A seller’s performance is reviewed continuously by online marketplaces to ensure enhanced customer experience. Getting account suspended, or worse, getting blacklisted can be an e-tailer’s worst nightmare.
Ways for Preventing an Account Suspension
Here are some important ways for preventing your account being suspended:
- Must adhere to marketplace selling guidelines Â
- Avoid selling restricted products and/or prohibited content
- Don’t sell counterfeit products
- Maintain a low percentage of negative customer feedback.
- Work proactively to provide customer support and resolve order related issue
- Avoid repeated violation of seller performance policy
These rules need 100% compliance as these marketplaces reserve the right to suspend your account.
In addition to these rules, you need to maintain performance metrics too.
How to improve Performance–
1)Seller Performance Targets – All sellers should be working toward achieving a level of customer service that meets the following performance targets:
 In case of Amazon-
- Order defect rate < 1%
- Pre-fulfilment cancel rate < 2.5%
- Late shipment rate (also known as Late Dispatch Rate) < 4%
In case of Flipkart-
- Seller Cancellations Rate <0.5%
- RTD Breach Rate <0.75%
- Reattempts Rate < 3.0%
As such you fail to meet these targets may not necessarily put your Seller Account in negative standing, but failure to improve these metrics may result in the removal of your selling privileges.
2) As the customer is a king, therefore, provide timely and helpful cu
stomer service.
3) Make sure to pack your products carefully to avoid any kind of damage during shipment which can promote negative customer reviews.
4) Always ship your orders on time. If at all there is any unavoidable delay, make sure to keep the customer informed. You can use Amazon’s partial refund to keep the customer in confidence by offering a little incentive.
5) Honor genuine returns, you always have an option for raising a dispute for illegitimate returns.
6) Keep a track on customer ratings and reviews and try to resolve the issue as soon as possible so to avoid your account being suspended.
7) Make sure you are not breaching the MRP by selling the product at a higher price than that mentioned on the product’s MRP declaration label.
8) Avoid any kind of promotional materials in your packing material and also in product content.
9) As a rule, if there is direct customer query for a seller, it should be handled in minimum possible time, the maximum in a rare case can be 24 hours, best is it to answer within few hours.
How can I start selling again??
If your selling privileges have been removed, you need to the check the notification you received from the marketplace to determine whether your selling privileges were removed due to poor performance, or for one or more violations of selling policies and agreements.
In the case of Amazon, you need to create an Action plan that summarizes the steps you will take to correct the problems you identified and send it to Amazon. After receiving, Amazon will notify you of their decision usually within 2-3 days. All the appeals are reviewed carefully; however, submission of an appeal to Amazon does not guarantee.
In some cases, like committing fraud against other sellers, the marketplace can blacklist the seller permanently.
So if you are a seller or planning to start selling, make sure that you follow the marketplace guidelines and policies for a sustainable and profitable business.
