#528 – How To Revive Suspended Seller Accounts and Outmaneuver Online Sabotage

Video of the episode at the bottom

Navigating the unpredictable rapids of Amazon and Walmart marketplace selling, we had the pleasure of being joined by Lesley, a maestro with a flair for reviving online seller accounts from the depths of suspension. In our conversation, we uncover the labyrinth of issues that can snag unsuspecting sellers, from the snares set by underhanded competitors to the resurgence of ‘inauthentic’ item flags. Lesley, drawing on her rich tapestry of experience that spans from journalism to digital marketplaces, guides us through the complexities of maintaining a pristine account on platforms like Amazon and Walmart, while also sharing her own transition from traditional business consulting to the fast-paced e-commerce arena.

The episode takes a turn into the shadowy alleys of the online marketplace, exposing the black hat tactics of less scrupulous sellers who resort to fraudulent reviews and other deceptive maneuvers to gain an edge. Stories of sabotage and extortion unfold, revealing the lengths to which some will go to undermine their competition and the sophisticated strategies Amazon employs to counter these threats. Lesley’s insights prove invaluable for those looking to safeguard their ventures in this cutthroat environment, ensuring your business not only survives but thrives among the giants of the digital retail world.

In episode 528 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Lesley discuss:

• 00:00 – Strategies for Amazon Account Reinstatement & Protection
• 05:00 – Common Suspensions and Appeals on Walmart 
• 07:59 – Amazon KDP Issues and IP Theft 
• 11:10 – Amazon Account Suspensions and Prevention Tips
• 17:18 – More On Account Suspensions on Amazon
• 23:25 – Amazon TOS Compliance, Fraud, Extortion, and Black Hat Tactics
• 23:45 – Fake Orders and Amazon Locker Strategy 
• 34:20 – Lesley’s New Book And The Importance of SOPs in Business

Transcript

Bradely Sutton:

Today we’ve got somebody who has helped hundreds and hundreds of sellers out there get their accounts or products reinstated on various platforms like Amazon, and she’s gonna give us the latest strategies on keeping your account clean, protecting yourself from bad players out there, and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all, your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the helium-10 tool profits. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash profits. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by helium-10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton. This is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed Organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got somebody who’s been helping serious sellers for years Lesley, welcome to the show.

Lesley:

Thank you so much, Bradley. I’m excited to be here.

Bradely Sutton:

Where are you in the world? By the way, are you on the east coast?

Lesley:

No, I’m in Texas.

Bradely Sutton:

Texas, okay, whereabouts.

Lesley:

I’m in the Dallas Fort Worth area, so a little bit removed from the Mecca of Sellers in Austin, but happily I can be there in three hours or less.

Bradely Sutton:

Is that? Is that where you were born to raise, or your transplant, or what?

Lesley:

I’m actually an eighth generation Texan and I’ve lived in the North Texas area Most of my life. I did spend five years in Austin, hookham horns, at the University of Texas.

Bradely Sutton:

Wow, eighth generation. So we’re talking from like 1800s Over there.

Lesley:

I’m Texas independence.

Bradely Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, like wow.

Lesley:

I actually have a couple of distant relatives who were in the Texas Rangers on the frontier, so old school Texas family here.

Bradely Sutton:

I love, love to love to hear it. All right, cool, you said. Did you say you went to University of Texas?

Lesley:

Yes, I did. I got an undergraduate degree there in journalism and an MBA and, most importantly, met my husband there, and our oldest son is named Austin.

Bradely Sutton:

Oh, okay, I see how that goes. Did you go after graduation? Did you go into journalism at all?

Lesley:

I did. I was a reporter for several years and worked for Houston Chronicle, did some AP work, associated Press, then transplanted up here, worked for the Dallas business journal and then actually moved into PR and marketing for several years and did traditional Old-school business consulting Like working for an accounting firm business consulting.

Bradely Sutton:

Well, where’s the segue then? To like e-commerce and how you got into to this world.

