How to Avoid Costly Amazon Suspensions: Insider Tips for Sellers — Or Shamosh | What To Do First When Suspended, How To Audit Amazon Listings For Compliance, Why Keywords Can Trigger Account Bans, How ChatGPT Helps Prevent Amazon Account Suspension (#359)

Enjoying the Ecommerce Coffee Break Podcast? Here are a few ways to grow your business: https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/level-up/

---

Discover expert strategies to prevent Amazon account suspensions with Or Shamosh, founder of AmazonSellersAppeal.com.

In this episode, Or shares actionable tips for auditing listings, avoiding keyword pitfalls, and staying compliant with Amazon’s policies. Learn how tools like ChatGPT can help safeguard your account and what steps to take if you're ever suspended.

Whether you're a new seller or a seasoned merchant, this episode offers invaluable advice to keep your business running smoothly.

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why sellers get suspended: Uncover hidden risks in Amazon listings 
• How keywords trigger account suspensions: Avoid dangerous product descriptions 
• What Amazon really considers a "product": Legal definitions that surprise sellers 
• Why ChatGPT can prevent suspension: Free risk assessment strategy 
• How regulatory agencies define your products: Unexpected legal classifications 
• What to do when suspended: First critical steps for account recovery 
• Why multiple appeals are normal: Navigating Amazon's suspension process 
• How to conduct weekly listing audits: Simple compliance checks 
• What products need extra caution: High-risk categories exposed 
• Why understanding Amazon's algorithm matters: Insider scanning secrets 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://amazonsellersappeal.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/or-shamosh/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrShamosh/ 

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://tinyurl.com/2yvvpvus 

MORE RESOURCES

Download the Ecommerce Conversion Handbook for store optimization tips at https://tinyurl.com/CRO-ebook

Best Apps to Grow Your eCommerce Store: https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/best-shopify-marketing-tools-recommendations/

Become a smarter online seller in just 7 minutes
Our free newsletter is your shortcut to ecommerce success. Every Thursday. 100% free. Unsubscribe anytime. Sign up at https://newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com

Rate, Review & Follow
Enjoying this episode? Help others like you by rating and reviewing my show on Apple Podcasts. Rate here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ecommerce-coffee-break-digital-marketing-podcast-for/id1567749422

And if you haven’t yet, follow the podcast to catch all the bonus episodes I’m adding. Don’t miss out—hit that follow button now!

Transcript

Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we discuss how to avoid costly Amazon suspensions and share insider tips for sellers. Joining me today on the show is Or Shamosh, founder at amazonsellersappeal.Com. So let's dive right into it.

This is the e commerce coffee break. A top rated podcast that helps you become a smarter online seller. Each week, your host Claus Lauter and his guests share what's working right now to grow your store, boost your sale. and stand out in a crowded market. Stay ahead in this fast changing world of e commerce and get expert advice you won't find on Google.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Today we want to talk about how to avoid costly Amazon suspensions and we want to give you some tips for sellers to avoid that. Now obviously Amazon, you don't want to be suspended and that will be a bit of a nightmare for a lot of sellers losing out a lot of money.

And with me today I have a specialist 

who can really do that. good overview on how you can deal with this. Or Shamosh is the founder of AmazonSellersAppeal. com by Aizar Compliance Group, helping Amazon sellers navigate complex compliance challenges, account suspensions, and appeals since 2016. As a former eight figure seller and a great app developer, aggregator founder or combines a deep industry knowledge with a unique perspective on both sides of e commerce.

So let's welcome him to the show. Hi, how are you today? Hey, i'm doing great. Thank you very much for inviting me And welcome to our listeners Well, as I said having a amazon Account suspended that's a nightmare for every seller. Um, you're losing pretty much money instantly. What are the main reasons why people get suspended?

So, as you said, I've been around for a while now, almost nine years, actually, almost nine years. And as an Amazon seller by myself, I try to figure out how to avoid getting suspended, not just how to resolve it. Now, obviously, our services, To provide appeal services. But what I want to do today is to help you avoid entirely being our clients to avoid getting suspended.

