issue that caused the complaints
- Root Causes of the issue
- Steps we have taken to resolve the complaint
- Details how we will prevent future complaints
Once you’re finished writing the Plan of Action, navigate to Compliance Dashboard > Next Steps > Appeal to submit the file to Amazon. Upon that, the issue is out of your hands now: you will need to wait for a reply from the Amazon team. Here’s where it gets tricky: response time varies from 24 hours to a week, so there’s no true time frame you can expect. However, drafting a comprehensive Plan of Action will be your best bet at having your account reinstated.
VASO Group Can Help with Your Amazon Seller Account Deactivated Situation
Did you find yourself in Seller Central jail? No worries at all – we are here to help. Our Amazon Seller Central experts have helped many at risk and deactivated accounts get reinstated before. Our proprietary Plan of Action protocol has a proven track record of successful reinstatements, and we’re confident that we can give you the best fighting chance at regaining control of your account. Reach out today and let’s improve your account together.
Let’s grow your business together.