Lesley:

So I am one of those mommy people who started selling on Amazon because of an issue with their kids. I had been a consultant for years and years and I always wanted to be home with my kids. So I started working from home as an independent consultant before we had children and then when my oldest son Got to be about fifth grade, he was having a whole lot of issues in school. We decided to homeschool him and do a ton of therapy because he’s on the autism spectrum and Therapies expensive even when you’ve got insurance. So I couldn’t just not work, even though my husband was working full-time, because of all the expenses with homeschooling therapy. So I found out about selling on Amazon way back in 2010 and Started selling then and it was so ideal Wild West at the time, you know it was all like RA and OA back then and so my husband would come home from work and I’d go out at night and source and on the weekend, as a family, we would pack and ship our inventory to FBA.

Bradely Sutton:

Hey nice, nice, all right. And then I’m assuming that you started realizing that there’s a lot of issues that that Sellers have to a face and and maybe got your account suspended, or here they’re like wait a minute, you know this, other people might be having these kind of issues. Is that kind of like a simplification of how River Bend started, or?

Lesley:

Exactly. I started going to some conferences, meeting other Amazon sellers, people who had been suspended, and writing plans of action and business plans was part of my Consulting background, so I just saw a niche of where I could apply those old-school Principles to e-commerce and it was a great fit. And then I met my business partner at River Bend, joe Zalta, because his account was suspended. He’s a he’s a pretty good size seller and he had actually gone to another consultant who couldn’t get him and reinstated, got referred to me. I got him up in one shot and he was like we should turn this into a business.

Bradely Sutton:

Cool, cool. Now we’re definitely gonna talk about Amazon, you know reinstatements and and what’s what’s going on in that platform. But the one thing that kind of like I don’t want to say caught me off guard but that surprised me was that part of your services on your website you talk about like Walmart Appeals and account appeals and item appeals, and I was like, wow, you know, like, yeah, walmart is getting more popular. But what? I’m just curious, what are the common things that Walmart sellers, which they’re Exponentially more of now than two years ago, what issues require your services? That’s happening to people on Walmart.

Lesley:

So there’s a simple answer to that. The folks who built the seller performance organization at Amazon Then got hired to do the same thing at Walmart. So the suspensions are almost all the same things. So, for example, dropshipping, that’s a big Walmart suspension. Product authenticity issues, condition issues it’s really a lot of the same things. They don’t have some of the bigger, more holistic things like the platform manipulation. We don’t see a lot of that. You know review, manipulation, code of conduct, but we do say the you know you’re harming other sellers. Language it is so much the same. Their organization is just a little different and you know anywhere out there that you either process a Transaction as a seller or that you sell has an enforcement arm. So we’ve worked on eBay appeals At Amazon. We’ve also done Kindle, direct publishing appeals, associates appeals and even things like PayPal or Groupon you can do appeals. It’s everywhere.

Bradely Sutton:

How is the Walmart team to deal with? You know, like, sometimes you know with Amazon, like you know, and we’ll talk about this, but it’s like you know, you got to, like pretty much, admit to something, even if you didn’t do it sometimes, and and you have to know the exact thing, and sometimes you have to fight with them, like for for months. Like is Walmart, since it’s the same people who started the Amazon’s like the same process or they’re more easygoing are there? Are they more hard line? Like how is it?

Lesley:

They’re actually slightly more responsive. They do request that you, they want the admission of guilt, they want you to find something you did wrong, but they are more responsive and I think it’s part of being smaller. As they scale and have more third party sellers and more enforcement, I would bet they go down the same rabbit holes and have the same problems Amazon does, but for now, they are more likely to tell you what you did wrong. Or if you appeal and you appeal incorrectly, because, as you know, you don’t see all the data in your account, you see pieces of it and they see all of it. So if you appeal the wrong thing and then you start to escalate up the chain, they’re more likely to say hey, hey, seller, you missed it, this is what we’re looking for than Amazon is. Amazon says that’s all proprietary, you figure it out. But I do understand why. Amazon has a lot more bad actors, a lot more black hats, so I think they’ve had to lock that down more and it’s made it harder for everybody, even the good guys.