So what we do is we took all of our clients. We just took a look. What is common between them? What are something that matches between each one and another? And we saw first, we started, uh, Making it into three parts. We saw that there are three main suspension areas. There is the legal of the regulation and the policy.

So the legal is obviously the trademarks, patents, uh, would it be design patents or utility? It would be copyright, inauthentic and so on. Uh, the regulation part would be based on the country in which you're selling, uh, the FDA. EPA, FTC, DEA, or if you're in Canada, it would be Health Canada, and so on, based on your country.

And that mainly, uh, is relevant to restricted products. Or to medical claims, we will touch that and there is then the policy side of Amazon, which is the terms of service, the business solution agreement, what you're allowed, what you're not allowed to do, how to write the title, how to make the variations and so on.

And then we saw What is shared between all of them? So over 3, 000 cases resolved, we saw that the main thing that combines all of them is keywords. Now, that's a big thing to say, keywords. Okay, what does that mean? So if we are talking about the legal thing, let's say the trademark. So obviously, if you're using Prohibited trademarked words, keywords.

You are possible, it's possible that your listing would be suspended. Now, that's easy. And same thing with the policy side. Now, let's even take, uh, another easy thing. If you're, like, saying that this, uh, the bullet points, okay? Uh, a few years ago, Amazon came and said, Hey, you can't write the bullet points with all caps.

Right? So you must lower cap them and write them regularly. So that's another simple example about keywords. Uh, and then in the regulation, the second part, that would be, for example, medical claims or drug claims. If you're selling, I don't know what, a water bottle, and saying that the cap is antibacterial, That's a problematic term.

And again, we will touch that. Um, but this is in very short and concise and summarized way what keyword misclassifications means that can cause suspensions. And this is what I mean by saying it is relevant to all types of suspensions. Okay. Now, this is quite a, a, a huge range of different areas where a seller needs to have a good insight on specifically with keywords, what they need to avoid.

Um, a lot of seller might think that getting suspended might not happen to them. Why is that thought dangerous? Yeah. So, uh, first you touched a very good point. A lot of people think, oh, okay, I'm safe, I recovered my product, I'm not doing any blackhead things. We are not there. I'm not talking. If you're a blanket seller and you're listening, this might not be precisely relevant to you because you know you're at risk.

I'm talking to the average seller to everybody who is selling on Amazon and thinking they might or might not be at risk. I'm telling you, everybody are at risk. We got so many people reaching out and saying, Hey, Oh, what, what, what, what's happening? I didn't do anything wrong. Now, it doesn't mean that you need to do a violation to be proactively manipulating reviews and getting traffic or getting or damaging competitors.

We are not there yet. You can make a mistake and get suspended. It's like in anything else in life. You don't need to be a bad actor to receive like a lawsuit or something. So same thing in here. Now the thing is, It's not necessarily about the product you're selling. If you are at a high risk category, for example, if you're selling supplements, I'm pretty sure you know, or you should know, let's hope that you know, that your labeling matters a lot.

So whatever you write on the product labeling, It needs to be carefully reviewed against the FDA guidelines. So this is, again, obvious. And I'm here to talk about the less obvious things and to show you that every product, no matter in which category you're in, You're at risk off some suspension and the good friend.

You don't need an expert. You don't need us. You don't have to be the expert by yourself. You don't need to be aware of any trademark laws, any regulations off any policies. We will show you soon how to resolve it by yourself, how to be familiar with what you're doing wrong, even if unintentionally, and then how you can resolve and prevent it.

So are there any kind of warning signs that your Amazon account might be in trouble? Yeah. So in some cases, I can see with clients that their niche is starting to fall down. The competitors are starting to get suspended. Now let's, it makes sense. Let's understand a little bit about Amazon's algorithm.

The algorithm is simple software that scans The listings. Amazon doesn't have like a data. They do have, well, they do have a huge database, but to read it through it, it costs money. Even if you own the database, like Amazon owns it at their AWS, um, or their m. media if you're aware of it, um, so it costs money to check for it and to scan it.

