Counterfeit Claims Gone Wrong: How Brands Get Themselves Suspended

[00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions, Chris McCabe flying solo today from ecommerceChris. For today, I wanted to talk about some questionable tactics and some troubling trends. We're seeing with brand owners going nuclear or going into attack mode anytime any reseller hops on one of their listings. They might not consider them resellers. They might say, we know these guys don't have any access to our product. These are counterfeiters. I just wanted to make sure that people understand that if you are overly or overly aggressive or unable to conclusively prove with test buys, with other evidence that's documented that the other seller is in fact abusing policies, breaking terms of service, offering fake product and so forth.

The focus might end up being on you and not the resellers that you've reported. And I understand there's numerous services [00:01:00] consultants out there saying, Hey, we can knock these people off, lickity split. Just hire us and you know, we'll contact some people we know internally. That's a risky move. Unless you know exactly what they're doing on your behalf, number one.

Number two, make sure there's transparency around those tactics and practices because you don't want your brand registry revoked. That could be incredibly difficult to get back. And also you don't just wanna be caught red-handed, violating the code of conduct simply because you think somebody is offering a lesser product than what you're selling. I understand that if you do a test buy and they keep canceling it, that's a problem. But obviously you can report that somebody keeps canceling our orders. We're doing a test buy. We're trying to verify the legitimacy of their supply chain and also the product itself, and make sure even if it's not a counterfeit version of our product, that it's matching the detail page.

These are terms and approaches that will resonate with policy enforcement [00:02:00] teams with anyone at Amazon interested in protecting detail page integrity has to be framed a certain way. I see a lot of brands kind of stumbling through it in a rather clumsy manner, in a risky manner as well by making allegations of counterfeit or just making other unsubstantiated IP claims.

Typically they are not working through with any professional guidance or advice from an intellectual property attorney, it might just be a general practice attorney, or it might be no attorney, and they're just doing it on their own. There's very little discussion within the Amazon community or within this space seller space, marketplace sellers about consequences.

There's lots of recommendations for aggressive tactics for reporting things via email, sometimes directly to executives, sometimes through Seller Central, but you can get your brand registry revoked. We as suspension and reinstatement specialists have dealt with numerous [00:03:00] brands who were kind of overreporting and underdelivering on the kinds of content and evidence Amazon wanted.

Some of the causes being that they didn't recognize the reseller, they were tired of swatting at the flies. They thought that, uh, that were hopping on their listings. They thought that their brand register would protect them, protect their brand from resellers. You don't automatically get gated when you're a new brand, right? That's not how it works. It's an open marketplace. If there's a reseller selling legitimate versions of your product, legitimate items that match your ASIN, that reflect what's on your detail page, and the the product meets those specs, then they of course can sell it. They can offer it.

You can't have private pricing wars with them, contact them, cease and desist style saying You're not supposed to sell on Amazon, sell our product on Amazon, you don't have our permission, it's not about permission. Amazon might ask them for a letter of [00:04:00] authorization. That is true. Amazon does that more and more and more now, but it doesn't mean you can report them for counterfeit simply because they're not authorized to sell your product on Amazon. There's tons of confusion around this. I think it's just wishful thinking on the one side and on the other side it's just services who want to collect a little cash for their strategy, their tactics, who are kind of pitching their wares and as many forums as they can find.

But again, as it has been with other types of policy violations, not intellectual property. Related and not abuse. Reporting related things like review, manipulation, the emphasis is always on sales and less discussion around is this compliant with policies or I guess I've seen more people addressing this directly instead of skirting the whole issue saying, okay, you probably want to know, is this TOS compliant?

Yes, it is. Here's our explanation for why. The explanation never holds water. I mean, I see all these third party service sites all [00:05:00] the time. There are legitimate brand protection methods. There are legitimate brand protection services out there. There are legitimate ways of reporting abuse. The notion of successful back channel, there are ways of emailing different people at Amazon to show them different types of abuse, whether it's IP related or counterfeit or otherwise.

But you don't want to be caught reporting abuse in the wrong way, the wrong to the wrong team, to the wrong people, and exposing your flank for not doing your homework and not doing your due diligence on have you reported somebody for something that you cannot document. It's a violation of the law or a violation of the terms of service.

There's been all kinds of tricks and tactics people have used. I brought up review manipulation because some people were buying from competitors and then leaving them nasty Reviews certainly don't do that. That's not the right way to [00:06:00] go. People were getting their entire account suspended for doing that.

