Amazon cracks down hard on variant violations.The entire site is blocked!

Starting from April, Amazon has intensified its crackdown on variant violations.Especially in the past few days, many sellers have found their stores have been disabled when they log into the backend. Some sellers received warning letters, but their accounts were not banned, while the accounts of some other sellers were directly banned. According to the sellers, the direct reason is almost always - variant violations. According to the platform email notification provided by the sellers, Amazon clearly stated: “Because one or more ASIN variants you created violated our ASIN creation policy, we have disabled your account.”

Moreover, this round of sweeping is extremely strict, even shops that received variant violation warnings in October 2023 can now be directly shut down. Sellers are simply suffering:

"I've had several competitive variant violations in my category, and the links are gone directly."

"We also received it, but the account manager said that the title of the sub-body is inconsistent, and we did not merge variants."

"It's too hard, now the abuse of variants is so severe. How many sellers have to be swept?"

"I heard that products that are separately made into vine, and then merged together later, will also be judged as illegal merging."

At the same time, the scale of this account banning action has significantly expanded compared to mid-March. Some sellers have triggered a comprehensive sweep due to variant operation violations on the Canadian site, which has led to a ban on the US site. However, just one day apart, all the European sites of this seller were not spared, all of them were forcibly shut down due to association issues.

However, some sellers have stated that merging variants was once a strategy commonly adopted by sellers, but this practice actually has a significant negative impact on the shopping experience of buyers. For example, when customers see a vacuum cleaner priced at only $9.99, they may eagerly click on the link to view the details, but they find that this is just a part of the vacuum cleaner, the gap between expectation and reality easily makes customers feel dissatisfied and disappointed. Therefore, for the platform to strictly review, it is beneficial to sellers in the long run.

According to sellers, there are several main situations in this variant abuse:

1. Change the parent or child Listing page, causing the description to not match the product itself;

2. Change the parent detail page, causing it to not match with the child product;

3. Add products that do not match the parent body, which are not the real sub-bodies of the parent body;

4. Add sub-bodies that are not from the same manufacturer as the current parent body;

5. Merge zombie Listings.

An experienced seller gives advice:

"For sellers who have already been penalized for banning, the first task is to carefully check the variants that may exist in the shop for violations, adjust or remove these non-compliant variant combinations. After resolving the violation issues, you should actively admit your mistakes and submit a compliant POA appeal, and explain in detail the rectification measures taken in the appeal, to show that you will avoid violations in the future."

Many sellers have expressed that Amazon's regulatory efforts in variants have significantly strengthened recently, and it is expected that a new round of strict reviews may be carried out before the peak season. Therefore, those sellers who have not yet been affected by the sweep should adjust the variants to compliance as soon as possible to avoid potential risks.

Orders and traffic drop
Sellers face huge pressure
Since March, Amazon has frequently taken action in its operation strategy, adopted a series of severe measures to rectify account violations, including strict checks on variant violations, large-scale delisting of product listings, and suddenly launched account sweeping actions on the eve of the big promotion, causing a large number of accounts to be banned. In addition, a new round of account verification has also started, and store information review is more strict.

However, the banning storm has not yet subsided, and Amazon has raised multiple fees again, which undoubtedly brings greater pressure to sellers. Starting from April, Amazon began to levy fees for lowering inventory levels and expanded the scope of warehousing utilization surcharges. The rise in these costs has further increased the operating costs of sellers, and the originally limited profit space has been squeezed even more.

Under the double blow of the threat of banning and the worry of costs, Amazon sellers are facing unprecedented sales challenges. Many sellers have seen a downward trend in sales and profits since mid-March, not only failed to seize the traffic opportunities brought by the big promotion, but were troubled by the continuous strikes of banning and price increases.

A seller frankly said that the single volume in March showed obvious instability, the sales volume gradually declined in the second half of the month, and April continued this downward trend. Many sellers have felt the coldness of the market, and they have expressed that the instability of the single has become a common phenomenon in the past two months. The boosting effect of the spring promotion is not obvious, and sellers' price reductions and promotions not only failed to stimulate consumer enthusiasm, but led to a continuous reduction in profits.

In addition, many sellers believe that the traffic in the US market is now dispersed by multiple platforms, and consumers will compare prices from multiple parties when shopping. Especially during the holiday period, the competition of other platforms has severely squeezed the profits of Amazon sellers. The price war between peers has also intensified this competitive situation, making Amazon sellers feel pressured.

In general, as the industry gradually matures, under the trend of increasingly tightening compliance requirements, many sellers cry out for compliance difficulties, but no matter how difficult it is, sellers must abide by relevant requirements. Faced with increasingly strict compliance requirements, sellers should actively embrace changes, strengthen self-discipline, and continuously improve their compliance awareness and capabilities. Cross-border sellers can only stand invincible in the fierce market competition if they stick to the bottom line of compliance.