From Bad Actor to Brand Success: Navigating Amazon's Complexities to Overcome Policy Violation

Problem:

A brand-registered seller came to us while facing a challenging situation with a restricted product policy violation. Despite extensive efforts by eGrowth Partners and cooperation with Amazon’s various departments, we were unable to resolve the issue. Unbeknown to us, the violation was due to the addition of attributes added by an unknown actor through Vendor Central, making the ASIN non-compliant and unable to be edited.

Solution:

The solution was reached through a crucial decision by employees of eGrowth Partners, who decided to contact Amazon once more after previous attempts were unsuccessful. In a call with Amazon’s Catalog Team, it was discovered that the problematic attributes causing the policy violation had been added to both the parent ASIN and one child ASIN. With our client’s permission as a brand-registered seller, the representative was able to manually remove the attributes, in a process called ‘deprecation of retail attributes’. This action, typically handled by the Brand Registry Proper team, ensured that the ASIN became compliant again. It was confirmed that the attributes were added by a bad actor who had access to Vendor Central.

Results:

The ASIN was reinstated on Amazon’s Canadian marketplace (CA) and later on the US marketplace as well. The policy violation was successfully removed, ensuring our client could continue selling the product on Amazon. The experience highlighted the importance of brand registry and the complexities involved in resolving policy violations, especially when attributed to actions of bad actors on the platform. The situation also underscored the necessity of communication and coordination within Amazon’s various teams to find solutions for sellers facing policy violations.

We had given up, but eGrowth Partners didn’t. They persevered until the problem was solved.