Amazon Terms of Service: Prohibited Seller Activities Explained

Here at Jungle Scout, we get a lot of questions about Amazon’s Selling Policies and Seller Code of Conduct. That’s why we decided to post it all here and break down what each and every part of it means.

Amazon Terms of Service: Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions

Introduction

  • Amazon wants to protect both you and the buyers.
  • Amazon can and will ban your product or your business for breaking the rules.
  • Amazon can hold your payments if you break the rules.
  • The prohibited activities and actions portion of the Amazon terms of service is in addition to all other parts of the Amazon terms of service.

General Guidelines

  • The seller prohibited activities and actions is for most products and services. Some products and services may have additional guidelines.
  • Don’t try to send buyers away from Amazon.
  • Don’t use business names that try to trick shoppers, are trademarked, or are URLs.
  • Don’t send marketing emails to your customers
  • Don’t misuse customer phone numbers.
  • You can only send emails through Amazon’s messaging system.
  • Don’t try to break Amazon’s system.
  • Don’t cheat for good reviews.
  • Don’t cheat for sales rank or brag about it in your listing.
  • Don’t abuse the A-to-Z guarantee.
  • Don’t abuse the search engine.

Additional Guidelines

  • Two-day shipping confirmations on all media products.
  • Don’t raise prices after the transaction is complete.
  • Don’t create duplicate listings with the intent to trick buyers.
  • Don’t list or match against pre-orderable media products.

Additional Service Guidelines

  • Don’t upsell additional products during service.
  • Don’t send an unregistered technician in your place.
New to Selling on Amazon? Watch our free in-depth video with accompanying article and get started today! How to Sell on Amazon FBA for Beginners

 

Part 1: Introduction

Amazon wants to protect both you and the buyers.

“These prohibited seller activities and actions are established to maintain a selling program that is safe for buyers and fair for sellers of both products and services.”

Amazon can and will ban you or your product for breaking the rules.

“Failure to comply with the terms of this policy can result in cancellation of listings, suspension from use of Amazon tools and reports, and the removal of selling privileges.”

Amazon can hold your payments if they suspend your account.

“In addition, we do not pay sellers until we are confident that customers have received the products they ordered, and if we determine that a seller account has been used to engage in fraud or other illegal activity, remittances and payments may be withheld or forfeited.”

This portion of the Amazon terms of service is in addition to all other Amazon terms of service agreements.

“Note: This policy is in addition to, and in no way limits, your other obligations pursuant to your seller agreement or otherwise.”

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Part 2: General Guidelines

The prohibited seller actions and activities are for most products and services. Some products may have specific guidelines.

“The following guidelines apply to both sellers of products and services. For guidelines specific to products see the information following this section. For guidelines specific to services, see Selling Services on Amazon policies.”

Don’t try to send buyers away from Amazon.

“Any attempt to circumvent the established Amazon sales process or to divert Amazon users to another website or sales process is prohibited. Specifically, any advertisements, marketing messages (special offers), or “calls to action” that lead, prompt, or encourage Amazon users to leave the Amazon website are prohibited. This may include the use of email or the inclusion of hyperlinks, URLs, or web addresses within any seller generated confirmation email messages or any product/listing description fields.”

Does this include links or marketing material on or in the product’s packaging?

There’s some debate to this question, and while I’ve heard rumors of people getting in trouble for this, for the most part, Amazon doesn’t penalize for it. After all, nearly all major brands and labels do it. We recommend that you don’t go overboard. And if anything, put it inside the packaging, where it’s not as obvious.

Don’t use business names that try to trick shoppers, are trademarked, or have a URL.

“Your business name (identifying your business entity on Amazon) must be a name that: accurately identifies you; is not misleading; and that you have the right to use (that is, the name cannot include the trademark of, or otherwise infringe on, any trademark or other intellectual property right of any person). Furthermore, you can’t use a business name that contains an email suffix such as .com, .net, .biz, and so on.”

Don’t send marketing emails to your customers.

“Unsolicited emails to Amazon customers (other than as necessary for order fulfillment and related customer service) and emails related to marketing communications of any kind are prohibited.”

Don’t misuse customer phone numbers.

“Amazon provides Professional sellers who fulfill their own orders access to customer phone numbers so that they can comply with carrier label requirements. If you receive this customer information, you are required to adhere to Amazon’s customer personal information policy, which can be found in our Seller Agreement.

Please review the policy there and the guidance below to make sure that you are using customers’ phone numbers correctly.

