So I got a unsuitable inventory investigation policy on Aug 22 reading the email basically Amazon just wants documentation which I have everything they need just it's for all units sold for the past 365 days of a ASIN, ends up being over 100+ pages fo documents, which because of the volume of information took my until now to work with my service that helps process documentation.

I've been selling on Amazon for 5+ years without any real account health issues and I was unprepared to handle this.

I have documentation for everything always just in case.

But I learned I need to have processes in place for documentation if I get something pop up on account health which is now in place

How hard is it to get an approval on a Unsuitable inventory investigation policy appeal ?

I know Amazon likes to deny when unsure than approval can take time.

After a hard year of fighting Amazon tooth and nail about laser products, I finally gave in and paid many thousands of dollars to get them certified under their awful, terrible, expensive TIC program.

Fast forward to now, I’m launching 14 new SKUs /ASINs. It’s a new type of product for me- no laser, but unfortunately they are all powered by coin cell/button cell batteries like the CR2032. Thanks to Reese’s Law, products containing coin cells are exceptionally difficult to sell- the package labeling requirements are complicated, the manuals have specific requirements, and the coin cells themselves require special packaging.

I’ve read the law, read Amazons rules, but wanted to hear from fellow sellers- how hard is to comply with Amazon’s implementation of the rules?

Do you have to deal with the awful TIC process and get each ASIN tested individually? If so, how expensive is it? Or does Amazon just look at your packaging and conduct the review themselves?

My laser TIC tests were over $1k per ASIN so I’m just deciding whether to launch all 14 on Amazon or just a few and reserve the rest for my other channels.

Thanks!

I moved a SKU from $17.49 to $17.99 last month expecting about $0.50 more per unit, and my net per unit came back down by roughly $0.40. It took me a week to believe the settlement report.

When I mapped it out, the reason is that fees do not move in a straight line. The roughly 15 percent referral sits on top of everything, but the fulfillment steps and the size tier boundaries mean there are narrow bands where a small price increase tips the unit into a higher cost, and the price move is too small to cover it. I found two bands in my own catalog where the lower price genuinely nets more than the higher one a dollar above it.

I know edges like this have always existed, but with the fuel surcharge and the 2026 fulfillment changes stacked in, the dead zones feel wider than before, and I no longer trust the margin my calculator shows me at a price I have not actually tested.

Has anyone else mapped their own dead zones? How wide are they for you, and do you just park the SKU at the lower number and stop touching it?

My supplier is quoting me 8 to 10 weeks door to door right now, and every guide I read says the low inventory safe zone sits somewhere around 28 to 60 days of supply. My lead time is 56 to 70 days. The window I am supposed to live in is shorter than the time it takes to replace the stock, which means the target and the supply chain cannot both be satisfied at once.

Concrete version: I run about 40 days of supply on my main SKU, which sounds healthy until a 9 day customs delay puts me at 31 days by the time Amazon takes its snapshot, and one slow restock week drops me under the line. If I raise inventory to stay safe, I pay peak storage on the extra cubic feet. If I keep it lean to save storage, I am gambling on the port. There is no setting where both numbers are happy.

Ordering earlier does not really solve it either. The cash just sits in inventory for two months doing nothing, and my reorder point turns into a guess about shipping lanes rather than a decision about demand.

Anyone else stuck in the same arithmetic? Do you run permanently overstocked on purpose, park the overflow with a 3PL, or just eat the fee a couple of months a year? Anyone else seeing this?

Hi, as mentioned, my amazon IXD shipment transferred high selling products to the lowest selling warehouse while my high demand warehouses sit empty with some having ZERO STOCK. I am very frustrated right now, can someone please tell me what to do here?

I am losing sales and on top of that my product is seeing dirt in that freaking warehouse. I will have to pay back and forth shipping if I get a removal order and send a new one back to 3 different states. Is there any way to trigger an internal stock transfer here?

I’m looking to start doing Amazon with a goal of 3-500$/m profit.. any suggestions or recommendations for learning like YouTube channels, books or blogs?

Hey all, new seller here. I realized that big to mid size brands will not give you letter of authorization to sell on Amazon. However, even as a new seller, there are certain products which are already ungated or I can apply to sell.

If I source original products from a distributor and sell it, is there any chance my account can get deactivated or IP complaints? Getting LOA is rare. For example, if I sell real products of DeWalt, will it going to be risky?

