With 14 years of experience under his belt in evaluating seller account performance and enforcing Amazon’s policies, Chris has mastered the ins and outs of Amazon from the reasons why sellers get suspended to how to successfully appeal a reinstatement and how you should protect your brand’s digital assets while on the platform. Listen to this episode with Chris and Andrew as they dive into the technical aspects of Amazon listings.
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Andrew Maff and Chris McCabe
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Chris McCabe
Former Amazonian Chris McCabe helps sellers communicate with Amazon to protect (and save) their businesses. After working for Amazon for many years evaluating seller account performance and enforcing Amazon’s policies, Chris launched ecommerceChris. He teaches sellers how to think like Amazon, and helps them protect their accounts, appeal listing restrictions and suspensions, report abuse, and escalate seller issues.
Transcript:
00:02
Parading as though enforcement only matters if you're caught doing something is kind of a high-risk way of operating. Don't make decisions based on what you see. Other people do make decisions based on proper interpretation.
00:15
Hey everyone, this is Nezar Akeel from Max Pro. Hi, I'm Linda, and I'm Paul, and we're Love and Pebble. Hi this is Lopa Van Der Mersch from RASA. You're listening to, and you're listening, and you are listening
00:27
Maff. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host, Andrew Maff. And, of course, super excited for today's show. I'm joined by the amazing and super famous Chris McCabe of Ecommerce Chris, Chris, how are you doing right for a good
00:27
to The E-Comm Show. Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts. They share their secrets about how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew
01:08
show. And also, I'm really good-looking. Don't forget that
01:11
you are very attractive.
01:13
Doing great. Thanks for having me.
01:15
Yeah, no problem. So you've been in the industry for a very long time. But I still would like to pretend that no one knows who you are. So why don't you give everyone a little bit of your little bit of insight into your background, where you've been, where you're at, where you're going, and we'll kind of kick it off from there?
01:30
Sure. Short version, if you haven't been irritated by my voice in the past on podcaster. And in person at a conference, X, Amazon X solid performance as it's known. I've been in the account reinstatement and listing ticked down slash reinstatement appeal space for seven years. I worked at Amazon for six before that, so kind of on and off Amazon, for the last 14 years or so, worked there in Seattle, moved back to the Boston area, which is where I'm from, I would say roughly a year after leaving Amazon, maybe several months after leaving, living in New York. But consulting was a natural fit because I'm consulting on all the issues I used to deal with when I worked for Amazon. So evaluating Seller Account performance, third party marketplace expertise. We don't do vendor first parties so much. We deal with policy violations and performance notifications that sellers can't figure out how to counter or assess. We do policy work. And then we do performance evaluation as well. So it's a one-to-one relationship with my job when I worked at Amazon.
02:42
Beautiful. So ecommerce, Chris, obviously your business, is that more of a consultancy? Or do you go and execute some of the suggestions or requirements that you tell the sellers?
02:57
Well, I'm it's a consultancy, we're not full account management, full-service agency. And we kind of stick to where our areas of expertise reside, which is appeals strategy. I mean, we do conduct an appealing strategy, but we also help write appeals for sellers. We're not just coaching them through doing it themselves. I do have one-hour consults for people that really want to do it themselves and think they've got the right strategy for it. That's fine. The right perspective. The rest of it is where we're hired out on project work for reinstatement appeals until the accounts are reinstated. Amazon loves to play games in terms of, well, we didn't read it, we didn't like it. Maybe they read it; maybe they didn't. They're very, very vague in their communication. It's deliberate, I would say. But most sellers that haven't been through that process before, even many that have, are reluctant to go through it again. Understand that Amazon's got a language all of its own. It's not just jargon and terminology. It's also just strategy, which is kind of my way or the highway to Amazon. And when they reject appeals, they rarely give you a clear indication of why. And they give even less guidance on what needs to change or be done next. I mean, they kind of do with account health teams, but a lot of that sort of, you know, smoke screen and window dressing. It's not competent. High-level help is as numerous salary is a great degree because they tell us this every day.