So Amazon doesn't scan it 24 seven. in all products, all listings. So they do it per category, per subcategory and per suspension type. So for example, some days it's not arbitrary. They do have some reason behind what they scan and when, but let's say now they will start scanning a specific niche. We talked about water bottles.

So let's say tomorrow they will. Have randomly start scanning the water bottle snitch and review it for regulatory infringements. Uh, so that's basically how it works. And so you can't always be prepared in advance because you don't know that they will randomly start. Check in that niche, but you can see them that some competitors are starting to fall down.

And one more thing that you can be aware of, and this is where you do need to be a little bit sophisticated seller is to check for news about your type of products. For example, I would take us, I think, five years ago, the vapes, like the e cigarettes. So, I personally followed the news there because I was considering selling it, and I saw on the news, uh, that the regulator, the head of the DA, uh, he had a crackdown on it.

So we said that it, and look at us today. There is literally almost no e-cigarettes online and huge multi-billion dollar companies. Are no longer selling. Uh, So these are some science. If you're sophisticated, uh, you can check the news on your products on your niche and randomly check your competitors.

I'm sure you will even see it by, uh, suddenly getting a lot more sales and not figuring out why, perhaps because others are suspended and hopefully you're not. Okay. It's a very interesting insights that you said that they're not constantly 24 7 scanning or checking your account, but it comes in waves, so to say.

And once you see the wave coming, you should be prepared. Now are there some kind of practical steps sellers can to protect their accounts from suspension? Yes, definitely. Yes. And this is what I want every listener to go out with today. It's something very simple, very straightforward. It's even free. You don't need any professional, you don't need any paid softwares.

You don't need anything. So GPT and not even the paid version, the free version is sufficient. Okay. So before, yeah, it's simple as that. And it works. And I saw customers of mine who were suspended due to it. And I tell them, Hey, look, let's see together how we can know what you're suspended for. And I will take it a step back.

They got suspended for a medical device. Now, getting suspended for a medical device doesn't necessarily mean that your product is a medical device. It means, it's a legal term that's called product as a whole. Now, a product is being classified by a few things. Again, the water bottle, so it will be the product itself.

It would be the packaging. It would be the labeling or whatever you are writing on it. And it will be your promotive and marketing materials. Your listing. And as a side note, the listing, the product description page, the PDP, it consists of five things. That would be the images. The title, the bullet points, the description or the A plus, and the search terms.

The search terms are important. Not a lot of people know that, that the backend, the search terms are being classified. Uh, so these five things constitutes your PIP, DP, the product description page. These are the things that are getting scanned by Amazon's algorithm. And if you have something problematic there, This also a part of the product as a whole, which can classify your product as a medical device.

And so if, even if you're selling earphones or water bottle or a mouse, a computer mouse, it technically, by definition, by the law, can be a medical device, even a mouse pad, right? Even this simple thing that can be legally a medical device. Now, let's take another easy example that I'm sure many of our listeners know.

A few years ago, we had the whole pesticide situation. Are you familiar with it? You heard about it, I'm sure. So, a lot of people said, and a lot of gurus, or so called gurus, said, oh, Amazon is crazy, what are they doing? My products are not pesticides. No, stop, stop. The products are pesticides by law, by regulation.

Because the EPA, in that case, the Environmental Protection Agency, came and said something very simple. Every product, every product, not a pesticide product, every product that makes pesticide claims is a pesticide product. And then people came to us and said, selling, uh, towels, selling, uh, hand soap. And they told me, hey, oh, it's not pesticide, what's going on?

Sorry, it is a pesticide product, by law, by definition, that is a pesticide product. Uh, so If we are now returning a few steps back to what we discussed, now that we understand what are the things that get us classified, let's focus on what we can avoid. So obviously, we have the product which we can't avoid.

