Q4 brand awareness: how to safeguard yourself during holiday peak

In the run-up to the peak period, Amazon expert Chris McCabe of ecommerceChris walks you through how to identify and deal with abusive competitor attacks, and protect yourself.

What are you up against?

By this point, it’s fairly well known that a successful brand can expect to lose sales due to abusive attacks from competitors during a peak sales period like Prime Day or Black Friday/ Cyber Monday. 

Whether it’s a top selling product ASIN, or a bad actor making you look bad with IP (intellectual property) or buyer complaints, understand that you need to prepare to defend yourself, just in case your competitor understands how to damage you. They may be seasoned at anti-competitive behaviour, or they may hire out help to do it to you.  If they do it right and Amazon teams chase after you, then you could be facing challenges you didn’t anticipate.

Five years ago, brand owners could pay less attention to competitor attacks because they were not so frequent. Now, these are omnipresent trends and concepts that former Amazonians like me know about – because we work with sellers who don’t want to be left behind or risk having a knowledge gap. We know that there is a lot at stake on this topic, and hope you do too.

Since various types of attacks are common in Q4, you can’t afford to let Amazon take their time reviewing and responding. This is especially the case when an attacker is adept at siphoning sales away from you simply because they know Amazon takes time to review your appeals. Your competitor also may expect you to receive a canned, generic response that has no use. This only prolongs the problem.

The longer it takes, the more it’s worth it to them to behave this way. Don’t make it worse by leaving yourself exposed, and open to attacks that pay off at the busiest times of the year. 

A brief history of abuse reporting and actions taken by Amazon teams

In the old days, Amazon might have transferred your abuse report into the abyss as if to say, “we’re not taking action. We think you’re just seeing things, then shooting at another seller who’s in your category.” In those early times, we saw competitors throw a bunch of things at the wall to see what stuck.

Attacks developed over time and are very targeted and sophisticated now, to the point where Amazon had to create dedicated abuse prevention teams built to identify illicit conduct.

A lot of competitors now attack brands just to see how knowledgeable they are or what their defences are like:

• Did you quickly identify what is happening or why listings are getting flagged? That’s a big reason why they’re “stress testing” you, because they want to see how quickly you react
• Do you diagnose and dispute it right away, and properly, to get your ASIN back?
• Did you delay appealing it, or did you approach the wrong teams at Amazon, like opening cases with Seller support and hoping for a miracle?

The good news

Amazon’s improved their knowledge of this area, which is great. They went from telling every seller who complained of abusive attacks that it was only in their heads, that they were making excuses for bad performance, or worse, that they were imagining all of it.

Nowadays, these abuse investigation teams understand how gaping holes are exploited by bad actors. They grasped a company-wide need to do more and to help itself, its sellers, and of course, all buyers. 

The bad news

Unfortunately, Amazon won’t always catch bad behaviour and initiate investigations to stop it.

It’s still up to brand owners to establish timelines, provide details in the form of solid evidence, and to demonstrate proof that another party is responsible for trying to harm your account. As of this time, you’ll need to know how to identify these behaviours and protect yourself.

And unfortunately it is also your job to keep persevering and continue showing them the information again in a factual, concise manner. They may send you basic responses that don’t accomplish anything, forcing you to resubmit and escalate it. 

How do you start the process of abuse reporting on Amazon?

If you get a canned response:

• Do save that Case ID then stop opening support tickets
• Don’t call account health reps over and over

Keep in mind that this is Amazon’s first line of defence only, so you can’t be shocked that you didn’t get a real answer. They may not do a deep dive into what’s happening to you, and it may seem like a waste to you, but it’s not.

Track their comments and your own notes in a spreadsheet, using a list of dates and names of the Amazonians on the calls. If you talk to Account Health services reps, they may investigate it and call you back at a later time. Note that result, too, for future reference as needed. 

Do you have a paid account manager from SAS core?

• Keep notes on those Chime calls
• Track the teams they are interacting with on your behalf
• Push your account manager for more guidance and follow up if 72 hours pass without any real signs of help or action by Amazon

Why seller attacks are such a problem

Every time Amazon miss the mark on these cases, they encourage your attacker to come back and attack you more.  Do everything you can to prevent a self-perpetuating cycle.

If competitors keep scoring more revenue out of successful attacks, it only motivates them to milk it for whatever they can get until the ‘fun’ stops. Sellers using creative abusive tactics are often borrowing tricks from mastermind groups they pay into, or they may hire a black hat consultant who does this sort of thing all the time. Amazon knows this behaviour proliferates but it’s a moving target. Black hat types always innovate to stay ahead of enforcement. 

Have you been attacked by that same competitor before?

Use that past experience to push Amazon.  If the other seller only had their wrist slapped the first time (which is increasingly common right now), and if Amazon did nothing when you reported the second attack, it’s time to dispute it and get reinstated-– then to shift gears into reporting the other seller until they’re blocked off the marketplace. 

