Massive Scale Cross-Border Amazon Arbitrage

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    9 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I followed up with two of the vendors and got a 'no' from one, and the other said they will come back to me.

Coding​

Totally swamped with full time work today and had no time for coding.

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (second day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: Healthy
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   36 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I have a cost saving solution for the moment, but transit time is still the same.

Coding​

Got a lot of coding time in. I was refactoring a lot of the core logic to support multiple marketplaces at once.

Since I was revisiting a lot of 'old' code, I took the opportunity to add some things I had wanted but never took the time to implement. The biggest one is to return an explanation of every update outcome, because there are so many possibilities and it isn't so clear sometimes why things are happening.

I did a lot of manual testing updating individual ASINs and examining the results before turning this on for the bot.

This refactoring actually slows down the bot because it has to check both country markets for competition, but I think on balance it is going to earn me more return than if I had kept it with Amazon's marketplace sync feature I was using before.

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (third day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: Healthy
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[msufan]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   36 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I have a cost saving solution for the moment, but transit time is still the same.

Coding​

Got a lot of coding time in. I was refactoring a lot of the core logic to support multiple marketplaces at once.

Since I was revisiting a lot of 'old' code, I took the opportunity to add some things I had wanted but never took the time to implement. The biggest one is to return an explanation of every update outcome, because there are so many possibilities and it isn't so clear sometimes why things are happening.

I did a lot of manual testing updating individual ASINs and examining the results before turning this on for the bot.

This refactoring actually slows down the bot because it has to check both country markets for competition, but I think on balance it is going to earn me more return than if I had kept it with Amazon's marketplace sync feature I was using before.

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (third day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: Healthy
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

Honestly with getting up near $1K of profit per week despite lots of account health issues, feels like you could be poised for a big breakthrough soon.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   22 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I have a cost saving solution for the moment, but transit time is still the same.

Coding​

My brain was fried after a long day so I didn't try anything complicated. I just checked individual listings and examined if the pricing was reasonable in both countries.

Account Health​

Country 2 also switched to 'at risk' even though there aren't any new warnings. I guess this must be from the warnings I got a few days ago when I added a bunch of new products there. Since then I stopped adding products and maybe I should wait for it to turn healthy again before restarting.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (fourth day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   32 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I have a cost saving solution for the moment, but transit time is still the same. I shipped the first two orders to Country 2 today.

Account Health​

I woke up this morning to an email that Country 1 has been fully deactivated. The reason was a copyright infringement claim made against my account several weeks ago that was dismissed and does not appear on my account health page. So it is a bit confusing. I submitted additional information three times today to appeal the case but only received automated responses that Amazon cannot reinstate my account.

I contacted my account manager as well and he said he would look into it, but haven't heard anything yet. Tomorrow I will try a few more ways to try to get it back.

Unfortunately with my account deactivated my app and thus my bot as well are both deactivated.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (first day)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (fifth day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[Xavier X]

Worst case scenario, you would have learned a lot from the endeavor and its related processes.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Digital Ads​

Both ad accounts are still blocked even though I disabled and archived all my campaigns.

Country 2 Vendor​

I have a cost saving solution for the moment, but transit time is still the same.

Account Health​

Country 1 is still deactivated and I have 20 days to convince Amazon to reactivate it before the account is permanently closed. I spoke to my seller support and my account manager but didn't get a lot of help, then at night I read a bunch of Amazon forum posts and got some ideas for things I can write to try to get the decision reversed. First thing tomorrow I will write my best Plan Of Action for them and see if it works.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (second day)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (sixth day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I found several sites that recommended formats for an appeal letter to get an account reinstated for similar violations. I've submitted about five different letters, but all of them come back rejected with the same points which are all generic. I will keep submitting variations on the letter until time runs out to get the account reinstated or until they overturn it.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (third day)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (seventh day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I watched some videos about my account situation and submitted several more appeals, but they have all been rejected so far. Lastly I contacted one law firm that specializes in Amazon seller cases.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (fourth day)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (eighth day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I tried another angle to getting my account reinstated. Instead of confessing, as Amazon pushes you to do, I ordered the products from the US and sent them the invoice to prove they are not counterfeit. Additionally I attached a full report of all of my sales on the account to prove that I've never sold any of the ASINs that I was accused of counterfeiting. Let's see what they think.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (fifth day)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (ninth day)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Fulfillment​

I dispatched 26 orders today, the most ever. But the backlog now is only 13 and I'm not getting new orders until my account gets reactivated.

Account Health​

I requested an invoice directly from the seller of the products, but they said they will only provide it once the products have shipped. While I'm waiting for that to happen, I have repackaged my previous attempt into an appeal letter and plan of action (POA) which is commonly requested by Amazon. Like many things with Amazon, the process is opaque and they give conflicting instructions. Thankfully I can just keep trying different things until something works.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 6)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 10)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I spoke on the phone with seller support and they have access to slightly more information than I can see in the response emails. I used that information and I submitted six different appeals today and all of them were still rejected. I spoke with my account manager over the phone who promised to have someone contact me, but then nobody did.