Bradely Sutton:

Yeah, that’s definitely the truth. Now, switching to Amazon, you said another kind of like you know, maybe not so common thing of KDP. What are KDP sellers, or, you know, authors? I guess you could say what’s happening to them. That would require your services.

Lesley:

There is some crazy that goes on with KDP that is as frustrating or more frustrating than anything for an Amazon seller, and I’ll tell you why. Let’s say you publish a book on KDP, someone else completely rips off your content, republishes the book and for some reason the timestamps aren’t right at Amazon. It’s a programming issue, it’s a technical issue, and they will say that you violated the person who ripped off your IPs IP. And we don’t even think that it’s happening because that seller is reporting the person they ripped off, because the people who ripped off the content are trying to just fly under the radar. So in the cases we’ve had, we don’t think they’re actually reporting anyone. We think Amazon system is doing it automatically.

Bradely Sutton:

Huh, Interesting, Interesting. All right, so what about Merch by Amazon? Like I would imagine that Merch by Amazon, that would come to mind more than KDP in my mind, because like it’s borderline. Like somebody I heard recently I don’t know if it was Merch by Amazon, but it was something I had to design and he did it like he made a picture. It wasn’t like a picture of Luke Skywalker or something, but it was like a drawing of something that could be construed as oh, maybe it looks Star Wars-ish, but it was his own drawing and he didn’t have the words or anything in there. But like that to me sounds like it would be common. Like where there’s a lot of gray area as far as what’s IP and not. Like are you running into things with people who are doing shirts and Merch?

Lesley:

Yes, but I’ll tell you something Merch and their suspension and reinstatement process is impossible. If they think you violated intellectual property, they just shut you down and they don’t really entertain appeals. Now there are other people out there who’ve appealed successfully, yes, but the success rate on those is abysmally low. I don’t even understand their rules Usually, like I’ve grown to understand so many things about Amazon seller performance just because we’ve dealt with thousands of appeals and so you see patterns over time and you can explain to people why the rules are fair or unfair in Merch. And I just got no idea. It’s not if it makes any sense to me, just to be completely frank.

Bradely Sutton:

Yeah, I’ve been hesitant to get into it. Like I have a lot of cool ideas but they might be a little gray area. Like one of my ideas is like I watch a lot of Korean dramas and and other kind of like foreign TV shows and then sometimes I might be watching a high school show and I’m like or the anime or something like you know, this fictitious high school would be cool, you know, like to do one of those athletic department, you know like that. But I’m like I wonder how you know if this is gray or. But then I’ve heard about that. Like, once you get shut down, you’re kind of like locked. Now let’s go to some more mainstream, mainstream things. And here in 2024, you know, looking back at 2023, if I were to ask you the top, let’s talk about account level suspension overall, the top two reasons that people get their entire account suspended in 2023. I think a year by year it might change. You know, some years might be the same. What would you say? Those top two or three reasons would be.

Lesley:

Number one is linked accounts. As far as not not keeping in mind, these are folks who’ve hired help. That, that’s my set of data, and so we’re usually going with the things that are a little bit tougher to fix. The super easy things your average seller can fix, they’re not going to hire anyone. So so what? We see a lot of his linked accounts. That’s where Amazon believes that you are selling on an account that is linked to another account not allowed on the platform, and it doesn’t matter if it’s an account you had 15 years ago when you were in college and selling your textbooks and you went out and got drunk at the end of the semester and forgot to send them, which people do, and they lose their account. And then you open a new account and they shut you down. So linked accounts is a big one. Number two is a shocker. This is coming at the end of this year is inauthentic. So back in the day when Amazon started all of its enforcement against sellers, that was pretty much the only reason you would get suspended. It was all inauthentic all the time. And then it kind of went away and only became an ascent issue because Amazon started saying we’re not going to take your account down for one ascent.