04:29
So yeah, you're you know, I've, I've, I don't know if I've worked with you, but I've definitely known you in the industry for six, seven years at this point from way back when, and you were always you've always been like the guy to know, because especially when it comes to like account reinstatements and you're dealing with appeals and all that kind of stuff, right? No one has that skill set, and they don't even know that they need that skill set until it's too late, and then they come to you in a Haneke. And so what do you see are some of the common things sellers do? Do? You know, if they're going to appeal, like a listing getting taken down? Or maybe the entire account got suspended? Or what are the common mistakes that they make?
05:14
poorly written appeals? misunderstanding what kind of appeal is required? So sometimes, the nature of their appeal or response is way off from what was asked or expected. Yeah, that's one issue is just misinterpretation of what you know what you're being asked for. Secondly, I guess I'll give you the top three. Secondly would simply be people that don't like writing or don't feel like doing it and just cast about on the forums or Facebook groups and ask around for templates. And then they just try to copy and paste their way to success and happiness. That pretty much never works. I ever so often hear from a seller who tells me that, like, I copied and pasted my buddies or my friend's appeal, and it worked. And it was great. Those are like maybe 234 percent of the time they're successful. I mean, if you're happy with those odds, then great. It's kind of the same as people who write escalations to Jeff at Amazon, the old escalation path from years ago, that gets read by just some run-of-mill staff, you know, employee at Amazon. We used to have to be certified to answer the Jeff emails. And it was only a small tight crew of us were handling those now. Everyone writes to Jeff, and people send everything under the sun. Common mistake. I mean, I know searching around you get a right to Jeff right to Jeff. It's very outdated, antiquated advice. So people are still doing that. Unfortunately, and I would say the rest of the complaints or mistakes we see people making is just not being prepared, you know, no supply chain documentation, unacceptable. Irrelevant supplier info or supply chain documentation, Amazon asks you for a letter of authorization. And you just throw some retail receipt at them or, you know, your supplier doesn't even have a website. I mean, that's grounds for an automatic denial if your supplier doesn't have a website, so for us, that's kind of easy to grasp information, but many sellers don't even know that. So I guess I would say the third most common is just not being aware, not being tuned in or hooked into the community enough, or you're reading the wrong blogs and listening to the wrong people. There's it's not just me. I mean, there are a lot of services pretending to be experts at reinstatement appeals. The problem is, if you want to pretend to be an expert, you also have to produce a lot of content, videos, and articles that make you look like you're an expert and make it sound like you know what you're talking about. And I don't really read or listen to that stuff anymore. But I occasionally get links to these things. And I'll, I'll see that it's just they're just regurgitating content, they found someplace else. Or it's very vague and unclear, and they're just faking it. So it's up to the seller. I mean, you can't. You can't blame every lukewarm service out there for trying to create a side hustle that's always going to exist. You have to kind of blame yourself for not hiring well and vetting services properly. You know, some people out there that are good at this, that didn't work in Amazon. But obviously, if you can find people that worked on the seller performance teams, that's a good place to start.
08:18
Yeah. So there's not there are not very many of you out there. And if there are not many of them are often the service. So that's the clear differentiators that you've been there. You know, it, they come? Do they come in? Oh, yeah. Years ago, you know, the appeal process, all that stuff was a nightmare. You know, Amazon would flag you for anything under the sun. Now, I think they've gotten a little bit better with it. And I'm not hearing as many, just random suspensions because they hit the wrong button or something like that. But how have you kind of see things evolve from, you know, where they were several years ago to kind of where they are now with that whole process?