Tomorrow will keep submitting more appeals in different ways and reach out to more people.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 7)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 11)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I tried to write my appeal letter using ChatGPT to refine it, but that version also got rejected.

I reached out to the senior person I know at Amazon and he gave me a few more tidbits:

1. You have to ask forgiveness, because they will not accept any amount of evidence that you did nothing wrong
2. You get two chances that can be successfully appealed and if your account is deactivated a third time then you will be permanently banned
3. The process is ridiculous even to the people in Amazon - their process even contradicts their own published policy that they send you when you get deactivated
4. It's a relatively new process here, which is why the other big sellers using the same model that I do haven't already been permanently banned

A few hours after speaking to the big boss, my account manager suddenly became more helpful and offered to rewrite my appeal letter. For the past week I got essentially no help from him, so I now I think I know how to motivate him.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 8)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 12)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

My account manager gave me a number of instructions and said he was working on my appeal letter.

I'm continuing to get restricted product warnings and now my account is under review in Country 2 for having too many orders(?). It seems like the policies and bots have changed recently and there are more things being flagged than before.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 9)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 13)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

No progress from the account manager since it's the weekend.

I'm thinking about alternatives if I can't sell on the Amazon marketplace. I can still use their API and populate an online store.

I'm also thinking about how to reduce my account risk if I do get my account reactivated.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 10)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 14)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Another Channel​

My goal for the coming week will be to set up a Shopify store with 10k products. The challenge will be to get the product pictures from Amazon. Everything else is simple with the API work I've done so far.

Before I was working on this Amazon project I was doing some similar API development for Shopify, so I will open that code again and see how much of it can be reused for this.

Account Health​

No progress from the account manager since it's the weekend.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 11)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 15)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 12)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 16)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 13)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 17)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

I spoke to my account manager again after several follow ups without response. He says he will speak to the account health team directly to get more information about what is needed in the appeal and then help craft the letter.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 14)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 18)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                    0 USD

​

Account Health​

So I actually have some progress today. After hounding my account manager for two weeks, he went and spoke to the account health department and managed to secure an example appeal letter that has actually worked for another company that had the exact same violations as I have.

What did I learn? After my account was restricted I should have driven straight to the Amazon office and met him face to face to sort this out sooner.

So anyway I rewrote the letter to the specifics of my case and shared it with him tonight, since he wanted to review it before I submit it to the account health team.

This put me in good spirits after two stressful weeks where I frequently didn't even to even think about this business anymore.

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: No (day 15)
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 19)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   11 USD

​

Reactivated​

I submitted the revised appeal letter and got my account reinstated within an hour. Even though it came back, the featured offer eligibility was not there. I'm guessing this is due to late dispatch on a few orders.

I've learned several new things I can do to proactively protect my account, so will be focused on that for the time being.

Strategic Account​

My account manager called me later in the day to say that there is a strategic account program where an account manager will actively review your account and help you remove problematic listings. You are also given more leeway than a normal account when it comes to account restrictions. It costs $700 per month.

If it saves me from losing my account, then it will be worth the money. When my account is at full health I should be making at least $4k per month. I'll think about it over the weekend and then probably visit the Amazon office next week to discuss in person.

Turning Bot Back On​

I had a lot of warnings come in during the two weeks when my account and my bot were deactivated and I don't want any problematic ASIN to slip through the cracks. So I went one by one through every single email I had to make sure that I have every ASIN or brand added to my blacklist before turning the bot back on to update the pricing and availability.

I'm not adding any new offers until my account health is 'healthy' again.

Account Health​

• Country 1
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 20)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: At Risk
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 2)

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Profit                   64 USD

​

Relationships​

After this deactivation incident, I realized that I'm not building enough relationships within Amazon. So to build those up, I'm going to take a number of actions:

• Make sure that I visit their office at least once per month
• Speak on the phone with my account manager at least once per week, so about four times per month
• I will visit their office this week and will most likely join their strategic account program
• I will also try to meet more people in the office to have more avenues of information and leverage to support me

Risky Brands API​

I spent some time looking for an API or marketplace app that can flag risky brands. However, I could only find Chrome extensions. This would give me a manual solution, but I would prefer to fully automate.

Maybe I can marry this to my relationship efforts and get Amazon to feed me information on risky brands directly, which I can then put in my bot. I will put this on my agenda for my office visit.

Possible Business Opportunity​

There is probably a small market for helping other sellers get their account reinstated. Now that I know what to do, maybe I could create a small landing page and Google Ads to generate leads for this. I could probably charge about $1-3k per client and spend maybe 1-2 hours helping them.

Account Health​

• Relationship Work (September)
  • Amazon Office Visits: 0
  • Account Manager Phone Calls: 8
• Country 1
  • Account Health: 152 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 21)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: 184 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 3)

 

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[GoldFibre]

Weekly Update​

The country 1 account is reactivated now but in country 2 they are reviewing my account for having an abnormal number of sales and requested some documentation to prove I'm legitimate.