Lesley:

That’s inauthentic. We’re just going to let you deal with on an ascent level. All of a sudden, here we are with all of these inauthentic suspensions coming out. Some of them are related to false positives for stolen merchandise, which is very upsetting for sellers because they know they didn’t steal their stuff. They have suppliers that they trust, so that’s very, very frustrating for them as well. And then we have seen a resurgence of code of conduct as well. Code of conduct is this big nasty basket of scary things. So anytime you see a section three or code of conduct suspension, those are the ones where you should hire someone immediately and not touch it yourself because they’re very difficult. And it’s this catch all it’s like where amazon has all the data that you can’t see once again and they’re acting on it. So for some reason they believe that you, as a seller, you’re hurting other sellers, amazon itself or customers.

Bradely Sutton:

Okay, going back to the first one, um, you know you are related to an account that you did fifteen years ago, or, or you know, who knows, maybe, like you know, roommate had some some account and your guys were on the same wifi and he’s now banned from amazon or something Is is. Is there going back, um, to that? Like, is that? You know you’re pretty much screwed. You better make a completely new entity, or is there? You know, are you able to salvage those at all those cases?

Lesley:

So what you don’t want to do is create a new entity because they’re just gonna link that one up to and keep in mind that amazon is a vendor to the national security agency With AWS. So you don’t want to create another account because you’re just asking for more enforcement. You can get accounts back. So I think my oldest when I ever got back was eighteen years. It was suspended eighteen years prior. It’s really easy to get back. If you were a minor, which some of these older situations people were minors. When they have that old account, those are simple to get back. If you have a roommate and ex husband and ex wife, all of those can be solved, but they do put you at risk. So can I tell you a quick story, bradley, like, like. I love story you will ever hear.

Bradely Sutton:

Let’s do it.

Lesley:

Okay. So we had an aggregator we were working with and this aggregator acquired a really high quality brand from this lady, excellent line of products, and then, all of a sudden, one after the other, all of their accounts started going down for linked accounts, boom, boom, but it was like one a week. So they were spaced out. But not enough. Turns out this woman who they had acquired her account I think six months prior, she had an ex boyfriend she lived with three years before that and he had gotten banned from all Amazon global accounts because he was a bad guy. Black hat, she didn’t know this. He wasn’t even selling on Amazon when they live together and he got into it after they broke up. And because of that past relationship, this aggregator had all of the accounts they had acquired starting going down one week, one a week for like two months.

Bradely Sutton:

How do you even trace it back to figure out that that was what was going on? Did Amazon?

Lesley:

was Amazon fight like forthcoming with with how they tied it, or so sometimes Amazon gives you a notice where they’ll say you’re connected to an account, starting with the letters and letters or even the account name. In this situation, though I don’t think they did If they think it’s something really super fraudier, bad, they don’t give you information, and that’s where we just start asking tons of questions. So we, we put the seller through the ringer. We actually I actually start to feel bad when I do this, because it’s like they’re in a police interrogation yeah, and I’m asking them you know, who did you kill? So we ask enough questions till we link it up and when we appeal based on that one bad guy, we got the first one up. We knew that was the right strategy and then just kept appealing them as they happen. But unfortunately Amazon doesn’t have any kind of wonderful global thing internally where they can say, oh, we’re gonna whitelist all these, we know now we fix the first one. Oh no, they just kept suspending them till they were all suspended and all had to be a field.

Bradely Sutton:

Alright, guys, moral the story. You know you gotta be vetting your potential dating partners. You know, like you might, in the past, be like, hey, what kind of upbringing did they have? Does he treat his mom? You know nicely, but nowadays is kind of like, hey, have you ever sold on Amazon? Have you ever been suspended? I want to start considering these things. When you’re out. There is not just about swiping left and getting ready to go. Guys, you never know what’s what’s happening. That’s a crazy story, especially, you know, being an aggregate or having an effect. So many people now. What about like eight? Not account suspensions, but just a sin level suspensions. What are some common things that you’re seeing in this day and age?

