Amazon Account Suspensions – Could A No Win, No Fee Model Work?

Richard Morgan
March 2, 2018

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Will Tjernlund joins us to talk about Amazon account suspensions and the inner workings of companies that help out.

The concept of Amazon account suspensions is semi-foreign to Will, he manages lots of accounts and never gets suspensions and hasn’t heard of any of his group.

But Will when he goes to conferences there’s lots of people getting suspended all over.

Getting unsuspended is straight forward?

Getting unsuspended seems straight forward says Will
Explain the problem that you broke
Explain how you have rectified it and solved that problem
Then say that it will never happen again and be persistent
Change your wording to fit theirs and replay it back to them
Should be something you can manage yourself really
Some suspension experts charge £3k or some down to £500
There are levels – if you’re a seller losing $20k / day then you may pay that $2k to get it fixed to stop your meltdown
Because you’re scared then the value of the knowledge in someone’s head and a one-pager to get this suspension problem fixed is worth it (but is it?)
You will spend $2-3k to get someone to write you a letter but with no guarantees
Is there a more cost-effective model for people that maybe don’t have huge revenues and monies
Danny probably hears more stories about people that didn’t get re-instated than those that did

Have a go?

Always try and do it yourself first
Would be helpful if suspension experts would breakdown the types of Amazon account suspensions (brand incorrect, co-mingled suspension, etc) and their success rates so you can see which experts specialise in what
More transparency would be really helpful to Sellers so you know who to go with for which problem

Money Back model

A different model Dan’s UK expert uses
Takes him 30 minutes to write an Amazon account suspensions appeal letter and he will give the £500 charge back if the Seller doesn’t get a successful appeal
Could we have a cost for writing the letter only?
Is it possible to do a No win-No Fee model
Does it give more weight if you once worked inside Amazon

Conversion Rates for experts

How about having a conversion rate across the experts
One guy charges $50 and win-rate is 30% and another expert is $3k but 99% success rate you can see what you’re paying for

Non-Transparent Market

It’s a totally non-transparent market
Buyers don’t know the success rate
Don’t know the likelihood of the expert being able to solve the case
The mis-information and fear can have a detrimental impact on your business
Unfortunate smaller Sellers have to spend out $2k for a sheet of paper and a couple of hours of elbow grease on email and no guarantee of anything in success
What if it was a percentage of lost-sales that you paid for the service?
What does Amazon think of the 3rd Market where people are helping others to get unsuspended
Lots of people that get suspended are of good heart and were not malicious intent when they got suspended

DIY appeals

Some suspension agencies sell packages to help you do you own appeals
From a business point of view you can see it being quite lucrative on the fear factor for the suspension expert
There’s no level of responsibility where there’s no guarantee and you’re paid up front
Danny has seen people that have spent $7k and got nowhere

The Co-op model

What if you banded together with 9 of your buddies and formed a co-op
everyone paid into a $100/month co-op to get one of these companies on retainer
Best case scenario is that the Suspension Agency gets it it’s fees
If no-one gets suspended then the expert does well and you’ve for peace of mind
If 5 of you get suspended then the expert company gets a lot of work and earns the fees

What about if you can’t get your account back

You might really mess up and dig yourself into a hole
Unfortunate as the people who need the most information have the least
Usually new people who don’t know enough and can’t communicate with Amazon in the right language
If you’ve been selling for a while and talked to Amazon enough then you’ll be more comfortable and capable of dealing with it yourself
You send an F-bomb to Support out of frustration or emotion and they reject you out of hand
You write a war & peace super long ticket and they reject it out of hand
It’s worth paying the expert to get the suspension lifted as soon as you can