Prohibited seller activities and actions

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.

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:
  • Print on labels to comply with carrier requirements.
  • Dispose of any customer phone number data that you retain after you have processed the customer's 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. For more information, please see our Buyer-Seller Messaging FAQ.
  • 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.

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:

• 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.).
• 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:

• 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.
• 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
    • 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.
• 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.