Don’t skip that step and hope it never happens again! That only hurts you in the long run.

This sounds like a lot of work – will it be worth it?

Well, think of it this way – what you report successfully now demotivates your attacker from coming back for more.  And in the long run, it will pay off if they leave you alone or leave Amazon entirely.

Basic seller support cases: what happens when you show them evidence, using the “report a violation” button or tool?

Of course, sellers who come to us looking for this type of help say they only get canned template messages back.

Amazon tells you they’ll look into it, but can’t share any details on the actions taken.  And yes, it’s been that way for years, and yes, it will end there -– unless you give them real facts, real details, to the right teams, not low level staff.  Consider support cases to be part of the foundation you lay for the real work ahead.   

Be sure to highlight:

• exactly how many times you’ve been attacked, and in what ways
• how much it’s costing you to have the problem persist, week in and week out, or month in and month out – that can add up fast, so tell them some estimated numbers if you can’t be exact 

Give them a chance to send you signs that they’re working on it. 

Typical client situations include:

• A listing that is down for a couple of weeks, and that the seller spent tons of time trying to get reinstated
• A competitor using back end keyword abuse, or faking receipt of bad product who lodges ‘inauthentic’ complaints, or they may be making bad ASIN contributions to detail pages behind the scenes

Amazon may fail to recognise that and then won’t do anything to stop it. But if Amazon fails to stop clear abuse, our clients have an easy basis for an escalation, and probably more than one.  We make sure that they don’t fail to take advantage of it. 

If you report abuse and the seller on the other side should get suspended, and they don’t, giving up is not the right move. Expect to keep your foot on the pedal and keep Amazon interested in engaging with you on the subject. You may feel somewhat discouraged if it looks like they seek excuses not to act – but don’t let that stand.

And if Amazon’s not initially paying attention to you…

What not to do

If things don’t go your way right away, don’t:

• panic and start sending angry emails to Jeff
• go racing to the Seller Forums to complain to sympathetic sellers
• wildly tweet about the attack and Amazon’s copy and paste answers

You may have only begun what may be a process of emails, follow ups, some calls even or protests outside the company to other useful sources (more on that later).

Remember that if you handle it poorly and you send less than useful info, or if you send long rants without evidence or facts or details, you only lengthen the timeline to resolve it satisfactorily.

What to do instead

Believe me, I know how frustrating it is when Amazon messages you back something vague or random, as if they don’t even understand the nature of your abuse report. 

Here’s what to do:

• Clarify your case, as needed: is it a fake IP complaint, or a pattern of bogus negative reviews on the product?
• You should only need a page to identify an abuse pattern for them, to give them a thread to pull on
• Figure out what examples can be attached, and what can be summarised in your first contact to the Abuse teams

It also helps not to recycle something you tried two years ago; it may not fit this time. Don’t email them several pages of info at once.

If you’re putting it in front of an executive and they delegate it to a manager who reports directly to them, that person will need facts they can use to argue an enforcement case against your competitor. Abuse reporting requires top-tier communication to people or teams that will appreciate the complexities of one brand sabotaging another. 

No templates are welcome! I cannot say that enough.  You’re just wasting their time, and your own, if you source a generic template for this type of abuse reporting.

Amazon already knows and understands:

• that there’s more for your attacker to gain by putting together an attack against your top selling ASIN
• that attacks are likely right before Black Friday or Cyber Monday – so don’t waste time or space on the obvious
• why you’re reaching outside of their established procedures to email senior management, or executives, to get more attention to the problem

Don’t waste energy apologising for bothering them from their busy schedules. Time is of the essence, revenue’s suffering, and you need real help quickly. 

If you do this right…

The abuser may face an account suspension that they cannot undo, or they will get reinstated, but then leave you alone.  They’ll find some other successful brand in another category and move their attack onto another seller, hoping that seller won’t figure out what to do.

If you do this badly…

You could lose your whole account, not just that one ASIN. And we’ve seen a multitude of brand owners do this wrong, too– whether it’s intellectual property complaints that are unsubstantiated or allegations they make of counterfeit products sold (when the situation is really one where the brand owner believes the seller is an ‘unauthorised hijacker’ for example). This involves high level strategy.   

While we grasp that lawyers and agencies are out there pitching services to numerous brand owners, advising them to accuse resellers of counterfeit, we have a harder time understanding why sellers are falling for these tricks.  Numerous seller accounts got suspended or they got their brand registry revoked, or they lost access to A+ content for doing that. 

Whether it was a lawyer or a consultant or a seller moonlighting as a consultant, brands trusting services like this will pay the consequences, not the third parties they brought in.  The buck stops with you, and Amazon doesn’t care to hear who promised you what in exchange for your cash, if it meant violating policies.  

So Amazon revokes privileges for committing abuse if you falsely report abuse by others.  If you’re reported for that, you’ll probably get suspended. Most of the time, Amazon teams will tell you it’s a ‘dispute only’ path out of it to reinstatement.  In other words, disputing that Amazon took the wrong action to deactivate you.