Lesley:

So in authentic is a big one right now. Stolen goods is actually a serious one and it’s a very interesting thing happening. In the past, stolen goods would always go straight to an account suspension and right now some of these are being treated on an ace in level because there have been a few stolen goods written in the past. There have been a few stolen goods rings out of New York and New Jersey that has been broken up and Amazon is going after trying to find that inventory. So there’s a whole lot of that going on which is really scary. And then condition, including expiration. Those are really common right now to and you’ll see a ton of expiration coming up through the holidays y’all and a ton of condition in January, February, after those holidays pass. And here we are sitting at go time. You think we got through peak and now Amazon is going to leave my account alone. They actually look at data going back for 60 days. So in the return period it goes through January 31st. Now, right, everyone’s doing their returns and so that means you really start to see those ace in suspensions happening mid February to Mid March, or so maybe end of March, based on all of that data that’s coming out from the holidays.

Bradely Sutton:

Hmm, interesting, all right now, you know, obviously anything can happen to anybody at any time, regardless of how much of you doing quote-unquote the right thing. But what are just some tips that you can give to sellers to kind of like not have to give you a call Down the road, because obviously that’s just you know. To have to call somebody like you, that means you’re in a pretty bad, in a bad way. So what are some easy things that you know? A preventative maintenance. I guess you could say that that definitely would have saved a lot of people who ended up having to use your services, would have saved them a lot of trouble. But by doing something that what doesn’t take that much effort.

Lesley:

My very favorite strategy is also the most boring strategy, but the great thing about it is you can outsource it to someone on your team or to a VA, and I call it always be Improving your worst ace in. It doesn’t matter if your catalog has 10,000 listings or two. You have a worst ace in. So you have some item that has too high of a return rate Based on your sales data. So what you need to always be doing is downloading your returns data. You can sort that spreadsheet that Amazon gives you and take out all of the dumb reasons like accidental order and couldn’t deliver, and so you’re just looking at the things that would be attributed to you as product quality, being unhappy with the product. Look for return rates that are outsized. Also, look at voice of the customer. Look at your reviews and your seller feedback All that data sitting there in the account waiting for you, and a lot of people never take that time to go look at it. If you will look, you will see people telling you exactly what’s wrong. So I want to give you a super quick example. I had a client who is approved to sell Nike clothing and it sold Nike clothing for years, in years and All of a sudden his return rate went through the roof for clothing. So clothing you’re looking, you want 20% or less, and all of a sudden he’s up in the mid 30s to 40s. Can’t figure out why.

Lesley:

So we did this process. We went and sorted everything by return rate and looked at the voice of the customer data. There was this one particular line of Nike clothing where everything was too small, bad quality, check or bad manufacturing, whatever it was. But it was a women’s line where every single thing return was too small, too small, too small, too small. Unfortunately, he waited about three months before he paid attention to that data. He was able, because he could show the data he actually got to return it all the Nike for a refund, everything that he had left. But just imagine if he caught that in the first month before he had all those expensive returns.

Bradely Sutton:

Yeah. So, yeah, there’s definitely some preventative maintenance. You guys can do it in Amazon. It’s actually, I mean, more than ever before, and I was on really good at giving information out that wasn’t available before. You know whether it’s. You know keyword stuff you know from brand analytics and search career performance, but but they give you reasons for returns and a lot of you helium 10 users out there Don’t even realize you can actually access that. Instead of having a download report, you can just go into your profits dashboard and you can see all the reasons that people leave for Refunds and and set an alert like, hey, if this, if any of my products go over this, this number of Refunds or returns, you know to give you a notification. So that’s definitely something you guys should be doing. Going back to what you said earlier about the code of conduct things you know, like you know Things I have to do with Amazon terms of service what are some people doing to actually trigger? Trigger that nowadays, the buyer code of conduct thing, because it’s not too.

