Amazon account suspended? How to appeal, write a plan of action and protect your account health

An email saying your Amazon account has been deactivated is the most expensive message a seller can receive, because from that moment no product earns anything. Most deactivations we see are avoidable, and most failed appeals fail for the same reason: they apologise instead of explaining. This guide covers how Amazon UK decides to deactivate an account, what it asks for when you appeal, and how to write a plan of action that deals with the cause. It sits under our guide to running a complex Amazon account, where account health is the first job of the week.

One word first. Sellers say “suspended”. Amazon’s help pages say deactivated for the whole account, and listing removal or restriction for individual products and fulfilment methods. The appeal routes are different, so check which one you are facing before you write anything⁶.

How the Account Health Rating works

The Account Health Rating (AHR) is Amazon’s measure of how likely your account is to be deactivated for breaking the policies it covers. It is a colour-coded score from 0 to 1,000, shown for each store on your Account Health page, and it reflects your policy record and selling activity over the last 180 days¹.

New sellers start at 200. You lose points for each new violation, typically two to eight depending on severity, and gain them back when a violation is resolved. Repeat violations of the same policy count for more each time, sometimes doubling, and you earn four points for every 200 orders fulfilled in the last 180 days². So a small account with a couple of violations can turn yellow faster than a large one with the same record.

Severity decides how fast it happens. Amazon groups violations as critical, high, medium or low. A critical violation, such as a counterfeit confirmed by a test buy, review manipulation or non-compliant inserts, drops the score to zero immediately, and you have three days to resolve it before deactivation². Reaching the repeat limit for one policy in 180 days has the same effect: the limit is five for infringement-related policies and two for restricted products².

Two caveats matter. A Healthy score does not protect you from everything: Amazon can deactivate immediately, whatever the score, if it suspects fraudulent, deceptive, illegal or otherwise harmful activity, or for breaches of policies outside the AHR¹. And violations you successfully appeal, without disputing that they happened, can still count towards the repeat limit².

The performance targets Amazon measures

Alongside the AHR, the Account Health page shows customer service and delivery metrics. Most of them apply only to orders you fulfil yourself; FBA orders are Amazon’s responsibility for dispatch and tracking.

All five targets come from Amazon’s Order Performance programme policy⁴. Missing them can lead to loss or restriction of selling privileges; a valid tracking rate below 95% in a category can restrict your non-FBA selling in that category⁴.

The order defect rate in detail

The order defect rate is the share of your orders with at least one of three defects: negative feedback (one or two stars), an A-to-z Guarantee claim, or a credit card chargeback⁵. A few details change how you manage it:

• It is counted by order date, not by the date the feedback or chargeback arrived⁵.
• Fraud chargebacks don’t count; service chargebacks decided in the buyer’s favour do⁵.
• A-to-z claims that are denied or withdrawn don’t count, and a claim reversed on appeal is removed⁵.
• If seller-fulfilled offers are at risk because of ODR, Amazon may offer a five-question quiz. You have 72 hours to take it, and passing it means no plan of action is needed and the listings stay live⁵.

The quiz is the cheapest fix Amazon offers anywhere in account health. Look for it in the banner at the top of the Account Health page whenever ODR climbs.

Which policies can get an account deactivated

The AHR currently includes fourteen policies: anti-counterfeiting, brand name, intellectual property, fair pricing, ASIN creation, category, product and content restrictions, communication guidelines, customer product reviews, product condition, product detail page rules, adult products, software, product safety and compliance, and the selling policies and seller code of conduct³. Amazon notes that not all of its policies are in the score yet³.

Amazon’s own examples show how severity is set:

• Critical: counterfeit or pirated product confirmed by a test buy; soliciting reviews or non-compliant inserts; attempting to damage another seller; manipulating search results or sales rankings².
• High: a valid notice of infringement from a rights owner; customer reports of infringing or counterfeit products².
• Medium: listings with links that send shoppers to external websites².
• Low: a customer reporting an expired product or the wrong condition, such as used sold as new².

In the accounts we manage, the violations that most often turn a green score yellow are not the dramatic ones. They are product safety and compliance documents that were never uploaded, restricted claims in a bullet point, and rights-owner complaints about a listing someone else created. Our guide to Amazon Brand Registry covers how to control the content on your own listings.

How deactivation works

The UK Business Solutions Agreement sets the rules. Amazon can end the agreement for convenience with 30 days’ notice, but it can suspend or terminate immediately if you have materially breached the agreement and failed to cure it within 7 days of a notice, if your account may be used for deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, if your use of the services may harm customers, other sellers or Amazon, or if your Account Health Rating falls below the published threshold for deactivation¹¹. Amazon must tell you the reason and any options to appeal, except where it believes that would hinder an investigation into fraud¹¹.

