As the Christmas season approaches, Amazon has published some official recommendations aimed at sellers to help them preserve their account health during the most critical period of the year.
In particular, the marketplace highlights the importance of constantly monitoring the account health rating, a tool designed to prevent issues that could lead to deactivation precisely when sales potential reaches its annual peak.
Losing access to the platform during November and December would mean giving up the most substantial slice of annual revenues. Compliance with Amazon policies therefore becomes a strategic priority.
The holiday period amplifies every operational aspect of the business on Amazon. Sales volumes grow exponentially. Customer expectations rise. Response times shorten. Logistics pressure reaches high levels. In this context of operational stress, even small deviations from platform policies can have amplified consequences. Amazon recognizes this reality. And, for this reason, explicitly invites sellers to pay particular attention to their performance during these crucial months.
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How the Account Health Rating system works
For some time now, Amazon has developed a system called Account Health Rating that assigns every seller a numerical score between 0 and 1,000 points. The Account Health State is visually represented through a color scheme that allows one to immediately understand the risk level associated with their account. The underlying logic is to provide a synthetic but complete indicator of the seller account deactivation risk, based on compliance with the multiple policies that regulate selling on the platform.
The score calculation takes into consideration several interconnected factors that Amazon evaluates dynamically and continuously.
The number of unresolved issues constitutes the first evaluation element. In summary, the more pending violations a seller accumulates, the lower their score drops. But not all problems have the same weight, and here the second determining factor comes into play: the severity of violations.
Amazon in fact classifies problems on a scale ranging from low to critical, passing through medium and high. It also assigns penalties proportional to the severity of the violation. A critical violation can cause the score to collapse much more rapidly than several low-severity violations.
The third element considered in the algorithm is perhaps the most interesting. The negative impact the violation had on the customer shopping experience. Amazon does not evaluate violations in the abstract, as simple regulatory infractions, but weighs them based on the concrete consequences suffered by consumers.
An approach that confirms once again Amazon’s customer orientation. And, furthermore, explains why some apparently technical violations are treated with particular severity if they caused frustration or harm to customers.
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The critical threshold and the point recovery system
Amazon has established an alert threshold at 100 points. When the account health rating falls below this level, the seller enters a high deactivation risk zone. Finding oneself below this threshold during the Christmas period is a scenario to avoid absolutely. It would mean conducting the most important moment of the commercial year with the sword of Damocles of suspension always looming. Account deactivation can indeed mean the sudden end of a business that maybe took years to build.
Fortunately, the system is not permanently punitive but offers recovery mechanisms. Sellers lose points when new policy violations are detected. However, they can recover them by correctly resolving the identified problems. Once Amazon has verified that a violation has actually been remedied, the account health rating is updated quickly, generally within a few hours.
There is also a mechanism of positive point accumulation that rewards operational continuity. Sellers earn 4 points for every 200 orders managed correctly. A positive reinforcement system induces maintaining high sales volumes with constant performance, as this actively contributes to building a safety cushion in the account score. During the holiday period, when volumes explode, this mechanism can play in favor of sellers who operate well, allowing them to accumulate points more quickly than normal.
Adopt constant and active monitoring
Amazon explicitly recommends regularly checking the account health rating, using the performance notification system as an early warning tool. Waiting for a problem to become critical before intervening is a mistake that can cost dearly. And it is especially so during the fourth quarter. Monitoring must therefore become a daily habit, integrated into the operational routine just like order management or inventory replenishment.
Account performance notifications work like a diagnostic dashboard that signals in real time the emergence of issues. Ignoring these warnings or procrastinating their management is equivalent to driving a car ignoring the warning lights on the dashboard. Sooner or later a breakdown occurs. During the holiday period, when attention is often absorbed by a thousand different operational urgencies, it is easy to let notifications pile up unread. Amazon implicitly warns against this temptation, underlining the importance of timeliness in resolving problems.
The monitoring cadence should intensify precisely in moments of greatest activity. Paradoxically, when one is busiest managing orders and shipments, is also when it becomes most critical to keep an eye on account health. Many experienced sellers have developed routines that foresee a morning check of the account dashboard before even starting to process orders, thus ensuring they are not caught by surprise by issues that could degenerate during the day.
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Manage problems in order of severity
Not all violations require the same urgency of intervention. And Amazon explicitly advises prioritizing problems based on their severity. The recommendation, well sharable, reflects the fact that during the holiday period sellers have limited resources and must make choices on where to concentrate their efforts. Addressing violations classified as critical or high severity first therefore means dealing with what represents the most immediate risk to account survival.
The most critical violations are generally those that touch fundamental aspects of the customer experience or violate stringent legal regulations. By way of non-exhaustive example, they are those that include problems such as:
- sale of counterfeit products
- product safety violations
- failure to respect mandatory compliance requirements
- systematic elements of poor service.
These are situations that require immediate and often complex interventions, which can include:
- the removal of listings
- the revision of entire operational processes
- the modification of relationships with suppliers.
Medium and low severity violations, while not representing immediate threats to account survival, must certainly not be ignored. Accumulating them means anyway progressively eroding one’s score. And, in addition, reducing the available safety margin.
In this case, the optimal approach consists in quickly resolving the major criticalities. Then, proceed systematically to the resolution of minor problems. One must therefore prevent them from accumulating until they collectively become a serious problem.
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Curate information on product pages
Amazon places particular emphasis on the need to ensure that product pages contain accurate information. The recommendation may seem obvious, but the reality is that many account problems derive precisely from discrepancies between what is declared in the product sheet and what is actually received by the customer.
During the frenzy of the Christmas period, when products are added to the catalog quickly to exploit market opportunities, it is easier for incomplete or inaccurate information to end up online.
Well, the priority information to verify is that linked to:
- descriptions of product features
- technical specifications
- dimensions
- weight
- composition materials
- any other attribute that can influence the purchasing decision or product use.
Images must faithfully represent the item. They must not include manipulations that can induce unrealistic expectations. Customers who receive products different from what is viewed or described tend in fact to leave negative feedback and open claims. Factors that, clearly, negatively impact the account assessment.
A particularly delicate area is that of compliance and safety declarations. If a product requires specific certifications, these must be authentic and documentable. Falsely declaring that a product respects certain standards not only violates Amazon policies but can also expose to serious legal liabilities.
Quality control before shipment
Amazon’s last piece of advice regards the implementation of accurate quality controls before shipping products. The explicit goal is to avoid defective items reaching customers. The recommendation is central to the customer experience and is perhaps the point where sellers have the most direct control over their results. A defective product that arrives at destination generates almost inevitably a claim, a return and often a negative review. Elements that, obviously, damage account health.
During the holiday peak, when volumes multiply and the pressure to fulfill orders quickly reaches extreme levels, the temptation to cut corners on quality controls can become strong. Amazon warns however against this temptation, reminding that speed must never come at the expense of quality. An order shipped quickly but containing a defective product is worse than an order slightly delayed but perfect. The first generates a problem that will require time and resources to be resolved. The second might at most generate a slightly longer wait.
Quality controls should moreover cover not only the product itself but also the packaging and order correctness. Verifying that:
- the right item is in the right package
- the packaging adequately protects the content during transport
- any declared accessories or components are actually present
are steps that require a few seconds but can prevent significant problems. For those managing high volumes, implementing standardized checklists and double-check procedures is an investment that can pay off largely in terms of reducing post-sales problems.