Escalation nation: avoid doing these things to escalate abuse reports…

There’s a lot of material online about how to escalate problems to Amazon leadership. It ranges from:

• borderline useless info about emailing old Jeff email addresses
• chasing up Executive Seller Relations
• emailing specific people instead of standard email queues

Many lacking expertise on abuse escalations may suggest these things just because they’re recycling seller forums post ideas or YouTube videos.

Don’t use or create ‘fill in the blank’-style templates – they won’t take the report seriously. Account health reps may even tell you ‘we’ve seen this appeal before’ when they explain why Amazon refuses to do anything. 

Anywhere between 60- 75% of the time, the brand owners who contact us want our help because they did follow Amazon’s protocols, or followed a deficient, broken process. Things didn’t operate the way they were supposed to, and Amazon often needs you to point that out before they can justify spending time to fix it. 

…But do keep up the momentum

Since your first shot at this might not get the abusive seller fully suspended, you’ll want to keep pursuing it long after a token warning is sent. Amazonians, especially manager level or above, are supposed to pay attention when you prove to them a process failed to function. 

In all likelihood, you’re not the only one showing them with that kind of competitor attack or abuse report that day, especially if it’s in the heart of Q4.  If they see a whole cluster of people coming at them with the same type of complaint, they understand fast that there are holes, and gaps, and that black hat sellers are exploiting those gaps.

Hey… why do I have to escalate this, anyway? What is Amazon doing about this?

Amazon sellers are asking us pretty much every day at this point: what is Amazon doing to combat this? Why can’t they prevent abuse?

Some people assume automation tools or their standard operating procedures, their SOPs around abuse reporting, will help fix this. It’s now common knowledge that these teams exist. Amazon is a trillion and a half-dollar company, so they have the resources and the knowledge to move this forward, right?

Don’t overestimate Amazon’s approach to stopping this, because the current abuse investigation system isn’t that results-orientated.  Amazon shows us that high-level people work on escalations when you send a proper abuse report up the chain, so that is a positive step.  Otherwise, our escalations wouldn’t work.  While at Amazon, I was taught to think like a business owner for a reason. 

Amazon must realise this: if black hats out there are attacking you, they’re also creating bad buyer experiences by trying to take out legitimate sellers to have each category to themselves. It’s harming consumers, not just business owners like yourself. In all likelihood, it’s also harming Amazon itself.  Fewer sellers in a category means less selection, worse prices, and a higher chance of a bad product being sold to a buyer instead of a reliable one.  That’s why Amazon must stop abuse in its tracks. 

Attacks and the administrative burden around preventing more abuse cost Amazon money, reputation, and creates friction internally.  It’s in everyone’s best interests to stop it in its tracks. If they kick the can down the road or they respond to you just to show that they responded, it helps no one. 

Since Amazon professes to be devoting time, energy and resources to keeping all players honest, keep them to their word. The longer it goes on, the more brands will expand and grow but also get exposed to illicit parties exploiting loopholes in enforcement. If Amazon teams refuse to listen, that’s more money out the door that could be yours. And as I noted, it encourages your competitor to keep attacking.

As painful as it is to think about, sellers must report abuse to discourage more of it – not just for your own needs or to help sellers, not just for buyers, but for all stakeholders in the system, including Amazon itself.

How can consultants help sellers protect themselves?

At ecommerceChris, the main question we get is: ‘what can we do to help stop this madness?’

Since we’re pretty much the only service who understands high level abuse reporting strategy, we take that responsibility seriously. A lot of consultancies or agencies out there don’t work on this material every day, so they just dabble with it. We don’t believe it’s useful to ‘drop in’ occasionally in this type of work. You have to be expert level if you’re going to take on ‘third rail’-type problems.

The last thing you want to do is make false accusations or unsubstantiated accusations about a competitor, who can turn around and weaponise your false claims against you. 

We like to strategise by focusing on Amazon’s incentives and motivation to help you. Once you convince them that you’re going to keep coming back and reporting it in new and meaningful ways, they’re more motivated to nip it in the bud and to help you earlier in the process.

We help people understand these trends, to diagnose and assess them, and we certainly help people escalate it if all else fails.

Sellers have to understand causality before they can even think about appealing or reporting abuse, let alone appealing for reinstatement. Attacks have gotten more sophisticated. Competitors are savvy, and they understand sometimes information leaks out from inside Amazon to the hands of black hat or illicit sellers, and they exploit that information.

Those bad actors understand where Amazon’s vulnerable or where brand owners might be vulnerable, and what weak spots they can press on to make a lot of money. If you need help assessing this stuff or understanding the dynamics of it at a high level, we’re happy to help you conduct a threat assessment, to understand your options.

Learn more about the ecommerceChris consultancy and how they can help you with seller attacks.