Two protections are worth knowing about:

• Account Health Assurance. Professional sellers who keep an AHR of 250 or more for six months, with no more than 10 days below 250, and who have a verified emergency contact number, are enrolled automatically. Amazon then keeps the account active while it works with you on an issue, provided you engage within 72 hours of being contacted⁹. Fraud and similar activity are excluded⁹.
• Your emergency contact number. Before a deactivation, an Account Health specialist may try to call you¹. If the number is wrong, you lose the call and possibly the three days. Check it on the Notification Preferences page today.

What Amazon asks for in an appeal

To appeal an account deactivation, go to Account Health in Seller Central, click Reactivate your account at the top of the page, and follow the instructions. Depending on the violation, Amazon may ask you to complete a questionnaire, acknowledge a violation, take a quiz or upload documents. After you submit, Amazon says to expect a reply within two days; if it asks for more information, you resubmit through View Appeal⁶. Listing removals are appealed from the Product Policy Compliance tab or, failing that, from Manage Inventory and Performance Notifications⁶.

Amazon’s own guidelines for the appeal are short and specific⁷:

1. Be clear and concise. Stick to the facts that led to the issue, don’t introduce your business, and avoid emotive language.
2. Explain every issue. Deactivations often combine several problems; find the root cause of each, such as unverifiable suppliers, inventory management or quality control.
3. Include evidence for every product under review, within the time frame requested. Some products need invoices from the last 365 days.
4. Highlight the parts of documents that matter, such as ASINs, the supplier name and relevant clauses.

For authenticity and supply-chain cases, invoices carry the appeal. Amazon wants an issue date within the 365 days before the notification, quantities that cover your sales and stock for each ASIN over that period, clear product identifiers and the supplier’s full contact details. It does not accept pro forma invoices, and documents must be unaltered PDF or image files⁸.

How to write a plan of action

A plan of action is the core of most appeals. Amazon is not looking for contrition. It is looking for evidence that you understand what went wrong and have changed the system that let it happen. We write every plan in the same order:

The common mistakes are predictable: blaming Amazon, blaming a buyer, claiming a root cause that the evidence doesn’t support, listing actions you intend to take as if you had taken them, and sending the same text again after a rejection. If Amazon asks for more information, answer exactly what it asked, and add only new evidence.

If an appeal fails and you believe the decision is wrong, UK-registered sellers may be eligible for mediation through the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR). You must have appealed within six months of the original decision and request mediation within six months of the appeal outcome. The mediator’s fee is £490, split equally with Amazon and refunded to you if the opinion goes your way; the opinion is not binding on Amazon¹⁰. For an AHR deactivation you must name the specific violations you dispute, and the account stays deactivated while the score is below the threshold¹⁰.

Timelines to plan around

The critical violation, AHR update and 180-day rules are from Amazon’s AHR help²; the quiz window from the ODR page⁵; Account Health Assurance from its FAQ⁹; the appeal reply from the appeal page⁶; mediation from the mediation page¹⁰. One detail is easy to miss: if the account is deactivated for AHR, violations stay on the page past 180 days until you address them².

What a deactivation costs

Judged on net profit, the cost of a deactivation is not the sales you miss. It is the margin on those sales, plus the costs that carry on while nothing sells, plus what you spend to get your ranking back afterwards.

Set against that, the prevention routine below takes one person ten minutes a day. If you want to see what a day of your own account is worth, the Profit X-Ray works out contribution after fees and advertising from four Seller Central figures.

How to prevent it

This is the routine we run on the accounts we manage. It is our practice, not an Amazon requirement.

• Daily: one named owner opens Account Health, checks the AHR and every new violation, and treats any new violation as that day’s first job. Critical and high-severity items are escalated the same hour.
• Weekly: check ODR, late dispatch and valid tracking for any seller-fulfilled orders, and read every negative feedback and A-to-z claim. Most defects come from a handful of products or one courier.
• Monthly: reconcile stock against supplier invoices, so you could evidence authenticity for any ASIN tomorrow; confirm the emergency contact number is verified.
• Before any listing change: check claims, images and safety documents against Amazon’s policies. Our listing optimisation guide covers the content rules, and suppressed listings covers fixing listings Amazon has taken down.
• Before adding a supplier or reseller: keep invoices that meet Amazon’s appeal standard from day one, and protect your brand with Transparency or Project Zero if counterfeits are a risk.

Keep the account Healthy for six months and Account Health Assurance adds a further layer of protection⁹. That is worth more than any appeal, because the best plan of action is the one you never have to write.