If your product is a medical device, get the authorizations you need and the approvals. Um, so then there are four other things, we said there are three or four other things, the labeling, the packaging, and the dating page. So these three include keywords. So here in these three we can make steps to avoid being classified as a pesticide, as a medical device, as a drug product, even drug products, even a simple box, wooden box, which you said, which you say that it is good for for stash and that it prevents smell.

Let me tell you, it can legally be a drug, but it's not really a product. That's, uh, that's something that not a lot of people understand. They tell me, Hey, there is a misclassification. No, there is no misclassification. Okay. Very interesting example. So it also shows how difficult the topic itself is, because as I said, the most sellers are not aware that they fall under one policy category or something that they, um, Basically, they just don't know about it.

Now, obviously, if I'm a seller, I'm a merchant on Amazon, I get to notice that my account is suspended. I'm under stress and I'm all over the place and my mind is not really working a hundred percent to get it fixed the right way. What's the first thing you should do when you get to notice that your account is suspended?

Wait, go out, drink, walk around the block, drink cold water, don't do anything. Trust me here. The first thing that you are doing and sending to Amazon is very important. Don't send them anything under stress. Trust me. It won't even Taking one or two or three or even a week, even with a week, it's a lot. It's, it's your whole business.

And again, trust me, I'm an eight figure seller. I know about the stress involved. I have the employees. I have the, the, the cashflow, the suppliers to pay to. And again, and yet I'm saying, well it's worth it. Wait, I think it's true, but I will take it a step back with your permission, and then I will get to what to do once you are suspended, because I want to help you not get there, I want to help you not get to the point where you are suspended, and think of what do I need to do now.

Let's talk about One step before that, for example, if you're selling, branded products, obviously, you know that you need to have the proper invoices in advance and the letter of authorization and so on. But in here, how can I do? What can I do? As you say, it's a complex area. There are so many things to be aware of.

How can I find an expert that is aware of all of this? You don't. So we send chat GPTs, chat GPTs, uh, every other AI tool, honestly, it doesn't really matter. What I usually do is I go to the chat, uh, whatever tool, and tell him, hey, I am an Amazon seller. I need your assistance, help me review my listing. And again, my listing is the five things that I've mentioned.

Again, I will mention it. The title, the images, the search terms, the backend, the bullet points, and the description of A plus content. And you can send Send images. It's okay. It has an ODR if you're aware of it, so it knows how to read your images. So it's okay. RDA plus. So just send him everything through.

Send him. Walk him through around. You can help, uh, um, make it even more specific. I'm an Amazon seller. I need your help to review my listing, my content, to understand. What are the potential risks that I'm facing? Uh, what keywords are problematic and might get me suspended? Working through it, like I'm explaining to you, go ahead and explain to the chat, Hey, review it, let me know what's problematic.

And if you, Uh, in some cases, I saw that is obviously even today with we are quite far advanced into the, uh, different tools, it still still makes things up. It still gives a false negatives. Uh, false positives, sorry. Uh, but that's okay. Use your common sense. I'm not telling you, hey, go ahead and revise your listing, lose indexed words, and, uh, you're good.

No. Have some common sense. Think it through. Ask him. Okay, can you rate the risk? How far do you think that I am at risk for getting suspended? In sum, it will tell you, oh, okay, that's four out of ten. Ignore it. In sum, it will tell you it's ten out of ten. Now, take that specific keyword, the ten out of ten, the nine, And ask him to explain it to you.

Explain to me, hey chat, repeat, thank you. Please explain to me why this specific keyword can get me suspended, based on what law, based on what regulation. And then you're in a better position to understand what are your risks. And again, it doesn't matter if you're selling any product, whatever the issue of it is, your product can be suspended due to medical device or pesticide or drug.

It doesn't matter what product you're selling because the listing and the packaging and the labeling can also classify the product as a whole and get suspended as such. And telling Amazon, or us, or anyone, Hey, I was misclassified is completely incorrect. You were correctly classified. The product is not a pesticide, sure, but the product as a whole is a pesticide.