08:59
So it's a mixture of better and worse. I think the messaging is worse. It's definitely murkier. We're seeing a huge spike in messages that have empty brackets, or it'll say Dear, and it's like, not even you. It's another seller's name. So we're seeing a huge increase in right-click errors or non-modified messages, which just make the appeals process so much harder. It's embarrassing the Amazon it's a sign of no auditing, no quality assurance, and it's making the competency of the teams called into question. But the better part, as you mentioned, is Account Health reps reach out to you before you're suspended more often now than they did, let's say four years ago. So at least you have a hint that it's coming. It's not quite as a lightning strike as it used to be. That being said, there are still plenty of sellers to get suspended out of nowhere that haven't gone away. It's just less likely. It's just less often that that happens. But we found it sort of interesting psychology to selling we found it sellers still complain like this has been me and done. Tell me why, you know, we still get that as much as we used to. Often we look at the messaging, and we just tell them well, it says right here. Why? But everyone's kind of knee-jerk reaction is in their brain. They're thinking like, they didn't tell me, or I had no warning of this. And then if we're like working with them, and we get into, what kind of warnings did you get, or notifications Did you receive? Well, we did get something a month ago, like you get more detailed to the story. And it turns out there were plenty of breadcrumbs. It's just that they didn't see it. Or they outsource the management of their account to some agency that didn't take it seriously. Or they did read it. And they didn't know what to do with it. And so they just stuck where they were. And we're like, well, we'll figure it out another day. Because right now, we don't know what to do about it.
10:45
So yeah, a lot of the services and consulting obviously, that you offer is relative, I guess I would say offensive, right? Something happens; you have to make a play, and you have to do something to try to get it resolved. Do you do anything or provide any guidance on more of a defensive side of things to help sellers on, like, put things into place that will keep them from getting suspended or listing suppressed?
11:10
Yeah, a lot of people. And I can give you a couple of examples, let people commit listing violations just because they either don't know or don't understand listing policies. Sometimes they have us look over, you know, the random selection of listings, we find some violations, pointing those out, getting them to correct them, telling them why they have to correct them. The best example would be asin variations, anyone who's Miss creating or improperly creating synth variation groups or themes. The very common cause of an account suspension or a warning for listing violations. So if you can catch that before you even get the warning, obviously, you don't have a strike against your record for breaking policy. Then there's just sourcing, or, as I mentioned, a lack of sufficient supply chain documentation, a lack of compliance documentation, and testing from ISO-certified labs. It depends on what kinds of products you have, of course, but a lot of people just aren't prepared to show who their supplier is or why they're an established reliable manufacturer or supplier of those kinds of products. There's just a dearth of information about the supplier themselves. Maybe they do have a website, but it doesn't really say anything; it's just a placeholder. Or maybe you do have supply chain documentation like invoices, but they don't really look professional or they're not complete. And I think sellers just, you know, we can point these flaws out before it becomes a huge headache. Because sellers don't really understand that it can't just be, hey, we got an invoice. Well, is it an acceptable invoice that will pass Amazon's strict aggressive verification process? Because don't take that for granted. I think sellers at this point in history know not to take their eyes off of amazon for too long, the enforcement teams like you kind of know the threats looming. But at this point, you shouldn't be taking those types of teams for granted. Because it's cyclical, right? Every so often, there's a trend or a fad, like, Hey, we're going to investigate this, or we're going to ask people about that, or we're going to demand this kind of documentation, or we're going to crack down on this metric. Like keep in mind that these things don't just go away forever; they cycle back around.
13:12
Yeah, you know, obviously, you know, we do a lot of listing stuff here, more on the marketing side. And, you know, we'll come across relatively similar situations where there's something we kind of want to say, but we know that we probably shouldn't be based on Amazon's top and certain rules they have in place, but then we always have this issue where, you know, we might have someone turn around and be like, Yeah, but my competitors saying this, and I'm gonna bet that you get that. Oh, yeah. So what's, what is your response? You know, basically, that situation? You know, you're just because someone's doing it doesn't mean they're right,
13:49
Amazon? Well, first of all, if you show examples of, hey, where are you busting me? What about all these guys? That two wrongs don't make a right to Amazon. Amazon would say, okay, so you're reporting them. So, in addition to you, we should take them down to what would be the reaction, not. Oh, that we're letting them do it. So you can do it too. And for operating as though enforcement only matters if you're caught. Doing something is kind of a high-risk way of operating. Don't make decisions based on what you see other people doing. Make decisions based on the proper interpretation of the policy. Whether it's fair, whether you want to debate why other people get away with it and you don't. Amazon never really promises the public that they'll consistently enforce. They might promise it, but they don't do it. And that might not ever change. So except in the beginning, that enforcement will be inconsistent. Things will be missed. The internal policy team, infrastructure, and operation will be haphazard and disorganized. And it's been that way because teams are so siloed at Amazon. They're famous for that. I mean Amazon teams aren't known for communicating well. Oh, with each other internally, so they probably won't be able to communicate with sellers or with any external party any better than they can communicate with each other. Lots of things are left to fester and not fixed. Lots of passing the buck, lots of transferring things around. I remember even when I was working there, sometimes things would be transferred in a loop back to the original person. Because nobody wants to take responsibility for that sort of stuff. If they can find an excuse to hand it off, they'll do it. So don't make any decisions based on what you see live on the site. What you see live on the site this minute might be gone in 10 minutes. It might not have been flagged yet. Or it could be gone tomorrow, right? I mean, when sellers get suspended, all their listings come down, and you might have a competitor on a particular page. You see them today. They're gone tomorrow; it's the same thing with a listing that breaks policy. You might be just because you're looking at it live right now doesn't mean it belongs there. And it doesn't mean it'll be there in five hours.
