Lesson 3: Will Amazon Help Protect Your Brand from Unauthorized Sellers?

When you understand the threats that unauthorized 3Ps can pose to your brand on Amazon, a logical question for your company to ask is: Won’t Amazon itself help us keep those retailers from selling our products on its marketplace? Amazon doesn’t want rogue sellers using its platform to list products without the permission or knowledge of the brand owner, right?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes and no. Worse, it’s more of a no. 

In this lesson, we’ll discuss:

• Why Amazon tends to say no to brands asking for help removing unauthorized listings of their products.
• Under which circumstances Amazon will intervene to pull down a retailer’s product listings.

Why Wouldn’t Amazon Always Take Down Unauthorized Sellers’ Listings?

As noted in the first lesson, Amazon’s public position has always been that more retailers offering the same products on the company’s marketplace is a net positive. Amazon’s philosophy is logical: Competition drives down prices. It also forces sellers to find innovative ways to add value to their offerings. All of this benefits Amazon’s customers.

Moreover, Amazon has also consistently signaled to its seller community (retailers, manufacturers, and brand owners) that the company will generally not get involved in authorization disputes between brands and sellers. If a brand owner contacts Amazon Seller Central to complain that a retailer is listing its products without permission, Amazon will usually take the position that this is a supply-chain issue the brand needs to fix on its own.

Will Amazon honor our brand’s Authorized Dealer Network?

Here’s a related question that TrackStreet often receives from brands:

If we share our list of authorized dealers with Amazon Seller Central, will they input that list into their database and prevent unauthorized retailers from being able to add listings of our products in the first place? 

The answer is no. Amazon takes no responsibility for policing which retailers can list a brand’s products, as long as those retailers follow Amazon’s seller guidelines. As long as a product is authentic and Amazon believes the seller can deliver it to a customer as promised in the listing, the company views that listing as a good thing for the Amazon marketplace, even if it upsets the brand owner. 

Later in this course, we will discuss some of the tools Amazon makes available to give brands more control over their product listings and other content on Amazon. For now, though, just keep in mind that Amazon is not concerned with whether or not a seller listing your brand’s product has a relationship with your company.

When Will Amazon Intervene to Stop a Seller from Listing Products?

As the authorization issue we just reviewed makes clear, there will be plenty of instances when your brand’s interests are in direct conflict with the interests of Amazon. You want to limit your Amazon product listings to the dealers you know and trust. Amazon wants more competition for every product on its marketplace. And because Amazon is bigger and stronger than your company, their interests will prevail every time. 

The takeaway from this is that if you want to stop unauthorized sales of your products on Amazon, you’ll need to get proactive and stop the distribution leaks before your inventory ever has a chance to fall into the hands of rogue retailers. Once those rogues get your products and list them on Amazon, it will be too late to ask for Amazon’s help.

There are exceptions to this rule.

There will be rogue-retail scenarios when your brand’s interests align with Amazon’s. Under these circumstances, you will have a much better chance of receiving the company’s help ridding its marketplace of those unauthorized sellers. Here are the three main examples. 

1. The seller is listing counterfeit products.

If you find a retailer advertising a counterfeit version of your company’s product on Amazon and you can prove the products are fakes, you’ll be able to enlist Amazon’s help to remove the listing and even the seller altogether.

Because selling counterfeit goods is a crime, Amazon knows its business could face legal problems for facilitating these transactions on its platform and does not want to be involved in any illegal activity.  Amazon knows that taking a zero-tolerance approach to counterfeit products is important for protecting its own brand.

In later lessons, we’ll review some best practices for spotting counterfeiters on Amazon and documenting a case against them that you can present to Amazon Seller Central.  

2. The listing violates the brand’s intellectual property rights.

Your brand’s interests will line up nicely with Amazon’s when it comes to stopping a retailer from using your company’s trademarks and other proprietary content on Amazon’s marketplace. Again, for Amazon this will primarily be a legal issue. Using a business’s intellectual property without authorization is a crime.

Unfortunately, this legal strategy will not work in the majority of cases.

In Lesson 1, we described the two ways a rogue retailer can sell a brand’s products on the Amazon marketplace. They can add their listing to the legitimate product detail page, where they’ll be competing alongside all of the brand’s legitimate sellers. Or they can create a phony detail page, based on a fake Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), in which case the rogue retailer will be the only seller on the page.

Most unauthorized 3Ps will simply add their offering to the existing product detail page. This takes less effort than creating a phony page themselves. These rogue sellers know they have the advantage of being able to offer the product at the lowest price on the real detail page because all authorized dealers must honor the brand’s MAP policy pricing.

When advertising your product side-by-side with other sellers on the official Amazon product detail page, these unauthorized retailers are not technically using your brand’s intellectual property. The product’s name, logo trademarks, sales copy, and other content your brand owns are already published on that detail page when a rogue seller comes along and adds its own offer. In these cases, which represent the majority of unauthorized retailers’ listings, you won’t have an intellectual-property case to persuade Amazon to remove the seller.

But when these rogue 3Ps do create their own product detail pages, you can employ this legal strategy to enlist Amazon to remove them. Even if the retailer uses a slight variation of your product’s name to create the page and alters your sales copy, you can still make a strong case that they are using your intellectual property on the Amazon platform. That is flat-out illegal, and Amazon will step in to stop it. 

3. The seller is defrauding consumers.

These scenarios will be more difficult to prove, but a determined brand will be able to build a case that will get Amazon’s attention.

If an unauthorized retailer is selling your products on Amazon in a misleading way, and you can prove this, the company will be more likely to intervene to end the practice. Examples of misleading behavior that Amazon wants to prevent on its marketplace:

• The seller promises a shipping timeframe but fails to deliver on that promise.
• The seller alters the product’s packaging or opens and reseals the original package, before shipping.
• The seller’s offer includes rebates, warranties, customer support, or other benefits available only to consumers who buy through one of the product’s authorized dealers.  

To build a case against such an unauthorized seller, you will need to conduct test buys and document every aspect of the experience. 

That might include taking screenshots of sales content or promises made on the seller’s Amazon page and taking photos of the package when it arrives (for example, if it has clearly been opened prior to shipping).

Key Takeaway: Amazon Is Not Your Ally or Resale Partner

Later in this course, we will discuss additional best practices for boosting the chances that Amazon will help you remove unauthorized retailers from its marketplace, and best practices for preventing these rogue sellers from acquiring your products in the first place.

Key Takeaway: When Amazon Seller Central conducts an investigation into your complaint against a retailer, they will be looking only for violations of Amazon’s own seller policies, not threats to your company’s interests.

Quiz time.