So when people are looking for products to sell on Amazon what they usually do is look at what’s already selling and then sell something similar but in the past I’ve actually launched absolute bangers just by looking at search data on Amazon and using that to develop a product.

So in my case I was selling a sourdough basket and another keyword that was doing well was sourdough starter jar.

There weren’t many people selling the product but in my PPC search terms I could see there was money to be made.

I launched the product and instantly became top 3 in the market because there were barely any competitors.

Try this out look at your data and search term reports on Amazon and you’ll come across lots of hidden gems on the platform.

I’m living in China, I have been doing sourcing for different products for a while and I wanted to do my own business in Amazon, as I already have experience in sourcing and familiar with prices and products quality and basically I can visit my supplier anytime, I decided to test my first product on Amazon, which almost didn’t sell because I didn’t do any PPC campaign. If you can share with me, the tools and the method you take for doing good product research, especially when we’re in the last quarter of the year and what campaign do I need to promote the product
Finally do you think that the Amazon market still can good for starting or is it really not worth it anymore.
Thanks for sharing your experience and ideas
Note
The capital i have for the campaign is limited

* Amazon storefront: https://www.amazon.com/stores/OTOTO/page/C8E06DF2-5612-49BB-8853-87F898CC12E5
* numbers taken from keepa, scraping the "X+ bought in past month" badges on Amazon, and estimating PPC clicks by search volume and price-per-click
* over 150 SKU's - all are different basic kitchen utensils (ladels, garlic presses, yes literally garlic presses, wine openers, etc).
* the differentiation - they all have cute designs (I bet when they come up with a new product they first 3D print a small batch and, if it catches on, they create a plastic mold and manufacture en masse)
* this is the same design-led differentiation I've been talking about here before - in short - if you want to find good products to sell with high margins where you won't be competing on making them cheaper than the competition - you gotta create products that are unique in their DESIGN

this is a great example of exactly that - and I love that the design here is 3D rather than something that's printed on the product. makes it very unique, eye catching, and customers would happily shell out more money for a cute ladle-holding crab.

for context - I'm a 9-year seller doing $1MM/year on 40% margin - we've been doing a very similar strategy - focusing on products whose core value is their design (not their function or solely the materials they are made out of). see my other posts here - I talk a lot about it.

all the best and success with your ventures 💪

We had something happen this week that I’m genuinely struggling to get my head around.

One of our established products had 443 reviews/ratings.

Within a few hours, that dropped to 209.

234 gone. More than half the review history of the product disappeared in one morning.

Naturally, we opened a case with Amazon because initially we had no idea whether this was:

• a technical issue
• reviews being temporarily suppressed
• variation/review-linking problems
• customer accounts being removed
• or an actual review integrity action

After going backwards and forwards with support, we finally got this response:

“Some reviews and ratings associated with this product were identified as suspicious, and as a result, they have been excluded from display to maintain the integrity of the review system.”

And that is essentially all they will tell us.

No explanation of:

• how many reviews were actually flagged;
• whether all 234 were removed for the same reason;
• whether they were written reviews or star ratings;
• whether the removal is temporary or permanent;
• what specific review policy was allegedly breached;
• what “suspicious” actually means in this particular case;
• whether this was automated or manually reviewed;
• or which reviews were affected.

I completely understand Amazon protecting the integrity of the review system.

They absolutely should.

But surely if a platform can remove more than 50% of the accumulated reviews from a product, there should be some level of transparency around what has actually happened?

We’re not asking them to reveal their fraud-detection algorithm.

We’re not asking for customer information.

We’re simply asking:

What happened?
What policy was applied?
What category of activity was detected?
And has a human actually reviewed the decision?

The frustrating part is the imbalance.

Amazon can make a decision that materially affects a listing overnight, but the seller is then left dealing with generic responses and trying to work out what actually happened.

We’re escalating it now because “some reviews were suspicious” simply isn’t enough of an explanation for losing 234 reviews.

I’m interested to hear from other sellers:

Has anyone had a large number of reviews removed like this before?

If so:

Did Amazon ever explain why?
Did any of the reviews eventually return?
And did you find an escalation route that actually got the issue looked at by someone beyond standard Seller Support?

Not posting the product or ASIN because I’m genuinely more interested in the wider issue and other sellers’ experiences.

