Luckily, I have an incredible network of loyal friends, and truthfully, I have been through worse... so honestly this is a just a bump in the road. 

I confirmed with someone who worked for the Amazon Seller Performance team and she said there is no risk of using Go2lister. It will not link my selling account to your selling account. We have 400 users and none of our users have experienced account shut downs due to using the app.

As far as my other business Restricted Inventory goes, you can still send your items to us... My account shutdowns do not affect our service. We have an account that is approved to sell textbooks and thoroughly check for counterfeits. 

This is my theory. Believe it or not, Amazon won't tell me the exact reason why my account is suspended, but I suspect it's because of this:

So her account was shutdown for selling a counterfeit book.

Fast forward four months, and my Amazon selling account is suspended for linked to her account. And this is honestly no surprise. I had user permissions access to her account and even logged into her account on my computer at some point. 

So Amazon told me I could get my account back if we got her account back since Amazon essentially considered us the same business.

So, we worked on getting her account back. I called the big scary law firm, the one that does test buys for textbooks to see if they are authentic. They admitted to following me on social media. They knew my YouTube, my website RestrictedInventory.com ... everything. I couldn't even attempt to lie to them.

"So we've been watching your YouTube channel..." my heart sunk. "We have several accounts that you're linked to ... " She went on to list 10+ accounts. I only recognized 3 of them. You see, Amazon's algorithm thought I was part of a giant counterfeit ring stealing peoples identities to sell on Amazon and that's why it linked me to so many accounts.

The conversation went on and they continued reading accounts I had no idea existed. One of the accounts was my new Restricted Inventory partner who has been processing textbooks for us. She was happy to know we were sending books to him to process and check for counterfeits because he is part of EPEG Best Practices. Basically, his warehouse and processes have been vetted and approved by the brand to sell Pearson, Cengage, McGraw Hill and the other big publishers so Amazon and the law firm trust him to sell books for RestrictedInventory.com.

So the law firm was happy that I created a solution for the reselling community to continue selling textbooks without risking the sale of counterfeit books. 

In addition, I agreed to pay the law firm $20,000 and they in return they told Amazon to give me my accounts back. 

Amazon only gave 1 account back, and that was my friends account who was selling textbooks.

They never gave me my two accounts back that were suspended which makes no sense because they were only shut down because my friends account was shut down. 

Keep in mind that all of my Amazon accounts were set up with Amazon's permission, so I never violated Amazon's TOS on that front. But we had an agreement that each account would sell a different category of item, and technically I did violate this as I listed books on all my accounts when capacity limits were bad.

Anyway..

So up until a couple weeks ago, I was selling all of of my wholesale products on my last  Amazon account that I legally set up. But then Amazon randomly decides to deactivate this account, and I believe it was because I had an increase in used book sales. The reason why I have this hunch is when I talked with one Amazon rep, they stated that all the 17 accounts connected to mine sold books. This makes sense because Amazon and the law firm representing the brands have made a huge effort to reduce the number of counterfeit used book sales. 

My theory is that Amazon sees me as a used book counterfeiter, so if any account with my name sells books, they assume I am trying to game the system. 

Our accounts are all linked because they either had delegate access to my account or I had delegate access to their account via user permissions. 

Below are the people affected:

My mom. Her account was suspended for being related to mine. She actually appealed and got it back, but then Amazon resuspended her when my last account was shut down. Makes no sense.

My developer got his account shut down too, and this is where a lot of the Amazon community got super paranoid that somehow this was related to Go2lister. Yes, he's my developer for Go2lister, but his Amazon selling account was shut down because he had user permissions access to my account. He used to pack books for me from his house, essentially acting as a prep center, and he would need access to my account to do this. Nothing to do with Go2lister.com, but upsetting nonetheless.

My friend Andrew Gong. Some of you remember me and Andrew doing our trip in the Northeast a few years back. Amazon must've linked our accounts together for having user permission access to one another or maybe even using the same wifi, who knows. 

My cousins account is shut down too. He doesn't sell on Amazon anymore so it's not a huge deal, but it was likely because he had user permission access to my account when he used to pack books for me. 

And lastly one of my followers accounts was shut down because he used to have user permission access to my account. He offered a repricing service. 

Moral of story... be very careful who you give user permission access to. It will link their selling account to yours. 

The fact of the matter with this is that Amazon is wrong. Their algorithm suggests one person owns all of these accounts and it couldn't be further from the truth. All of the above people run completely separate businesses, they are just being punished for granting user permissions for one reason or another to yours truly. 

I know I sound like a broken record but user permission access is very different than granting access to a software. If you use Go2lister, or any software for that matter, your account will not be linked to other selling accounts.

By not having to worry about running an Amazon business I can focus more of my time on growing Go2lister. 

Growing a saas company is a ton of work, and it deserves all my effort. 

Am I done selling on Amazon forever? Probably not... I think Amazon will eventually give me my accounts back when someone actually looks at the case, but until then Amazon thinks I'm shipping boatloads of counterfeit books from India .. lol. If you really think about the whole scenario it's bizarre. None of my personal accounts are event allowed to sell textbooks, so why do they see me as such a big threat. Amazon has some pretty advanced algorithms, and I'm sure that I triggered every part of the algorithm that screams scammer.

God has a plan for all of us, and if selling on Amazon isn't in the books so be it. I'll still be here for the Amazon community. And let's be real, I'll be back one day.

If you want to help, send this blog to dherring@amazon.com with a personal message.

Much love,

Avery