Lesley:

I mean, I don’t hear about it too much so the most common is still probably the first one, which is friends and family reviews. And sometimes that is bad incentives at your business, because you might have people who you’re incentivizing them based on your revenue of a certain product and they’ll ask their friends and family to buy the product and to leave reviews and that Before you think that that can’t take you down, I promise it can. Amazon uses something like Spokio If you’re familiar with something like Spokio on the internet where it shows like everyone you’ve ever lived with and it can tell who your neighbors are. They figure out who your friends and family are through that and also through who you’ve bought gifts for and such on Amazon like they know everything, they know your whole life, they know all your friends and family, so that one still gets people a lot Also.

Lesley:

People get really frustrated, so they will. They will downvote or upvote bad reviews, down vote good reviews on their competitors products. They think that if they don’t actually write a review and they just up and down vote, that that’s they’re gonna get away with it. They’ll find that, too, very frustrating. Also, if you get oh man, there was one seller I dealt with, really nice guy, and I think he almost didn’t see. This is wrong, but he was placing fake orders for his products and having them delivered to oh gosh, bradley. And what are they called the Amazon, like the boxes where you go pick up your your stuff at one of the Amazon.

Bradely Sutton:

Oh, I know the locker.

Lesley:

Oh yeah, thank you, Thank you at Amazon locker, so he was creating fake orders for Amazon locker to boost his products velocity. I mean, I Think it was just out of so much frustration, because it is really hard when you have a new product and and people start to be afraid they’re gonna lose their business, so they grab on to this strategy that sounded really great. Well, they’ll figure that out too when they’re all returned To the truck, because no one ever picks them up. A lot of it’s the easy, simple things like that. It’s not the super devious stuff. Another thing to be really careful about right now this is, like my number one danger for sellers. A lot of sellers, even private label sellers, are being approached by people offering an automated Dropship service and that what they do is they will use the VA’s and they will set up dropshipping out of your account. A lot of these are overseas services From other countries. A lot of them are from Pakistan, india, all over the place and what they’ll tell you is oh, you just need more cash flow in your Amazon account. Even if you’re private label, we can do that. So here’s where it gets really bad.

Lesley:

Sometimes what they will do is then they will list products that are their own products or an agency’s products or our friends products on your account and it begins to meet the definition of money laundering when you do enough of this and so you’ve actually become part of a money laundering scheme. That is Overseas. Here’s why I mentioned the overseas. Now we’re talking about international wire fraud. So you can you can think you’re doing something really safe and cool and it sounds really attractive. Well, if it’s, if it seems too good to be true, probably is so. I’ve had multiple accounts who’ve been shut down for money laundering and, unfortunately, amazon permanently held their funds for their private label product and it destroyed the private label business.

Bradely Sutton:

Speaking of shady things, let’s flip the script a little bit. You know, let’s say you’re doing everything right and and knowing, and unknowingly, no problems. What are some common things that you’re seeing nowadays, where black hat sellers are attacking innocent sellers Like over the years has been different things Like sometimes sellers with vendor access or something. They’ll go into a marketplace where maybe that seller is not there and then get on their ace and then throw in some adult keywords or something to get them suspended, or do that downvote thing on all their reviews or fake reviews, giving them a big rush. So what kind of things are you seeing sellers being attacked by other sellers on?

Lesley:

So unfortunately, the strategy you just mentioned about using international vendor accounts to put in bad keywords is still happening, and there’s not as much adult right now, because Amazon has solved a lot of that adult flag issue internally, but instead they’re putting in every street drug name you can imagine. Some of them so wild that I have to Google them. I’m like what’s that? And then find out what’s-.

Bradely Sutton:

Hey, your husband taking a look at your internet browser history. Honey, I think we is there something wrong, you know, like-.

