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Amazon account banned due to a change of identity

For example, you moved to another city or bought your own house and registered there, changing your contact information at the local bank at the same time. Or, for example, a girl got married and changed her surname. Seemingly normal life situations.

But in the case of Amazon business, any of these “normal situations” can end up with a blocked listing or account, or a suspension of the account and a Utility Bill request, which is not pleasant either.

A similar situation happened to one of our clients and in addition to lost time and a lot of lost nerve cells, it also cost her money because of two months of account downtime.

Everything started out quite innocuous and happy – the girl got married and changed her surname.

The change of surname ended up in the blocking of listings for months

It all started innocently enough. She received a request from Amazon to check one of the invoices. It is important to note that the listings for this product were created 2 years ago, the product was selling well and nothing foretold trouble.

The contract with the Chinese manufacturer was also signed a long time ago. The supplier did not change, but after the marriage and a change of surname, the personal data in the supplier database was updated.

In response to an inquiry from Amazon, real invoices from the supplier were sent, as proof that all deliveries are made honestly and transparently. It is important to understand that many processes in the Amazon support service are automated. The verification of invoices is not an exception and is handled by special bots. And in this particular case the Amazon bot failed to correctly correlate the new surname of the girl in the invoices with the already changed surname in the seller’s account data. The result was a blocking of the listings and a request for additional data.

Ask for help to unlock your account

The simple and logical solution to the situation took two months

The following steps were taken to resolve the situation:

1. The marriage certificate was translated and sent to the Help Desk.

2. Documents were supplemented with a copy of passport pages before marriage and after, as an additional confirmation of the fact of surname change.

All documents were translated and notarized.

Despite this seemingly simple solution, the communication with Amazon support took (attention!) 2.5 months. As a result, everything ended successfully, the listings were restored.

The amazon merchant forum is replete with reports of account blocking due to a change in payment information. Not all stories end well, alas.

What is the danger of changing the data in the seller’s account

Amazon is trying to protect its site and the personal information of buyers and sellers as much as possible. For this reason, accounts do not display full information about payment card numbers, two-factor authentication and other methods of protection have been introduced.

With any change of information in the seller’s account, Amazon assumes the worst case scenario: you have been hacked and illegally gained access to your account. That is why the blocking system is instantly activated: the account and/or listings created from that account. That is why it starts with a harmless password reset request and ends with a request for supporting documents.

Which personal information is “most sensitive” to amazon

Amazon support asks that you take the utmost care in changing the following data: 

  • Email address preferences;
  • Payment information, including billing addresses;
  • Authorized secondary users on the account;
  • Two-step verification details;
  • Business, shipping and returns, and tax information;
  • User permissions (Permissions for other users who have access to the account);

And of course, the basic information – the name and surname, although they change very rarely

Conclusions: how to prevent such blockages

The advice here is very simple: make changes to your buyer account as carefully and thoughtfully as possible. If you change the card number from which Amazon charges your monthly payments, check the billing information to see if it needs to be changed as well.

An additional recommendation from Amazon support: install the seller’s mobile app to track the status of your account and respond quickly to support calls.

You can find the Amazon Seller app for iOS at this link >> and the app for Android platforms here.

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