Overview

During the holiday season Amazon intensifies enforcement of its performance and policy standards, and any lapse in compliance can lead to an account suspension that wipes out peak‑quarter sales. Sellers who ignore the tightened metrics risk costly downtime when consumer demand is at its highest.

Key Points

• Late‑Shipment Rate Spike — In November, a mid‑size electronics vendor missed 150 deliveries out of 3,500 orders, pushing its late‑shipment rate to 4.3 % and triggering an automatic suspension.
• Order Defect Rate Breach — An order‑defect rate that climbs above 1 % during the December rush, often driven by a surge of negative reviews, prompts an immediate account review.
• Single Counterfeit Claim — Listing a brand‑new designer handbag without a brand‑authorization letter and receiving one counterfeit allegation can lock the entire seller account.
• Restricted Keyword Usage — Adding prohibited terms such as “free shipping” or “best price” to product titles in the Black Friday window frequently results in listing removal and a broader suspension.
• Prohibited Category Listings — Introducing items from restricted categories (e.g., certain dietary supplements) without prior approval caused a health‑products seller to lose publishing rights within two days.
• Missing Invoice Documentation — Failure to upload purchase invoices within the 48‑hour deadline after a policy notice has led to permanent bans for several apparel merchants.
• Pre‑fulfillment Cancel Rate Surge — A home‑goods seller saw its pre‑fulfillment cancel rate jump from 0.5 % to 3.2 % after a carrier outage, crossing Amazon’s 2.5 % threshold and prompting a suspension notice.
• Inaccurate Product Condition Claims — Describing refurbished electronics as “new” on a marketplace listing generated a policy violation that resulted in a full account hold for the vendor.

How Amazon Detects Violations

1. Performance Metric Monitoring — Amazon’s automated engine scans daily seller metrics; when a seller’s late‑shipment rate rose from 2 % to 5 % over a two‑week December period, the system issued an instant “Performance Notification.”