However, the policy reminder email did not result in an immediate policy warning from Amazon which can have significant ramifications for a seller's account health. Sellers who had given RebateKey developer access to their account received a policy reminder. However, after suspending RebateKey's API access, any seller who has given the tool MWS access to their account received a policy reminder from Amazon as below. Has Amazon Suspended Sellers Who Used Giveaways/Rebates?Ĭurrently, no seller has had their seller account suspended for using RebateKey.
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Conceivably, a tool like RebateKey could continue to exist even without API access to Amazon, although sellers would be seemingly taking a significant risk in light of the recent policy reminder email and revision of the Seller Code of Conduct. It just makes it more convenient in terms of verifying orders and issuing rebates. It's also worth noting that RebateKey itself does not rely upon API access to Amazon.
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They'll tell them that they can give away products at as much of a discount as they want, but that discount needs to occur on Amazon and Amazon will decide how to assess those discounted sales in terms of sales ranking and organic search rankings. In my opinion, this is basically the line in the sand that Amazon is going to draw against RebateKey and other giveaway services. This is likely where RebateKey got into trouble-it was deliberately trying to transact out of the watchful eye of Amazon by mailing checks to customers as opposed to giving them discounts or refunds on Amazon. However, most of these services give discounts on Amazon as opposed to outside of Amazon. Other product giveaway services seemingly have not had their services impacted, which would seem to indicate Amazon isn't totally against giving discounted products.
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Certain giveaway services like RebateKey allow customers to purchase products at a significant discount which is granted as a check mailed to them after they purchase the item for full price on Amazon. It's hard to say if the RebateKey API suspension means the end of product giveaways and rebates. Does This Mean the End of Rebates and Product Giveaways? Regardless, it would appear Amazon is hyper-sensitive at the moment to anyone trying to trick its search algorithm, whether with fake reviews or fake search rankings. It's conceivable that manipulating such search results could draw the ire of the FTC for being deceptive to consumers.
While the FTC guidelines never mention anything about using rebates to manipulate sales rank on a marketplace, when many people browse an Amazon search results page they expect the first results to be legitimately the most popular products. Earlier in the summer, the FTC had also made an inquiry to Amazon about what it is doing to stop sellers from using inserts to incentivize reviews. Last week, the FTC issued letters to over 700 companies, including Amazon, warning them about potential penalties for fake reviews and deceptive endorsements. Now why did Amazon decide to finally act on product giveaways after turning a blind eye for years? There could be many answers, but one of the reasons is likely because of increased scrutiny from the FTC over deceptive marketing practices. Notice the part in parenthesis, “Accepting orders that you have paid for”, e.g., giving away products for a 100% discount through a service such as RebateKey. New wording : Manipulating sales rank (such as by accepting fake orders or orders that you have paid for) or making claims about sales rank in product titles or descriptions. Previous Wording: Activities that could be perceived as attempting to manipulate Amazon's search results or sales rankings”. So does that mean that product giveaways are now a thing of the past on Amazon? Why Is Amazon Cracking Down on Product Giveaways?Īmazon recently casually updated their Seller Code of Conduct language to make the subtle change described under “Acting Fairly” as below:
Product research tools like Helium 10 even give estimates to how many products you need to giveaway in order to rank a product. Product giveaways have been a hallmark of selling on Amazon for quite some time now. Concurrently with the suspension, users of the service were also emailed a Seller Code of Conduct policy reminder from Amazon warning against prohibited actions from sellers.
Last week, the Amazon seller universe was shaken when one of the most popular product giveaway tools, RebateKey, had its Amazon API privileges suspended.
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