This post is by Chris McCabe, owner and founder of ecommerceChris, LLC, an Amazon seller account consultancy.
The Account Health Services team (AHS) has taken an increasingly prominent role in Amazon’s account suspension appeals process.
Here at ecommerceChris, we used to get the occasional client case that involved a call from Account Health Services, asking for a Plan of Action within 24 hours, just before Amazon pulled the suspension trigger.
Now the majority of the account reinstatement clients coming to us talk about their interactions with AHS, and we often sit in on AHS calls with our clients. This particular team appears to be growing, and it looks like they’re here to stay.
Who are Account Health Services, and how can they help (or hurt) an Amazon seller’s chances of being reinstated quickly?
View Top Amazon Seller ToolsHow did Amazon Account Health Services get started?
Back in 2018, Amazon created a new team designed to communicate with Amazon sellers about potential account suspensions via phone.
The biggest complaint sellers had consistently reported to Amazon was that they could never talk to anyone about their Plan of Action or reinstatement appeals. Amazon listened, and eventually put together the Account Health Services team to speak directly to them, and help clarify what they needed to provide to successfully appeal their suspensions.
At first, AHS could explain to sellers what a Plan of Action (POA) was, how to structure one, where to send it, and what to add if their appeal was rejected. At least in theory, Amazon account reps would improve their communication with sellers on these topics.
Do Account Health Services give advance warning of suspensions?
Throughout 2018 and 2019, Account Health Services have been calling sellers before suspensions happen, giving them 24 hours to submit a POA before suspending the account.
Sellers get a chance to ward off a dreaded suspension if they appeal with a quality plan.
This then changed to 72 hours, and just to keep things interesting, sometimes they even sent messages indicating you had 48 hours to compose a POA. Either way, it didn’t give you much time to work out operational improvements and put them into place, let alone write them all up coherently.
During the call, an AHS rep would go over your account suspension situation with you, sometimes referencing specific ASINs, and then give you an idea of how to address these problems in your POA. The responsibility to convince Amazon that you should continue selling interrupted, without an account suspension, was then down to you.
This warning was sometimes referred to as a “pre-POA”, although an Account Health Services rep that I spoke with at the Prosper Show last year referred to it as a “proactive POA”. Whatever the term, sellers got a chance to ward off a dreaded suspension if they appealed with a quality plan.
In this latest phase in Q4 2019, AHS are contacting far more sellers in advance of a suspension. They will now discuss appeals that were entirely ignored or review denied appeals that were missing required information.
However, the involvement of Account Health Services can be a double-edged sword. We’ve studied all facets of this team’s influence, both positive and negative, on reinstatement work and identified numerous proactive measures sellers can use during the process of composing a Plan of Action BEFORE it’s submitted.
What can Account Health Services do?
1. Give background information
AHS can give you some background info on why your account is at risk for an account suspension.
They may be able to provide specific ASINs, orders, or buyer/brand complaint background that led to your account review in the first place. Likely, much of this already sits in your performance notifications but they could help you separate out what ASINs to focus on in the POA.
Results vary depending on the rep, so we encourage sellers to press them for details.
2. Give feedback on your POA
AHS can give you an opinion on your POA after reading it. Keep in mind, it’s only an opinion.