Featured offer eligibility is still off in country 1, so hopefully that will come back soon and I can hit my first 1k USD week.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

​

Automating Fulfillment Documentation​

This is the most time consuming part of fulfillment, and since I had a couple of failures in my manual process last week, I decided to get this mostly automated.

Since I didn't get approval for PII access with my app, I have to use browser automation to extract the address and phone number for creating the documentation with the carrier. I built this, although the logic is a bit fuzzy and some fields may not map exactly to the API names for provinces/cities/areas. So I'm creating a manual review whenever there is a missing field.

In all this cuts out more than 50% of the time spent on a given order, but more importantly it reduces the chance of error a great deal by automating lots of data entry.

I've extracted the address using browser automation and I've mostly mapped the fields to the carrier API. Next I need to test this on a wide variety of past addresses to make sure it works as expected.

Account Health​

• Relationship Work (October)
  • Amazon Office Visits: 0
  • Account Manager Phone Calls: 0
• Country 1
  • Account Health: 152 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 22)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: 168 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No sales today.

​

Amazon Office Visit​

From what Iearned today it looks like I should have been signed up for paid account support from the start. They can protect me from the account-disabling bots and also help me launch more countries. They can also dedicate time to me daily for phone calls or in-person visits.

Today I also got a lot of other questions answered and so I think my focus on building relationships was the correct choice. I think it can save this business and also help me thrive.

I got some general statistics on my competitors, and they make good money but they have far more overhead costs than I do since I do my own development and have zero employees. So if I can even get to 20% of their revenue I should exceed their overall profit, which is job-quitting money.

Anyway I submitted the information Amazon needs to prepare the contract for paid support and hopefully I can sign it by tomorrow and get started. My new account manager's first mission will be to restore my featured offer eligibility. Their second mission will be to reactivate my ad accounts. And their third mission will be to help me safely publish my catalog in country 2, which has been on hold for about a month.

Shipping Document Automation​

I spent some more time working on mapping the fields for the API payload and then submitted some test payloads until it worked.

Account Health​

• Relationship Work (October)
  • Amazon Office Visits: 1 / 1
  • Account Manager Phone Calls: 0 / 4
• Country 1
  • Account Health: 152 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: No (day 23)
• Country 2
  • Account Health: 168 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

​

ASP360 Lite​

I got the contract for the paid seller support and signed it and then towards the end of the day they sent me a questionnaire and assigned a dedicated account manager to me.

I will push for an in-person meeting tomorrow because today I also got dinged for something else that pushed my account health into red. I got an email that my account will be deactivated again after 72 hours.

So my account manager's first job is to help me get out of this crisis.

Featured Offer Eligibility​

Somehow this came back today despite my account health issues, and I got a couple of orders.

Account Health​

• Relationship Work (October)
  • Amazon Office Visits: 1 / 1
  • Account Manager Phone Calls: 0 / 4
• Country 1
  • Account Health: 88 (Unhealthy)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes
• Country 2
  • Account Health: 168 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

[alexXx9]

congrats for your effort and perseverance! Why aren't you opening another account to diversify and decrease the risk?

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

​

Amazon Office Visit​

I met my new account manager for the paid program and laid out my priorities. First thing is account health, which we managed to bring from red to yellow during the meeting itself. This should save me from being deactivated within 48 hours.

With this program I will have additional compliance protection, proactive warnings ahead of bot enforcement, as well as the ability to pre-screen my products before listing. All this should make my account much more stable.

Next week I will be introduced to a specialist in country 2 that can help me with finding a supplier to lower costs and transit time. They can also help me deal with the different compliance rules there.

As well I will meet someone from Amazon Ads to help me reinstate my ad accounts and see what possibilities there are with my business model. Normally to run ads you need to be the brand owner or an authorized reseller, but I am neither of these things for any brand.

All in all this was an extremely valuable hour to spend and I'm feeling quite optimistic about the future of the business now. We will have biweekly meetings together and I will always try to do them in-person to continue to expand my network of relationships in Amazon.

​

Account Health​

• Relationship Work (October)
  • Amazon Office Visits: 2 / 1
  • Account Manager Phone Calls: 0 / 4
• Country 1
  • Account Health: 152 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes
• Country 2
  • Account Health: 168 (At Risk)
  • Account Active: Yes
  • Featured Offer Eligibility: Yes

 

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[GoldFibre]

Why aren't you opening another account to diversify and decrease the risk?

If you get shut down then any associated accounts will also be shut down. Association can even just be the IP address that you use to log in. So I know that some people use VPNs or remote PCs to get around this, but probably the best thing is to not get shut down in the first place.

 

[alexXx9]

If you get shut down then any associated accounts will also be shut down. Association can even just be the IP address that you use to log in. So I know that some people use VPNs or remote PCs to get around this, but probably the best thing is to not get shut down in the first place.

i am doing amazon KDP and this is exactly what i am doing.... I am using a VPS with a different name / bank account, diversification when it comes to amazon is essential