Lesley:

Oh my goodness, I’ve thought several times about not only my browser history, but my Amazon like products. You viewed thing Cause I? I mean we work with people who are in the adult category and all kinds of crazy products that are banned and, oh my goodness, so many bad things. But, yes, one thing that I’m seeing that I find most upsetting is extortion, where people demand Bitcoin in return for having your ASIN go back up, because they’ve paid someone inside Amazon to take down your ASIN. I’ve had at least three clients in the last two months who I believe their report of violation tool in brand registry was removed by a bad actor working with someone inside Amazon because they told they warned the client. In all three cases I’m gonna get your report of violation taken down because you’ve reported me and it magically happened. And whatever notes were put in the account by the bad actor have made it extremely difficult to get their brand registry privileges reinstated.

Lesley:

The notes in there must be horrifying, because we can’t even get anyone to look at it until after five, six, seven escalations. So that’s a really big one right now. Oh gosh, what else? So many things? There’s still the massive down voting, the huge influx of negative reviews out of the blue, some of them clearly done overseas, so that you’re escaping you a jurisdiction, and also where it’s similar wording and you can tell they were all written by one person or by AI feeding in stuff. Those are all really awful. There’s just so many ways you can hurt other sellers it’s you can’t even count them.

Bradely Sutton:

There’s always this stuff in that. Amazon is always. It’s funny like I have this news weekly. I call it the weekly buzz, and once a month Amazon, on one of their press releases, puts out this report. I always play the law and order theme because they call it like CCU or something like that. So it sounds like a law and order SVU or something like that. But we’re like hey, here’s what our CCU department has removed all these bad actors, blah, blah, blah. So Amazon is always saying that they’re dealing with this. But like, how is Amazon these days at understanding the black category? That’s happening, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that hey, all of a sudden, three accounts are buying all of my products and then returning it and leaving a bad review. This is not organic. But then sometimes it seems like it’s nothing’s being done about it. Like, are you seeing any improvement? Like, is Amazon making an effort to kind of deal with this kind of like obvious black hattery?

Lesley:

What’s very frustrating is that it is so inconsistent. So couple quick examples. One big problem right now for US sellers is overseas sellers who are creating versions of products where there are US rules that are not being followed in that product. And so if you’re in the US, you have to follow the rules or you could even face criminal charges sometimes, and the overseas sellers they aren’t being held to account. So I had a client who they were selling a product that is a generic version of something that’s FDA approved and they had competitors from overseas who were selling non-approved versions and we escalated that to Amazon and we got all of the competitors removed. Awesome, exact same timeframe competitor who had a product that is regulated by the Department of Energy. Escalate, escalate, escalate, escalate some more. Do it five, 10 more times, obviously breaking the law. All you have to do is open the box and you can see the three ways they’re breaking the law. Still haven’t gotten that fixed. Like two months later still working on it, no one cares. And this isn’t even just you’re violating Amazon’s rules, which they are in, like six other ways that I’ve thrown it out, but they’re also violating US law and state law.

Lesley:

The problem with what you’re talking about with like, all of a sudden I’m attacked by competitors. I have a guy I worked with last Friday. He said he’d had three negative reviews on his product in three years it’s a number two in his category and then all of a sudden in October had nine reviews nine negative reviews in one month, and then all of a sudden gets taken down for restricted products when there were no bad keywords in his listing. It’s obviously an attack. I mean, we’re not stupid, but you can’t get Amazon to listen to you about a pattern of data like that. They won’t do it. They have the tools to look internally and see it, but they will not accept a pattern of data unless you can show them something that is, like you know, obvious. And how can I do that? I can’t because I can’t show the IP addresses that the reviews came from or any of the other things that Amazon can see. Those get really frustrating and we really just have to fight on policy alone. So, like that one, I was so excited it got it fixed in one escalation, woo. But then I’ll have another client with the same pattern, where it’s you know, five or six escalations later, beat your head against the wall.

Bradely Sutton:

Before we get into, like your 60 second strategy of the episode, you actually have a book that came out this week, right?