  • Proper treatment of customer phone numbers:
    • Print on labels to comply with carrier requirements.
    • Dispose of any customer phone number data that you retain after you have processed the customers’ orders.
    • Monitor who in your organization has access to customer phone numbers—protecting this data is your responsibility.
  • Improper treatment of customer phone numbers:
    • Never contact a customer using their phone number. To contact a customer about their order, only use Buyer-Seller Messaging. Please see our Buyer-Seller Messaging FAQ for more information.
    • Never share customer phone information with an external party.
    • Never pass along customer information of any kind, including phone numbers, outside of Buyer-Seller Messaging.”

You can only send emails through Amazon’s message system.

“Buyers and sellers may communicate with one another via the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service.”

You can only have one seller account (but there are rare exceptions).

“Operating and maintaining multiple Seller Central accounts is prohibited. If you have a legitimate business need for a second account, you can apply for an exception to this policy:

  1. Go to Contact Us.
  2. Click Selling on Amazon, then select Your account, and then select Other account issues.

In your request, please provide an explanation of the legitimate business need for a second account. To be considered for approval:

  • You must have a separate bank account for each Seller Central account. We will not approve multiple Seller Central accounts that use the same bank account within the same region. If you sell across regions (for example in North America and Europe), you may use the same bank account for your Seller Central accounts as long as your accounts are linked though.

Don’t try to break Amazon’s system.

“If you upload excessive amounts of data repeatedly, or otherwise use the service in an excessive or unreasonable way, Amazon may in its sole discretion restrict or block your access to product feeds or any other functions that are being misused until you stop its misuse.”

Don’t cheat for good reviews.

“Any attempt to manipulate ratings, feedback, or reviews is prohibited.

  • Ratings and feedback: The rating and feedback features allow buyers to evaluate the overall performance of a seller, which helps sellers to develop a reputation within the Amazon Marketplace. You may not post abusive or inappropriate feedback or include personal information about a transaction partner. This also includes posting ratings or feedback to your own account. You may request feedback from a buyer, however, you may not pay or offer any incentive to a buyer for either providing or removing feedback.
  • Reviews: Reviews are important to the Amazon Marketplace, providing a forum for feedback about product and service details and reviewers’ experiences with products and services – positive or negative. To ensure that reviews remain helpful, sellers must comply with our Community Guidelines. For example, you may not offer compensation for a review, and you may not review your own products or your competitors’ products. You may ask buyers to write a review in a neutral manner, but you may not ask for positive reviews, ask for reviews only from buyers who had a positive experience, or ask a reviewer to change or remove their review. If you think a review does not comply with our Community Guidelines, click on the Report Abuse link next to the review. For more examples of prohibited actions, click here.”

What about promos for reviews?

Pay very close attention to where it says:

  • You may not offer compensation for review. This includes free or discounted products.
  • You may ask buyers to write a review in a neutral manner, but you can’t ask for positive reviews. So you can ask for a review through an email message follow up or inside your packaging, but it has to be totally neutral.
  • Nor can you ask for reviews from only the buyers that had a positive experience. You’ve got to ask everyone.

The way we interpret this is that you can give away promos. And you can ask for reviews. But you can’t give away a promo for a review. No incentivizing!

This is one area that Amazon doesn’t mess around with. Your best solution for getting reviews is using Review Automation to automatically send a review request to  each and every one of your Amazon customers.

You can’t cheat for sales rank or brag about it on your listing.

“The best seller rank feature allows buyers to evaluate the popularity of a product. Any attempt to manipulate sales rank is prohibited. You may not solicit or knowingly accept fake or fraudulent orders, including placing orders for your own products. You may not provide compensation to buyers for purchasing your products or provide claim codes to buyers for the purpose of inflating sales rank. In addition, you may not make claims regarding a product’s best seller rank in the product detail page information, including the title and description.”

Don’t abuse the A-to-z guarantee.

“Any misuse of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee claims process is prohibited. Sellers who have an excessive number or monetary amount of A-to-z Guarantee claims are subject to termination. In cases where a buyer is dissatisfied with a product or service, they can contact the seller to make arrangements for a refund, return, or exchange, as appropriate. Amazon reserves the right to seek reimbursement from the seller if we reimburse a buyer under the terms of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee.”

Don’t abuse the search engine.

“When customers use Amazon’s search engine and browse structure, they expect to see relevant and accurate results. Any attempt to manipulate the Search and Browse experience is prohibited. Prohibited behaviors include, but are not limited to:

  • Artificially simulating customer traffic (through Internet bots, paying for clicks on organic search results, and so on).
  • Providing misleading or irrelevant catalog information (title, bullet points, description, variations, keywords, and so on).
  • Adding product identifiers (brand names, product names, ASINs, and so on), even if they are your own, to hidden keyword attributes.

For more context and guidelines, see Optimize listings for Search and Browse.”

Part 3: Additional Guidelines for Sellers

Two-day shipping on media products.

