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. 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. 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 might
be withheld or forfeited.
Note: This policy is in addition to, and in no
way limits, your other obligations pursuant to your seller agreement or
otherwise.
General guidelines
The following guidelines apply to sellers of both products and services.
For guidelines specific to products, see the information following this section.
Attempts to divert
transactions or buyers:
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 might include the use of emails, hyperlinks,
URLs, or web addresses within any seller-generated confirmation email messages or
any product/listing description fields.
Unauthorized and
improper business names:
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.
Inappropriate email
communications:
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.
Appropriate treatment of customer phone numbers:
Amazon provides access to
customer phone numbers to professional sellers who fulfill their own orders,
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 and the guidance below to make sure that you are using
customers' phone numbers correctly.
-
Proper treatment of
customer phone numbers:
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Print on labels to comply
with carrier requirements.
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Dispose of any customer
phone number data that you retain after you have processed the
customer's orders.
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Monitor who in your
organization has access to customer phone numbers, protecting this
data is your responsibility.
-
Improper treatment of
customer phone numbers:
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Never contact a customer
using their phone number. To contact a customer about their order,
only use Buyer-Seller Messaging. For
more information, please see our Buyer-Seller Messaging FAQ.
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Never share customer phone
information with an external party.
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Never pass along customer
information of any kind, including phone numbers outside of
Buyer-Seller Messaging.
Direct email addresses:
Buyers and sellers might communicate with one another via
the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service.
Filing Infringement Notices as an Agent or Brand Protection Agency
Amazon understands that many brands may choose to have brand protection agencies
or agents report intellectual property infringement on their behalf, and accepts
submissions from authorized agents. However, Amazon does not permit individuals
with active selling accounts to file infringement notices as an agent of a brand
when the filing of those notices could benefit their own selling account (through
removing competing listings, for example). Any person filing notices as an agent
that benefit their own status as a seller may have their selling account
terminated.
Misuse of the Amazon
selling service:
If you upload excessive amounts of data repeatedly, or use
the service in an excessive or unreasonable way, Amazon might in its sole
discretion restrict or block your access to product feeds or any other function
that is being misused until you stop its misuse.
Misuse of Amazon Case Management or threatening Amazon employees
You can use our Seller Support Services in case of questions or problems with
your Amazon Seller Account and you do have the possibility to rate the quality of
the support our Seller Support Associates provide to help us on continuous
improvement. It's prohibited to abuse this functionality. We measure our employees
on high quality standards in order to be able to provide the best possible
costumer service to you and we also expect a professional way of communication and
a fair rating from our sellers towards our customers and employees
Misuse of ratings,
feedback, or 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
cannot 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 can request feedback from a buyer,
however, you cannot 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 positive or negative feedback about
product and service details and reviewer's experiences. To ensure that
reviews remain helpful, sellers must comply with our Community Guidelines. For example, you cannot
offer compensation for a review, and you cannot review your own products or
your competitor's products. You can ask buyers to write a review in a
neutral manner, but you cannot 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.
Misuse of sales rank:
The best seller rank feature allows buyers to evaluate the popularity of a
product. Any attempt to manipulate sales rank is prohibited. You cannot solicit or
knowingly accept fake or fraudulent orders, including placing orders for your own
products. You cannot provide compensation to buyers for purchasing your products
or provide claim codes to buyers for the purpose of inflating sales rank. In
addition, you cannot make claims regarding a product's best seller rank in the
product detail page information, including the title and description.
Misuse of the Amazon 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 you to make arrangements for a refund, return, or
exchange, as appropriate. Amazon reserves the right to seek reimbursement from you
if we reimburse a buyer under the terms of the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee.
Misuse of Search and Browse:
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 therefore prohibited. Prohibited behaviors include, but are not
limited to:
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Artificially simulating customer
traffic (through Internet bots, paying for clicks on organic search results,
etc.).
-
Providing misleading or
irrelevant catalog information (title, bullet points, description,
variations, keywords, etc.).
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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.
Additional
guidelines for sellers
The following guidelines apply to sellers of products:
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Shipping BMVD Products: Books,
Music, Video, and DVD products offered through Amazon must be shipped within 2
business days from the date the order confirmation is made available to you.
-
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. We monitor seller shipping prices
and suspend ship options with excessive shipping fees that violate our fair
pricing policy. Amazon takes into account current public carrier rates and
reasonable handling charges, as well as buyer perception, when determining whether
a shipping price violates our fair pricing policy.
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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 cannot match their item to a detail page with a different
ISBN, UPC, EAN, or other 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
listed in Used condition;
-
The content on both editions is
identical; and
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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. 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.
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Separate listings: Sellers
cannot create separate listings for identical copies of the same product.
-
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 be
shipped within 2 business days from the date the order confirmation is made available
to you.
Additional
guidelines for service providers
The following guidelines apply to service providers:
-
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 might 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 might fulfill that request and
charge the buyer directly.
-
Unapproved technicians: For
in-house services, if you send a non-approved technician to fulfill a service
order, your selling privileges can be removed.