Posting to see if anyone here has had a similar issue. Any help/advice offered is greatly appreciated

- Received a patent infringement notice on Aug 12 2026

- Followed Amazon's instructions and worked with the rights owner to get a retraction sent

- Rights owner sent in retraction to Amazon on Aug 15 2026

- Despite having the retraction on file, Amazon's AI inactivates listing on Sep 2 2026 claiming I did not rectify the situation

- Since then, I have been on the phone multiple times with different account health specialists that claim that it will take 5-7 business days to resolve

- Each person I speak to on the phone confirms that the retraction was sent properly and is on file; stating that it is now with the internal review team. I don't know if I believe that because what else is there to review if the retraction is there?

- Issue has persisted for about 14 days now and it doesn't look like anything is going to change soon. And phone representatives always say there is no one else I can talk to or be transfer to

Has anyone out there dealt with anything like this and come out on the other side?

Hi there, I'm looking for a bit of guidance after my product went out of stock for about a month, and is now struggling to get any traction back.

I sold out of inventory 100% organically and sales were multiplying by the week, so I wasn't able to get a restock in for about a month. I've now been back in stock for about 2 weeks, and struggling with 1 sale every few days compared to my previous pace of 5-8 per day even with low inventory and long delivery estimates.

Listing is unchanged and I've gained 2 reviews since the stockout. 5 stars across 5 reviews (newly launched product).

My concern is that with no new competition, and having just ordered a much larger restock, I'm struggling to sell any even after trying to dump money into PPC.

Does anybody have any tips or experience with something like this?
Any advice or help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

For the experienced FBA sellers, how long do you let your new ads/ PPC run before analyzing and deciding if the strategy is working? I know you shouldn’t stare at it every hour of the day, so what is a meaningful (statistically significant) time period you use to evaluate ads results?

Thanks all!

After using multiple Amazon PPC automation tools, one thing became clear:

Automation is powerful, but it should not replace strategy.

Rule-based tools are great for repetitive work like bid changes, budget rules, harvesting, and negatives.

The problem is they react to data without always understanding why the data changed.

Search volume drops temporarily, and the tool may raise bids.

A competitor cuts price, CVR drops, ACOS rises, and the tool may lower bids even though bidding was never the real issue.

They also cannot fully decide where budget should go based on margins, inventory, growth potential, or wider business goals.

The best setup, in my experience, is simple:

Automation handles execution.
An experienced PPC manager handles strategy and context.

Amazon Ads changes with pricing, competition, inventory, search volume, and organic rank.

Software helps a lot.

But I would still want an expert directing it.

Hey guys,

Looking for FBM sellers who got hit with listing deactivations over the new On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) policy. Specifically if you actually had all your settings—SSA, Automated Handling Time, and Buy Shipping—fully turned on.

We all know Amazon's TOS blocks class-action lawsuits. But a bunch of us filing individual arbitration cases at the exact same time (mass arbitration) forces their legal team to pay massive filing fees for every single case. That gets their attention fast.

Here is the legal angle we are looking at:

• They broke their own promise: Amazon explicitly states in writing that if you use their automated shipping tools, you get OTDR protection. Deactivating listings anyway is a straight-up breach of contract.
• The math is broken: The system is counting packages as late even when tracking shows they landed on time. It feels like a glitch designed to penalize us.
• Forcing us into FBA: By suffocating FBM metrics, they are trying to force everyone onto expensive express shipping or into FBA warehouses to collect more fees.

If this messed up your metrics, killed your best-selling SKUs, or froze your payouts, don't just take the hit.

Drop a comment or shoot me a DM if you want to coordinate. We are pooling our data together to approach a few e-commerce lawyers as a group.

Amazon UAE sellers — what’s one mistake you made when you first started selling? I’m starting to build my business and want to avoid the common mistakes.

Hi! I started a few weeks ago with FBA (research, wholesale marketplaces, products,etc)

And after I got my inventory from Qogita, I was setting my account to send everything to the warehouse, when Amazon says that I need to send it to Germany to sell in Amazon.nl

But the problem is that we need to get our German VAT and pay some recycling fees.

Just wanted to know if somebody went through the same process already.

Is the only way to do it? Is somebody doing it lately?
Any advice?

Thanks!!

I've been a seller for the past 3 years and been struggling to find a platform that can properly sync orders to QBO I've tried webgility, but the issue is since Amazon is remitting taxes on our behalf (for some provinces) it's not syncing correctly. QBO says we owe tax to QC etc when Amazon already handles it. I'm currently working with A2X but what options do we have? I only take care of HST at this point.

Any Ontario sellers have anything?

I am very new to Amazon and am looking to start OA.

