Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account

79 points by hacky_engineer 144 days ago | 75 comments

I sell 3d printed sleeves to attach an Apple Airtag to a Samsung TV remote. But Amazon thinks I am selling a Samsung device and has deactivated me for IP violations. My listings are very clear that this is FOR a Samsung device, and not an actual Samsung device. But Amazon's automated system can't figure it out. I am following their IP guidelines for compatible products (section 6C - https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GZUQ6GBBXQVHQKF2):

You can see one of my listings here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHZVVL1H

Every time I listed a new product for a different TV remote, my item would be flagged, but then I would go in and make a small edit, and that seemed to trigger some sort of review, and everything would be great.

Until last week, out of nowhere, my account has been deactivated.

To reinstate my account, they asked me to submit an authorization letter from the manufacturer or brand owner authorizing me to sell their products. Well, I figured, I am the manufacturer, so I wrote an authorization letter for myself, and even got it notarized for good measure, that I am legally allowed to sell these devices. But to no avail.

I have an option to "Submit new information." But have no new information to submit, and fear if I try submitting anything else, I'll be permanently banned or something.

The funny part is that on most of the products I have listed, I am losing money, just because of the FBA costs and the advertising costs. I lost about $250 last month between two of the variants.

The sad part is that I sell a book, Computer Engineering for Babies, and do most all my sales through my website, but do get a few orders a week through amazon for the book, and am now afraid the Amazon door is closed forever.

ejo4041 144 days ago |

Amazon Seller for 10 years here. I haven't had my account shutdown, but some tips that could help. At the top, your brand is listed as "Generic", this is because you do not have a brand registered. The way to have a brand registered with Amazon is to first get a Trademark for your brand. This will also help you fight against counterfeiters on Amazon that could try to sell their own version under your listing. In that case, they would need a signed letter from your brand. I don't know that it will help in your specific case, but it could give you more credibility with Amazon. It will cost a little money to get the TM, so that's a decision to make if it's worth it or not.

Have you tried just having a single trademarked brand in your title, rather than Airtag and Samsung or changing the wording at all? Something like ... holder for Airtag, compatible with Samsung. How about targeting other popular brands like ... holder for Airtag, compatible with Apple TV?

Here's another brand that has a combination of the above suggestions: https://www.amazon.com/AhaStyle-Protective-Silicone-Compatib... They use "... for ... compatible with", and they also have a registered brand.

throwaway150 144 days ago | |

> I haven't had my account shutdown,

You have been lucky so far, but there is no guarantee that luck will not run out tomorrow. The algorithms making these decisions are not open to review. They are opaque, and there is no way to know when something in your account might be flagged as suspicious.

> but some tips that could help.

I know you are trying to help, so thank you for that. So don't take this personally when I say this. I'm just frustrated with how things have turned out.

It is absurd that we have reached a point where people must rely on unofficial and unverified tips just to possibly avoid losing access to their source of income. It seems incredibly unhealthy for a market this important to be governed in this way.

ejo4041 144 days ago | | |

I don't disagree with most of your comment, although I don't think my tips are questionable, they are well within Amazon's guidelines. I have been through counterfeiter issues on my account before and very familiar with the brand registry process. Changing listing titles also happens on a regular basis to chase trends in search results. My recommendations are pretty much directly from the cited guidelines in sellercentral.

hacky_engineer 144 days ago | |

Thanks! Yeah, I'll go through Brand registry. I'm guessing I need to get my account reinstated first somehow though.

paulcole 144 days ago | | |

There's a bunch of services that charge to help you with the reinstatement process because they know what keywords to use to help you navigate the Amazon system.

I think they're worth reaching out to (I don't have one that I personally recommend as I've been out of that industry for too long). Because if things haven't changed recently then there's no "penalty" for waiting and the mistake most sellers make is rushing to put through a crappy response and they just make things worse.

IChooseY0u 144 days ago |

I think people would be surprised what is on the internal seller forums. There is really like a huge amount of issues that Amazon fails to help with. Literally everything from onboarding to protecting sellers from refund scams.

I suspect big sellers must have dedicated account managers

binarysolo 144 days ago |

> The sad part is that I sell a book, Computer Engineering for Babies

Oh no way, I bought your book (I think via kickstarter?). :)

First off -- Amazon's super bureaucratic so all of their processes require a certain language and esclation path. I'll have to ask my team's support specialist on what she thinks, but my gut is telling me your language needs to be "compatible with Samsung" or "Samsung compatible" instead of "for... Samsung TV remote".

I've been doing Amazon for 13 years and have a team + a few brands I own in the ecosystem -- just some basic tips:

1. Get brand registry (or find a maker buddy and put it under their brand) for listing control. Generic is not the way to go for listing control -- you need brand registry. Then you can edit away under your own brand.

2. You shouldn't be losing any money doing this. If you're doing 3D printer stuff you should expect your cost to be like 5-10%, Amazon takes 40-50% between all fees, ads around 10%, and the rest is labor/margin... and if your numbers aren't there you need to figure out what's wrong.

I have lots more thoughts but I realize this can become an essay haha. Feel free to ping me if you need some help, loved your books. :)

===

Edit: I don't think you're at risk of getting banned, but you might need an escalation to a higher level support (a captive or escalations specialist within Amazon).