15:57
So it's a very good point. Yep. You've obviously been doing this for very, very long to last you were plus you were in you were internal at Amazon, like obviously, you are clearly the guy to go to from this. And at the same time, I'd have that kind of a double-edged sword of you obviously don't really want Amazon to fix too many of these problems because that's obviously where you get to come in. But do you see it at any point in the near future, getting any easier for sellers to actually be able to submit tickets and get, you know, some kind of information back that's a little bit more detailed around what the issues are instead of these templated emails that they're getting?
16:39
Yeah, and by the way, I mean, we do hope that someday there will be no need for people like us; we're expected to be extinct at some point. Either because sellers up their game to the point where they don't need this kind of help. Or Amazon finally cleans up their act, or you meet somewhere in the middle where we're needed for some things but not others. But I welcome that. Because we've had to offer more and more services, not fewer services, over time because there are more things going wrong as the marketplace scales up. And as more sellers join and more people create brands in the future. All I can say is we can only control our side, the non-Amazon side. And on our side, we know that sellers can greatly improve how they pursue different types of listings, different kinds of products, and how they respond to warnings. Hopefully, Amazon eventually allocates more resources to some of these areas, but the messaging is getting muddier response times are all over the place. I mean, it's I'm not that hopeful that Amazon can clean up its act. I mean, sometimes, with one particular problem, they will fix it. I mean, like a plus, content loopholes used to be gigantic, and those have diminished. Vendor central-based acent contribution abuse used to be a horrible thing. I mean, that's improved a little bit over the years. But it's the same as anything else, like one door closes, another one opens up; we're never seeing the point where every problem is being worked on concurrently at the same time, with the same amount of progress month in and month out so that we can project into 23 the Year 2024 and say, You know what, in 18 months, I think they're gonna have six out of these eight major brand pain points fixed based on today's progress. I hope I can say that in a couple of years. I don't see it unfolding that way. Because when it comes to ecommerce marketplaces, Amazon's a monopoly. I don't care what they say in public statements about antitrust. They do what they want for a reason they run the marketplace. They want the way they want for a reason. It's because they're not feeling too much pressure from government regulatory bodies, the seller community from the media. They feel a little bit, but it's trendy, and it's cyclical, right? Yeah. It's not constant. I mean, if they felt constant pressure from the FTC or this or that, you know, Senate subcommittee, or from sellers or do they, let's just say felt like they were at risk of a class action lawsuit. There's no way that operates the way they do today. I mean, they clearly just don't feel that pressure.
19:18
Do you see them getting more lenient as time goes on or more strict?