No, makes total sense. Now, obviously, if we have a smaller store, you have only a couple of products with a bigger store, you have tons of different products. And you might do your homework. And then this wave reaches you and you get suspended while the product listing was okay for a long time. Yeah. So things become more complicated.

And then this should be the time to reach out to you guys. So amazonsellersappeal. com you help merchants, obviously, what Or where do you come in and what's your process there? So, everybody who needs to know about the sellers who has like a lot of listings, download through the reports, the inventory loader file.

That specific file is prefilled with all of your data, so you don't even need to copy paste. Go to reports, inventory loader file, inventory repository, or something like that it's called. And then you can have all your listings prefilled, easier instead of copy pasting 800 listings like I had.

and so basically you can reach to us through. Anything, if you need help with reviewing complicated keywords or, uh, thinking of what a clutches and anything that you need to avoid being suspended, we will love to help you with that. And if eventually, unfortunately you will be suspended. We will be happy to help.

So you reach out to us, we review your situation, we give you our full strategy and how we are going to resolve it. If you want, you can all the same try and resolve it alone. We do encourage that, uh, in some cases. but again, if I will go back to the question from before, what to do, the first thing to do after getting suspended, breathe, take a minute.

Wait, it's not worth it to act fast. And I understand it's a multi billion, multi million dollars with employees, with cash. It's okay. I understand, but take your time. Wait a minute, wait 10 minutes, go around, take a walk and get back to it with a clear mind and a strategy on how to act forward, which will usually be the first step to understand the situation.

Try to figure out what you were suspended for. There are rarely cases where there are false suspensions. And again, a lot of people out there, PD services, like to make a buzz out of it. Hey, look at this, uh, uh, uh, 10 figure seller. So what's falsely suspended? No, no, no. There are rarely such cases. There is almost.

Always some kind of violation. And again, it doesn't have to be intentional. So what we do is to help you identify the hidden violation, the one that you are not familiar with, which is often the case. So we review your account, we review the entire situation, help you understand exactly what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to prevent it for.

Hopefully, the first reinstatement. Okay. You're talking about appeal. What's the, is there kind of an average appeal time or is this really from case to case? What's the time frame there? Our fastest appeal that got resolved is actually 14 minutes. That was a very unusual case, and I went about it in some, uh, other webinar.

That was the client of ours, he was speaking at another webinar, and he showcased it. So it was quite funny, but don't expect that, sorry, don't expect that unusual time frame. Um, we usually take one, two, three days to write the appeal based on the complexity. Um, And then it really, I will tell you the truth, it depends on Amazon, on how backlogged they are.

That, that, that's it, what it's up to, how fast they can review it. And I will say that in most cases, appeals are a process. So again, even if you are appealing by yourself, and you trust yourself that you know what you are doing, and you are getting rejected at first, Don't worry, it's okay. Appealing is a process.

Many times it takes a few appeal attempts. So call Amazon. Ask for the feedback and try to figure out what you need to change or to add in your next appeal. There are rarely cases where a one time appeal works. It's almost always a requirement to have a few appeals. Uh, there is a reason behind that, but I think we are quite short on time.

So I, we can dive into that on another time. But there is some sense out of why it's a process. Thanks. Okay. Now you mentioned before that you're helping people before they get suspended and checking their accounts. And I think that's very, very important, specifically if you have a bigger business, I think that's a must have.

Who's your perfect customer? Are there specific industries or verticals that you work more with? So, everybody, as we said, everybody, uh, our potential clients, because it's not only the high risk. For that again, the supplements, the health, everything that touches your screen or do you eat or anything like that, that would be some high risk that are bound to be suspended because it's obvious because there are motorizations there.

There is some high risk that the product will cause harm. Other than a mouse pad, so right, but still the mouse pad will still be our potential client to avoid to the risk management. So that's also something that we cover. We can have your entire account manually reviewed for the is within the keywords that we just saw the variations.

potential, suspensions, and we don't come around and tell you, Hey, look, here's your prohibitive variation separated. No, we are not there. We are coming here and telling you, Hey, look, this variation. It's problematic. I can assume based on nine years of experience that you have percent chances that your variation would be split.