Lesley:

Yes, I’m so excited it’s called the Amazon incubator. I argue, okay, so this is kind of the fun part about me. You will not find another person with more Amazon horror stories and more negative things to say about Amazon, because I live it every day. However, I still argue that Amazon is the best business incubator in the history of the world. There really is no rival. And people ask me every single week Is it still a good time to sell on Amazon? And the answer is yes. Is it harder? Yes, so I argue that you really need to go into it with a business plan, and that’s essentially what the book is. It’s a basic business plan approach, but instead of being like, hey, use my strategy, get a Lamborghini, it’s very much about what is your goal, what do you want to do, what kind of business do you want to have? And then walks you through how to develop that business step by step.

Bradely Sutton:

Awesome, and so how can people find it? Is it KDP that you made it on, or?

Lesley:

It is not. I got a brand spanking real publisher and it’s distributed by Simon and Schuster. So it’s at all the major bookstores and you can go to theamazonincubator.com and there will give you the link to every single publisher. You can just click and it’ll or sorry bookstore, and it’ll click and go out there and buy it and it’s available, of course, on Amazon.

Bradely Sutton:

Oh, you fancy huh.

Lesley:

All right, I like it.

Bradely Sutton:

All right. Now you know we ask our guest is a 60 second tip of the day. Could be about anything that’s your specialty, or could be about publishing books. Could be about anything you want.

Lesley:

Okay.

Bradely Sutton:

Well, your 60 second tip of the day today is how important it is to have SOPs.

Lesley:

Again, I’m all about the boring, Bradley, but I’m about the boring that will help you to grow a business over time without losing your mind and this is actually in the book quite a bit. There’s so much about selling on Amazon that can be put into a standard operating procedure and all that means is you, as the business owner or the seller, you’re writing down the steps and documenting how you do something. Then you test it and make sure you’re doing it well. Then you hand it off to someone who doesn’t have a clue about the business and see if they can do it. This could be your brother, your sister, your husband, your wife, your kid. Your kid is the best, because they will be happy to tell you where you’re wrong. And then, after you’ve gotten it sweet and perfect, that’s when you hand it off to that virtual assistant that you’ve hired for a few bucks an hour, or that agency person or whoever that trusted human is that you can have in your Amazon account to follow those SOPs to get your business running, but knowing that it’s being done the way you would do it. Yeah.

Bradely Sutton:

I like it. I like it, all right. And one last question too. You know when you need to step away from Amazon because, like I can imagine, some days your job gets pretty stressful and dealing with negative things all day long. What are your go-to, like hobbies or de-stressers or just you know good the things that just add some good vibes to your life.

Lesley:

I love to hike. Hiking is my very favorite thing. The combination of low-impact exercise, being outdoors and the sunshine cannot be beaten Right now. My younger kid he’s 16. He is very motivated to be a starter on his high school football team next year.

Bradely Sutton:

In Texas. That’s no small feat, that’s a big thing.

Lesley:

So the other thing I’m doing right now is he’s actually letting me work out with him y’all, which I can’t keep up. But we do things like we put him in a 40-pound weighted vest and then we do the same thing. Right, so he’s in a handicap. Or we’re taking I love this, we’re taking bar classes, yoga classes and Pilates classes because he knows he needs to strengthen his core and stretch and those are like old lady classes. So those are perfect for me, but he’s doing them with me and it’s just so great. You know, when your kids get older, I’ve only got a couple more years of him in the house. It just makes Mommy’s heart happy to be able to go work out with my kiddo.

Bradely Sutton:

Love it, love it All right. Well, wish y’all the best of success this year and, you know, keep doing what you’re doing. You’re helping a lot of sellers out there, and if people want to reach out to you, how can they find you? On the interwebs.

Lesley:

So you can go to riverbendconsulting.com. Not only do we have a form you can fill out, we have an actual phone number and people answer the phone and talk to you about your problems and if we can’t help you, we will help you find someone who can. Also, if you head on out to social media, especially LinkedIn I just searched for Leslie Hensel. I love connecting there and you could ask me your Amazon questions. Send me DMs. I love to answer and have conversations.

Bradely Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks for sharing your time with us and we’ll see you again, definitely next year.

Lesley:

Thank you, Bradley.

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