19:24
I would like to see them do some sort of amnesty program, which I equate with leniency in terms of, you know, you did one thing wrong three years ago, or two years ago, we banned you, we never let you back on we ignored your appeals. We didn't professionally review your appeals. We're willing to give you another shot. It was your first-time account suspension. And you just didn't appeal properly. So, in theory, you're available to appeal again. You just didn't. You got tired of it. You got frustrated. Here's the door open to crack. I mean, not for counterfeiters, not for Blackhat sellers. Not for fraudsters are users, those people should be gone after one offense, and they should go, you know, trouble some other platforms, some other business. But I think in terms of leniency, Amazon should understand that a lot of sellers have been reinstated that shouldn't have been because they were up to no good, and they're probably back doing no good. And at the same, the other side of that coin is a lot of legit sellers who just made some mistakes that were just poor performers or didn't understand policies the right way, the first time deserve a second chance. You know, that's where I kind of wanted to come up with this amnesty concept a couple of years ago. I don't know if that's gonna happen. I think Amazon's trying to be more strict than then lenient because it makes them look better for PR purposes, to act like, Hey, we're like maintaining, you know, protect buyer experience, we're maintaining a strict environment for selling because we only want the best sellers. Easy to say, not as easy to accomplish. Yeah.
21:02
As of the airing of this, which I believe will probably be in August. Once this goes out. We're, you know, essentially already halfway through q3, give or take. Yep. So we're getting into the prime time of, you know, Amazon is like it's no matter what you sell, it could be very relevant in q4, it could be not relevant at all, everyone's still seen some kind of an expanded exposure or sales or something along those lines. How do you kind of coach these sellers to prepare ahead of time so that they don't end up with some kind of mistake and q4 and get screwed this season?
21:39
I mean, especially IP, abusive or fake IP complaints are rampant right now. Lock down all your IP registry trademarks, and don't sell your brand on Amazon. And so you've got brand registry, and you've got your trademark, all set up. Registered copyrights, make sure that your images and you're written text are copyrighted so that somebody else can't steal your copyrighted your would be copyrighted images or info and claim it to the IRS and that you're violating their copyright. That's a very, very common problem right now. We keep talking to brands that haven't really researched copyrights or they're selling their product before entering it into the brand registry. Patents and designs are another heavily trafficked abuse path right now. So I'm not an attorney; I can't give legal advice. I would say, if you run a reference for me for an IP attorney, I can give you one, but hire a top-flight IP attorney, whether you get them from us or someone else. And make sure they know their stuff. And make sure they lock all that down for you so that anyone creates a fake infringement complaint and send it to Amazon. You can knock it down pretty quickly and get your listing reinstated fast because we've seen so many horror stories during Prime Day during q4 during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and even before where people just aren't prepared. They're not prepared to be attacked. They're not prepared for wild inaccurate listing removals by Amazon itself. But really just the anti competitive abuse. I mean, this is a common problem. It should be understood by every brand that sells on Amazon or really anywhere online now. And I don't really think there's an excuse anymore for being ignorant of those things. Because there's just too much money and greed at stake on Amazon. You can't. You can't afford to be prepared. I'm not saying sit down right now and write an appeal to have it ready in advance for fake copyright or a fake counterfeit complaint. But it's a good idea to have it outlined or, you know, rough drafted just before the peak season starts in q4, especially counterfeit. I mean, if you can believe it. We work with brands that are being taken down, there are the listings are suspended for counterfeit complaints as if they're faking their own brand. That's ridiculous. You would think this is one set of once I've every three months that we hear about this; I'd say it happens once a week or last
24:03
five days. Really. It's amazing. Typically, they've tried to
24:07
they just wouldn't hire us. They're like, What do you mean, We're faking? They tried to appeal it themselves. This is a mistake. Please reinstate our listing gets rejected. We need more information. A lot of them are being asked for a letter of authorization from their supplier. So this is their manufacturer, and they're being asked to provide an LOA. So it means nobody in Amazon is reading it. They don't understand the nature of it. Amazon itself. I know, I can guess logically is acutely aware that they are wrongfully suspending 1000s of listings every day every week for fake inauthentic complaints about branded products or fake counterfeit reports. I mean, we look at the voice of the customer just the way you should as a brand. We look at return reasons, just the way any brand owner should. And a lot of these complaints aren't, you know, like, hey, the quality