Edit 2: I had some extra downtime to look at it, my approach to resolving the issue would be: a. You should first try to clearly indicate you're a product accessory and not a Samsung-branded product; review sellercentral best practices for SKU naming but it's gonna be something along the lines of "compatible with Samsung TV remotes" b. If you get stuck here for too long, I would first remove all reference to Samsung for now from the listing and make it a more generic accessory, acknowledge the brand confusion, reinstate your store, then create a case to add Samsung back into your listing (and be sure to have this case handy if you get future problems so you can reference back and show you're doing this the right way). c. Phone support works a lot better in recent days than email/chat support. But since you're deactivated I'm not sure if you get access to this.

hacky_engineer 144 days ago | |

I would love to hear all your thoughts. Send me an email?

binarysolo 144 days ago | | |

My personal email is rot13’ed when you click on my username :)

This is my company (not selling anything, just wanna help out the creator of a product that brought my family some joy and showing I'm not some rando :) ): http://www.buyawesome.com

rorylaitila 144 days ago |

Don't use other companies brand names in your product titles. Regardless of what other people get away with. Regardless of what is in the Amazon fine print. Don't use trademark logos in your product images. Make your own brand name. Make it "compatible with" in the product description.

hacky_engineer 144 days ago | |

Yeah, this would be safer, but is anyone going to find the product if it's listed as "MyBrand attachment sleeve for location sensor and TV remote control." instead of "Attachment sleeve for Airtag and Samsung Frame Remote Control?" I kind of doubt it..

ejo4041 144 days ago | |

I agree that this would be a much safer route.

neilv 144 days ago |

I don't know how to appeal the deleted account, but regarding not triggering this check again...

Emphasize your own brands and model number, and make the other brands more clearly a description, in the Amazon item title?

  FooCorp TagTeam S (sleeve mount holder to attach Apple AirTag to Samsung TV remote)

(Background on a simple filter: On eBay, it seemed like someone told counterfeit sellers that all they had to do was to copy&paste the string "For" in front of the brand name and model number, and then they could sell counterfeits. And sometimes black out the counterfeited brand name in the photos. So an item title might be of the format "For <brand> <model>", and mean it's definitely a counterfeit or knockoff of "<brand> <model>".)

TheRealRealRevK 143 days ago |

Very familiar: https://www.revk.uk/2026/01/amazon-copyright-issue.html

And yes, more info is pointless, see https://www.revk.uk/2025/11/more-useless-amazon.html

benj111 144 days ago |

If it's anything like eBay, just open another account. I've had 2 eBay accounts randomly closed for no stated or discernable reason. I've just opened new accounts. Now I have separate buyer and seller accounts so at least I have an account with history, if/when my seller account gets locked.

tokyobreakfast 144 days ago |

Sell on Walmart Marketplace instead.

Amazon caters to the ALLCAPS Chinese scam stores. They know how to game the system and have invested a lot of resources into it. Your little home-based business doesn't stand a chance. It's a matter of time before they clone your product and undercut you by half.

WalterBright 144 days ago |

> Every time I listed a new product for a different TV remote, my item would be flagged, but then I would go in and make a small edit, and that seemed to trigger some sort of review, and everything would be great.

They may have a filter for people who exceed a certain number of flags?

rdtsc 144 days ago | |

That’s the first thing that jumped out to me. He was flagged multiple times, tweaked the listing and passed. But it may not be a free pass every time. Eventually multiple flags added up to something - a ban. So may not be Samsung per se as anything special just hitting some flag limit.

nikkwong 144 days ago |

Good luck. Amazon banned my seller account 7 years ago because my wife, who was also an amazon seller, used our shared CC (which has my name on it, although she's an authorized user) to pay her $45/month seller fee. The account had $48,000 in it at the time I was banned, and I was never able to get the money back; after an endless number of hours of pleads with their teams, mails to jeff@amazon, working on it from the inside, etc. etc. Be happy that your financial loss was limited.

edit: I posted about it on HN at the time [1]. Apparently looks like at that time I thought I was delisted for a bad review. To be honest, I still don't know why I was delisted, because at least at that time, Amazon would refuse to tell you why you were delisted. You just had to come up with reasons why you may have been, submit an appeal, and then they would come back to you with "sorry, that's not a sufficient appeal". So then you'd have to come up with another reason why you may have been delisted and try to submit another appeal (which itself was a grueling process, for which you would have to wait days/weeks for a response). It was beyond baffling as to why they would operate in that way; it was as if they were trying their absolute hardest to immiserate sellers in the most draconian and malevolent way possible. It was that bad. It was unbelievable to me at the time, and still today, that they could treat their sellers that badly. Yeah, fuck amazon. Seriously.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19551590

kazinator 144 days ago |

Suppose that an overseas scammer wanted to sell a copy of your product. Would they be begging Amazon to reinstante some closed account? No, they would be using half a dozen accounts to present identical listings.

when in Rome ...

timnetworks 144 days ago |

this is the correct affect. you lose money while they win an imagined IP violation, then someone posts a copy of your item with text that avoids their system and they make money there too.

throwaway150 144 days ago |

*smh*

Every time I hear a story like this (and there's one like every month) I wonder how we ended up here. The internet was meant to be this place where anyone could set up a website, run a business, and reach customers directly. Instead it has turned into a collection of walled gardens, where your existence and livelihood depend on the whims of an opaque algorithm.

Luckily in my country Amazon does not have the level of market control it has in the US and some other places. People still walk or drive to local shops and when they order something for delivery they usually do so from their websites.

But reading many of these HN threads gives the impression that in the US and elsewhere Amazon controls a huge share of the market. If it functions as such a powerful exchange for both merchants and buyers, should there not be regulation to prevent injustices like this?

nazgulsenpai 144 days ago |

Oh wow, I saw your book in a twitter video (and reposted) just yesterday and thought that was the coolest thing! It's a real shame it's not available on Amazon because of this nonsense. Best of luck getting reinstated!

edit: typing is hard