“Shipping BMVD Products: Books, Music, Video, and DVD products offered through Amazon must be shipped within 2 business days of the date the order confirmation is made available to you.”

Don’t raise prices after the transaction is complete.

“Post-transaction price manipulation and excessive shipping fees: Any attempt to increase the sale price of a product after a transaction has been completed is prohibited. Additionally, sellers cannot set excessive order fulfillment and shipping costs.”

Don’t create duplicate listings with the intent to trick buyers.

“Matching product offerings inaccurately: When you list a product for sale using an existing product detail page, the product being offered must be listed on a product detail page that accurately describes the product in all respects, including (but not limited to) the following attributes: manufacturer, edition, binding, version, format, or player compatibility. Sellers may not match their item to a detail page with a different ISBN, UPC, EAN, or another external identifier. Sellers may not match their item to a detail page with a different ISBN, UPC, EAN, or another external identifier.

  • Exception: Club editions of audio CDs and rental editions of DVD or Blu-ray discs should be listed against the detail page for the standard edition of the CD, DVD, or Blu-ray, even if the UPCs of the two editions are different if the following criteria are met:
    • The club or rental edition is in Used condition;
    • The content on both editions is identical; and
    • A page with the UPC for the club or rental edition does not already exist in our catalog. Use the listing comments to indicate that the product is a club edition. The format of the products (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) must be identical.
    • Use the listing comments to indicate that the product is a club or rental edition.

Duplicate product detail pages: Creating a product detail page for a product already in the Amazon catalog is prohibited.

Separate listings: Sellers may not create separate listings for identical copies of the same product.”

Don’t list or match against pre-orderable media products.

Pre-sells of BMVD Products: Sellers should not list or match against Books, Music, Video, or DVD products that Amazon designates as pre-orderable. BMVD Products offered through Amazon must ship within 2 business days of the date the order confirmation is made available to you.

Learn how to sell books on Amazon the right way. Check out this free guide: How to Sell Books on Amazon

 

Part 4: Additional Guidelines for Service Providers

Don’t upsell additional products during the service.

“Upselling: The service provider must perform the service as outlined in the scope of work on the service detail page on the date the service was purchased. The service provider may not solicit additional products, parts, or service orders before, during, or after the service call.

If the buyer requests services, parts, or products outside of the defined scope of work, then the service provider may fulfill that request and charge the buyer directly.”

Don’t send unapproved technicians in your stead.

“Unapproved technicians: For in-home services, if you send a non-approved technician to fulfill a service order, your selling privileges may be removed.”

 

Stay updated

And that’s it. Of course, this agreement is always subject to change, so keep posted for updates. The basic rule of thumb should be “if it seems like a bad idea, it’s probably a bad idea.” If you’re not sure, make sure to double-check Amazon’s help pages within Seller Central. 

Do you have any questions or comments? Leave them in the comments below!

 

 

18 comments on “Amazon Terms of Service: Prohibited Seller Activities Explained

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  2. Hello!
    What about sellers that use Amazon to fulfill their orders (FBA) in regards to customer information? I have a seller asking me for my address & phone number – which I replied I didn’t feel comfortable sharing. This seller is offering a partial refund because one of the pieces was damaged – how can they do a refund if they don’t have my information? I feel like they are offering something they cannot fulfill. By their messages, it appears English is not their first language & they stated they couldn’t replace the item because it would take a long time coming from China.
    Included with the item I purchased was a business card saying if I email them with a screen shot of the review, order #, and share the product on Facebook, I’d get a $5 Amazon Gift Card. Granted, it does NOT say I have to leave a positive review but it appears according with the rules you posted, they shouldn’t be doing this (offering compensation).
    I’m waiting to hear what they after I did not provide my information.
    Thank you!

    1. Hi Patty,

      Generally, refunds should be processed through Amazon directly and the customer shouldn’t contact you unless you are an FBM seller.

      Technically, the seller who sent that card is breaking Amazon’s Terms of Service since they’re incentivizing you for the review, good or othrwise.

  3. Hi Hello
    I opened an account at Amazon, and they opened the bill to me and a quarter of an hour later they suspended it. After they charged me $ 40, I gave them a notarized certificate for the passport, and they wanted a permit for electricity or municipal taxes. At this stage I did not understand what they wanted, He told me that I would close the account and then open a new account in an orderly manner, but then they told me that they no longer answered my emails, and they really did not answer me anymore, and that’s what I did, so I opened a new account and submitted everything in an orderly manner. Here they opened my account. They charged me $ 40 and after fifteen minutes they suspended my account because they saw that this account is connected to the previous account, which is not I do not want to sell Amazon, and here they wrote to me, we do not answer your emails. Question 1 – Is there anything to do and if I bring them the documents they wanted then they will open the account to me or they have already marked me and will not let me sell more in Amazon. Question 2- Now I also understand that I have 2 accounts in this issue and can I arrange it. Question 3 – In case they do not open the account to me, are they returning the money of the subscription fee or not?
         Question 4 – Who can I contact to help me with this, Amazon does not have phone service to sellers and I can not get them? Question 5 – Is there anything external that can help me with this?
    Thank you very much I turn to you because you are the best in this field Thank you very much Jacob