wasn't the same as last time like as if you might have sold a bad batch. I mean, that might not be irrelevant, but at least you understand where it comes from. Or if it was, like, damaged in transit, hey, this isn't totally new. The last one I bought was new, and it was damaged in transit. Well, you can kind of understand why the buyer said that. We don't see that we see fake. It's just trigger words, right? Yeah. This is counterfeit. This is fake. This as on inauthentic. Nothing else in the complaint, obvious attack from a competitor or from whoever saying that your own brand, you're faking your own brand. So Amazon itself should look at that and say, This is why are these guys constantly within a week, right? They know it's like a data cluster. So if you're being attacked by a competitor, they're gonna hit you within a series of days. They're going to try to group it together, right? Not spread it out over months because it loses all meaning if they do that. Most black hats know how to attack you. So but Amazon should know like, so he said, zero counterfeit complaints at nine months. And now we got five and five days. So I mean, Amazon itself should know not to suspend your listing over something like that. That's where the idiocy of the lack of quality assurance really comes home. Yeah. I know, it's kind of dark, dark clouds. And still, Yeah,
26:12
exactly. It's like, Yeah, this is great. No, I
26:16
mean, if you just consider this, like fact of life stuff, you know, just the reality. We encourage people not to put their heads in the sand and to be realistic. And I know it sounds doom and gloom. But it really isn't. If you just consider this a fact of life, the way Amazon currently manages the platform. Expect if you're successful at all, expect to get some eyeballs on your brand and on your listings, and expect to get some observed complaints. And except to get expect to get some fake IP complaints. But just know that if you do it properly, you can reinstate those pretty quickly. Yeah. Very good point. Yeah. Silver Linings are always there. Yeah.
26:57
Chris, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being on the show. I don't want to take up too much of your time. You're very busy.
27:03
If anyone has any questions about ecommerce, chris.com, we've got a contact form there, or you can email support at ecommerce, Chris, but anything we talked about today, or any brand disruptions or attacks in q4, especially when you need to react to that stuff quickly. Just let us know. We'll take a look.
27:19
And your socials all at ecommerce Christie. Right. So you want to talk the other day?
27:25
Yeah, I mean, the Facebook group is Amazon Seller first class. But we've got the Tick Tock and the Tick Tock channel and we've got Instagram and, you know, a whole nine. I don't know. Yeah, we're, I mean, I've actually I'm involved in meetups, for people in the northeast, if you're on the East Coast, or in the northeast, we have a meet-up in New York and in Boston now. So we're kind of alternating those. It's exciting. Just to get back into that. I mean, we already did the seller velocity conference couple of months ago, but getting into the in-person events has got us excited. After two to two months, two years, I should say, of not really doing anything except for prospering show. Yeah. You know and just go into Vegas over and over, which you know, Vegas is fine. But yeah, we like that. We're getting into the regular flow of things with events again. So
28:13
yeah, I like that you're doing them elsewhere because of Helium, Helium 10s. Got there is now that's in September, they're doing the was sell, sell selling scale. Sound scale. It looks like it's gonna be great. But I'm like, back in Vegas again. Great. Here we go.
28:28
Yeah, so far for our conference for seller velocity. We've done it in a different city each year. So we're coming up on our fifth one. And we've alternated east coast, west coast. So I don't know if I can do that forever. But we'll see. No, I mean, we're a long way away from doing that in 2023. But the most recent one was in Bend, Oregon, Central Oregon. So we liked mixing it up a little bit and having networking activities outside. So we had like a snowshoeing event that was a networking event, just kind of combined. Nice
28:59
way to change it up.
29:00
That was awesome. Yeah, and drinking some wine, drinking some whiskey and eating some, you know, snacks out in the snow while talking about brand issues, appeal stuff. You know, it was snowing off and on but not so so much so that you were just like, covered in your coat or your hood, you can still have conversations and you can still warm up by a fire. So probably going to do more stuff like that, those types of conferences where there are activities, in the mountains on the water, whatever. And you have a lot of opportunities to discuss things with experts and listen to panels and stuff. It just might be outside. That's all
29:37
beautiful. Well, we'll keep an eye out for that. But Chris, obviously thank you so much for being on the show and everyone who tuned in. Thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate review and subscribe on whichever podcast platform you want, YouTube, or just head over to ecommshow.com But as usual, we will see you all next time. Thanks and have a good one.
29:54
Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by blue tusker, a full-service digital marketing company specifically for E-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to BlueTuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.