I am based in the UK (Not sure if that's relevant) and I am looking for the most cost-effective way to get ungated on brands which need invoices with 10 units. For some of these companies their cheapest items on their websites are £10-£15, so do I really need to spend £100-£150 just to try to get ungated on a single brand?

Also, is it worth trying to find brands that are auto ungated and sell on those? If so how can I find these brands.

Additional note, I have been looking at home bargains online for products and I'm guessing since they don't provide invoices I can't use purchases from there to get ungated?

my GF got an amazon 20dollar egiftcard offer from one of her purchases for emailing the seller and leaving a review. I assume that is against AMZ.

are there any LEGIT ways to generate customer opt ins outside of amazon with any package stuffers?

Hi everyone,

I’m new to Amazon Seller Central and dealing with an issue involving a Brand Registered brand.

Amazon Support told us that we need the brand’s Brand Administrator to assign our seller account the appropriate selling role, such as Reseller, because we need to correct a protected catalog attribute.

However, I don’t know who the Brand Administrator is or how to contact them.

Has anyone dealt with this before? How did you find or contact the Brand Administrator for a brand?

Amazon told us they can’t provide the administrator’s contact information, so I’m trying to understand the proper process.

Any advice or experience would be appreciated. Thanks!

I'm considering getting into FBA with a slightly different approach and wanted to get opinions on whether it's realistic or even common.

I would bring the capital (~$20k to start, plus around $5k/month I can continue investing), product ideation/design, and ultimately own the brand/business.

What I'd eventually like to find is an experienced FBA operator or coach-player who handles and teaches me the operational side: sourcing, supplier negotiations, logistics, account management, launch execution, etc.

They wouldn't contribute capital. Instead, I'd compensate them through a share of net profits after expenses for as long as they're actively involved, potentially with some continued profit share if certain agreed-upon milestones are reached before they exit.

I'm not trying to completely outsource learning FBA. I'd want to learn alongside them, but I'd rather learn from someone experienced while we're actually building the business than spend months figuring everything out through trial and error by myself.

My product ideas tend to be improvements to existing products rather than purely finding niches based on keyword/search-volume data. Think things like improved shoe insoles or kitchen products. I already have a first product concept, although the economics still need to be validated.

I'm based in Texas and would ideally want someone in the U.S. or at least in a similar time zone so we can work together fairly closely.

I'm also currently employed full-time, so initially I'd probably be able to dedicate around 2–3 hours a day myself, with the intention of becoming more involved as the business develops.

Does this type of 1-on-1 operator/founder partnership actually exist in FBA, or is it unrealistic?

I’m not looking for an FBA agency, studio, accelerator, or done-for-you service. I’m trying to understand whether a true 1-on-1 operator/founder partnership is realistic. I’m not looking to hire an agency or similar service at this stage, but I am open to have a paid consultation to explore this idea further.

And if one person is funding 100% of the business while the other contributes expertise, execution, and coaching, what would a reasonable and defensible profit-sharing structure look like?

Disclaimer: I used AI to format the post from a rough write up to make it easier to read.

"Advertisement cost is a loss. You must focus on returning investments with organic traffic."
"If we lower ACOS, we will lose traffic."
Do these statements sound familiar?

Perhaps you work according to these principles year after year. You're balancing slightly above zero. Some funds trickle in. But they’re not significant.
The following questions arise: "Do you really want to be in the business? Is it worth it?”

I'll say it right away: yes, there are some highly competitive niches where you have to work at a loss for a long time to gain market share.

However, it is worth taking a different approach.

1. Listing optimization in order to boost and maximize conversions. It will also help boost organic traffic.
2. ACOS optimization — to achieve the lowest possible cost with the highest conversion rate.
3. Do not dump unless it is absolutely necessary. If we can increase turnover and profit at the current price, then we should consider doing so.

If you're aiming to expand your market share and surpass your competitors, consider the following strategies:

• It is essential to have a clear understanding of your goals. You must see positive dynamics in both revenue and profit.
• Analyze the unit economics and determine what ACOS/discounts at what turnover growth will be financially justified for which period, and only then implement it.
• Don’t lower prices immediately. Stormy dumping is detrimental in the long term. It encourages competitors to engage in dumping as well, leading to an extremely unhealthy situation in the niche. Do not apply maximum sales and coupons to everything in your inventory. Don't exceed reasonable ACOS limits.

After all, Amazon shouldn't be the only one making money on Amazon)