There is a 30 percent chance that it would cause your account to get suspended. You want to take that risk. That's up to you. It's okay. We are here to reflect that risk to you so you can make smarter decisions. Risk based decisions. Same thing for your listing content. You are telling me, hey, oh, the water bottle antibacterial is the top ranting keyword.

It gains me so much traffic. You don't understand. I will come and tell you, okay, listen, I can, I think I can resolve the suspension within one week. It will cost you the attendance. It's worth it. Okay, so take the risk. It's okay. Take the risk. Manage the risk until you will get suspended. If you will get suspended, you will enjoy the traffic, and then you will maybe get suspended, which we can resolve.

So that's what it's all about. Not being like, uh, extreme. No, don't do violations. Don't write prohibited terms. No. First, understand that you have some prohibited terms or prohibited variations, and then decide if you want to keep it. That's up to you. Yeah. I think it's what you provide is less than a service.

Obviously if you get suspended, then you're in the service area, but it's also a lot of coaching and consulting so that people really learn and understand what this thing is about. Oh, you mentioned there's a lot of manual work involved from your side to check. Tell me a little bit about the pricing structure.

How does that work? So it really depends on the, the complexity, the complexity. It can be, uh, uh, like a simple one listing, and, uh, it's like an hour list, and a coaching, as you said, and then we go on a call, and I don't teach you about, I don't show you what's prohibited in your system. I teach you about the subject that you want to learn about, for example, three hours ago I was on a call with a seller and he told me his variations got splitted and he got the high impact violation.

And I told him, look, instead of me just telling you what's problematic and fixing it for you, because he has 20 other variations, let's go on a call. One hour, one time fee, very, it's, this one is actually very cheap, so it's a no brainer, uh, and then I simply taught him how variations work, and then he understood what's prohibited in his specific variation that got, got splitted, and implemented it, hopefully, he really implemented It is other variations.

So this is the one time the coaching for your one specific issue. There is the risk management when we come and give you your account, you will listen, and it really depends on the complexity, the amount of listings involved and How much time will it take us? And then there is the appeal process, which once again, based on complexity can be anything from 800 to 4, 000.

So the range is very big here, uh, because some cases. I can tell you, hey, look, it's, it's quite simple, let's, here, go solve it by yourself, here's what you need to do. In others, I will tell you, okay, that's what it requires, and in some cases where there is a lot of legal, uh, regulatory work involved, that would be on the higher tier.

I think it's very important to have an expert on your side with this topic. And as mentioned before, it's your whole business. Everything comes to a standstill, your bills continue to run. So you're in a situation between a wall and a hard rock where you don't want to be. And then you want to have some one, to work with to really can help you from A to Z to make sure that this, first of all, doesn't happen.

And if it's happened, then you can solve the problem relatively quickly. But before we come to the end of the coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

You mentioned that, things are constantly updated. So you're right. What was permitted today. might be prohibited tomorrow. So what I do for either my business as a seller or for the customers that I work for, I build for them a weekly routine some monthly routines, for some weekly routines, and it takes no more than five minutes.

To just double check and ensure that nothing has changed. Uh, and again, you can use AI tools, very simple AI tools. H P-J-G-P-T. Can you check again if there is something new? Perhaps if there are any updates? Uh, and obviously once you are updating and optimizing your SEO, before you click save, go ahead and recheck on.

Okay, that's a very good tip, and everyone should do that. Where can people go to find out more about you guys? so, I think the most, the easiest way would be to Google my name, Or Shamosh, Google me, uh, over LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you feel comfortable with, I'm available, mostly anywhere.

So just reach out wherever you feel confident thank you very much for having me. And if there is one last thing to say, don't leave this podcast, don't go and continue with your day.

Just do this one simple thing. Copy past your listing, throw it into ChatGPT, ask him to analyze, and that's it. If you will be my client while suspended due to keywords, I will be very angry. Okay. Sounds good to me. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye bye.