For harming or abusing another seller. Maybe down the road you could determine. That the seller had counterfeit product, but you need the evidence. First of all, you don't need to leave them a product review just to scare buyers away. That's gonna do more harm than good. Secondly, if you get the test buy delivered, you have counterfeit product in your hand. You can send images of it. You can send a written description of how it's different from your product. It is possible to get those sellers off your listing. Will some other sellers jump onto your listing if there's some success rate and some sales there and undercut you on price?

Yes, of course they will. But understand that you can't petition that easily for gating. Gating is sort of this, you know, mystical creature that used to exist for brand owners who repeatedly had to file IP claims against counterfeiters, who repeatedly had problems with the same handful of sellers. That notion's kind of gone [00:07:00] away.

They don't wanna talk about gating anymore. If you're going to go to Amazon Legal, you want to have that track record of positive counterfeit reporting with evidence, with examples in hand, in order to get anywhere near having this concept of whitelisting in place. Whitelisting meaning, you know, essentially people can't hop onto your listing whenever they feel like it. You kind of have to get some of those seller accounts blocked. The best strategy I see is getting some of them removed from the platform for repeat abuses, which makes your listing less enticing. I mean, who's going to come back with a different account and sell the product that they say is the same as yours the next day, the next week, the next month. If they already tried it a couple of times and they already had a couple of their accounts blocked, when their accounts are blocked for things like that, they're probably not getting their inventory back. They're probably not getting their money back.

This is what has incensed and enraged so many China-based sellers over the years, right? Their biggest problem wasn't the account itself because they were just out [00:08:00] there opening new ones. They were losing their money and they were losing their inventory. That's what really got under their skin over the years.

So just employ some strategies and don't just kind of fall for a sales pitch from this or that person. You meet at an event or wherever you come across that, maybe on YouTube or different online ads, because they rarely talk about consequences. What I've seen is lots of either overpromising and under-delivering where, you know, the hit rate is a lot lower than what's promised.

But that's of course been common throughout the account suspension and reinstatement world almost, you know, the last six, seven years. The real issue is that brands are kind of easily believing some of these claims, throwing money at these people, and that just encourages them to pursue these different tactics.

Sometimes the tactics do involve reaching out to employees at Amazon directly, but, unfortunately it might involve illicit means that warning signs of course are [00:09:00] if they're not telling you what they're doing on your behalf, that's where you realize you could be risking your whole account, your whole business.

Just entrusting that one person or that one service. I don't know why you would do that. I understand it's tantalizing to see that you could, you know, the, the carrot dangled that says We will help you eliminate all competition but rarely are they talking about, oh, by the way, if you hire us to do this, there could be adverse consequences.

People that work with us on abuse reporting cases, we usually, in the first call or the first few minutes mention what the potential adverse consequences are, and we're working with a lot of brand owners that don't necessarily have a choice because they're being attacked so viciously and over a period of time.

But again, if there's a right way to do this and sort of a seasoned veteran, careful, deliberate way of doing this. And then there's sort of the homemade version or the version that's been dressed up and, and gussied up to look like it's professional, but it's not going to look that way to Amazon policy enforcement teams to [00:10:00] Amazon legal, to IP enforcement teams.

They're going to examine you. If they should be at least examining you as much as they are the party that you're reporting, because if you've got some skeletons in your closet. You're focused less on that and, and cleaning up your account health or any listing issues or, or any unregistered trademarks and so forth On your side, you're focused more on the resellers that hop on and off listings.

Then again, you're leaving your flank exposed and Amazon has shown. Countless times and countless past escalations that brand owners who submit abuse claims can be punished themselves if they don't have their house in order, and if they're just trusting unrealistic claims they hear and services they hire.

So also, of course, just to conclude this week's episode. With an obvious note, obviously Amazon doesn't wanna waste time with extra administrative tasks that they shouldn't have to spend time on, like chasing [00:11:00] down, you know, helping you attack another seller just because you don't want other sellers getting in your way and mucking up your revenue per projections or forecasts.

They need it to be substantial and legitimate if they think that they're being sent in a wild goose chase because you know, you've had it with resellers on the platform. I mean, unless you're on track to get your brand gated. And you've been told that by higher ups at Amazon Legal, or other higher ups at Amazon that you've maybe met in person at events or otherwise, you're just kind of wasting their time with some of these extra claims that they have to shoot down.

So, questions on that, of course, let us know. Anyone who needs a referral to a legit IP attorney and not just kind of a, you know, general kind of copy and paste AI style paralegal law firm that we typically see in the Amazon space, let us know. We're happy to give you referrals and get you in the right direction.

Thanks, and talk to you next time.

luck.