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Last updated on: November 13, 2023
As an approved Amazon reseller, you have the best chance of attracting new customers by selling things online. However, while you may be adhering to ethical standards, not everyone else is doing the same thing. Since the rise of unlicensed sellers and resellers on Amazon, certain brands’ income and reputation have been adversely affected.
Continue reading to find out how to report and remove unauthorized sellers on Amazon and secure your items and brand on the marketplace.
There are 9.7 million Amazon sellers globally, with 1.9 million actively selling on the platform, with tens of thousands more signing up each year. Illegal sellers have been a long-term problem on the Amazon marketplace because of the high volume of commerce and the large number of people who want a piece of it.
An unauthorized seller is any third-party reseller or distributor who sells a brand’s items without authorization. In certain cases, this could be a legal distributor who is selling directly to you or a counterfeiter who is selling fake products on your Amazon page.
Your business is being harmed in two ways by these people:
If a buyer thinks it’s necessary, they can bring any seller infractions to Amazon’s attention. To file a complaint against unauthorized sellers and resellers and stop them from damaging your brand’s reputation follow the steps outlined below.
Step 1: On the homepage, click the three-stacked-lines menu symbol in the upper-left corner.
Step 2: Select Customer Service from the Help & Settings drop-down menu.
Step 3: Go to the bottom of the page after being moved to a new window. Under Browser Help Topics, select Customer Service and then Contact Us.
Step 4: To proceed, you’ll be asked to enter your username and password. Do not perform Step 5 if not instructed to do so.
Step 5: Approve the login by confirming the notification delivered to your registered mobile number.
Step 6: You’ll be directed to a new window after approval, where you’ll be prompted to submit your query by chat or phone. It’s advised that you state the whole nature of the infraction.
With the ASIN/ISBN, business name, order ID, and a brief but clear explanation of what was violated on the item’s description page, it is easier for Amazon to track a seller’s authenticity.
There are three key stages to defending your brand from unauthorized sellers and resellers: identify rogue sellers, monitor pricing, and send cease and desist letters to unlawful dealers.
Before you can take any action, you must first identify the target. Today, an automated monitoring system can scan marketplaces, seller websites, and grey market websites to seek instances of your brand and items.
A monitoring system can also work to draw the connections between various seller accounts and uncover contact information and make Amazon unauthorized sellers enforcement more effective. With information on unauthorized resellers on Amazon, you may also identify how they obtained your products to see which of your distributor contracts need improvement.
MAP monitoring software can be used to verify that the dealers in your supply chain are adhering to your MAP policy in addition to identifying unauthorized resellers. This makes distribution contract administration easy. When an Amazon seller violates your policy, you’ll be alerted to the situation thanks to ongoing monitoring. You can move rapidly and keep your pricing power in the market.
In order to deal with and stop unauthorized sellers and resellers on Amazon, as well as authorized sellers who are selling below MAP, you now have two types of notifications at your disposal. The last step is to notify these parties in the proper way. You don’t want to send a cease and desist letter to a genuine vendor and maybe destroy the relationship, after all. It’s perfectly acceptable to notify a genuine company that they are in violation of the MAP and detail the steps you’ll take to enforce it.
But suppose you discover illegal vendors that haven’t agreed to your MAP policy and aren’t affiliated with your company. It’s at this point when cease-and-desist letters come into play. It’s also possible to argue to Amazon that new products require your warranty, but that the seller is unable to provide it since they are an illegal reseller. This can give you another approach to stop unauthorized sellers, remove the listing, and fix the issue.
You don’t actually own your product listing, which makes it extremely difficult to stop unauthorized Amazon sellers and resellers. Since Amazon controls all listings, you have to follow the company’s policies, which may not always work in your favor. As a result, removing and stopping unauthorized merchants from an Amazon listing is a cumbersome and time-consuming operation.
You have to build up a method to monitor your brand’s product listings, as well as who is selling what, how often, and at what price. After that, you’ll need to assign a classification to each vendor in order to choose the best course of action. It will be less stressful if you have done some planning ahead of time.
To secure your consumers and earnings, use Red Points’ Amazon Brand Protection Services to automatically detect and eradicate IP infringement on Amazon.