  4. Hi Dave,
    Thanks for the great info. I have a question regarding seperate seller central accounts. I’m just getting started with fba. I’m an American citizen who resides in Australia. I opened an Amazon seller account a few years ago. I would like to start selling via fba in the US and in Australia. Would I also have to open a second account in Australia now that Amazon has arrived? Just trying to avoid and confusion as far as banking etc. I was told by a friend that I would also need to open a seller central account for Amazon.com.au as well. I just want to do the right thing to avoid being banned. Any help is greatly appreciated.

    1. Hey Art,

      Good question. Yes, you’d probably need a separate account unless Amazon’s AU has integrated directly with America (which looking at my SC it doesn’t seem like it has yet).

      You might contact seller support to see what’s up.

  5. Hi thanks for the great summary.

    Question: the JumpSend webinar Greg and Adam did around May 14 included the email sent to buyers of the Sleeping Bag.

    It included this phrase: . . . IF you are HAPPY with your purchase, I’d really appreciate it if you could…… [etc. leave a review].

    But above in this post you quote Amazon’s TOS:
    ” . . . ou may not ask for positive reviews, ask for reviews only from buyers who had a positive experience, . . . .”

    So, my question is, how does that square? I am okay with pushing boundaries, but I just want to know if you have had any pushback from AZ on that, or if you accidentally did that, or are not worried about the consequences . . . etc.?

    Thanks,
    Donald

    1. Donald,

      Good question. Knowing what works and what doesn’t with Amazon TOS, unfortunately, varies day to day and seller support rep to seller support rep. I can say that the worst I’ve ever seen happen to sellers is a review get deleted. Typically, Amazon shuts down the actual reviewers a lot faster than their sellers.

      Personally, I word my emails with “if there’s any reason you aren’t satisfied with this product and wouldn’t give it a perfect 5 star review, please contact me so I can help” etc. From there, I offer the link

  6. Really helpful stuff Dave. A couple of clarifying questions:
    1. As an FBA seller, lets say I log into my account in the middle of the day, and change my price from $10 to $11 in the middle of the day, I do not know if orders have just been placed, or if they have been placed in the cart. Is changing the price here the same as raising after the transaction is complete ?
    2. If someone leaves positive seller feedback is it ok to say, “Thank you so much for the seller feedback. If you have any feedback on the product, please leave a product review as well”, along with some directions to do so ? For some reason, I get a lot of people who take the trouble to leave me a seller review, and not a product review.

    Thanks
    YP

    1. YP,

      1) I believe whenever you change your price and people have your product in their cart, Amazon will auto-remove the item from your cart. However, it isn’t the same as raising it after complete. I believe that’s mostly for FBM sellers trying to be janky after a deal.
      2) I believe that’s okay, so long as it’s for everyone and you’re not obviously going after those that you know had a good experience. Interestingly, Amazon penalizes reviewers more than sellers when it comes to fake/fraudulent reviews.

      As far as product reviews vs seller reviews, I honestly think that most of Amazon’s customers don’t know the difference!

  7. Hi Guys,
    I’m just getting started and think I found a good product but I am finding that there are SO MANY products that are listed in my category that shouldn’t be that it makes my product go WAY down to page 32! There were a bunch of problems with some of the listings I saw – like the photo had a lot more in it than what was actually being sold, and items came up in the search that didn’t seem to match the search criteria I put in – so I am wondering if those products were listed in more than one category…? I called Seller Support and they said to report violations through the website. They didn’t seem to have an internal system set up to monitor that unless there was a complaint. If there weren’t all these problems, I would be much higher up in the pecking order. I reported some of these things through the link on their detail page to Amazon but doesn’t Amazon monitor what is posted? Is that our job to police others? I can’t go through 100,000 detail pages. I spent three hours on it this morning and didn’t even scrap the surface. Thanks for any suggestions you have!

    1. Sandra,

      If there are clear listing violations, yes, you can report those to Amazon. Our general recommendation would be to use PPC and promotions to make sure your product is relevant in the eyes of Amazon’s search algorithm. You might also try using AMS to advertise your listing on the pages of your competitors.

  8. Thank you for the doing all the dirty work in order to provide us with a succinct and concise summary. Much appreciated !!

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