Amazon Account Banned - Next Steps

Hello Friends,

I recently started selling on Amazon.ca and was doing fairly well with no complains. I was delivering all of my products before the scheduled delivery date and everything was green from that prespective. I spent over 2 weeks adding an inventory of 500+ items and had a dedicated staff email and respond to questions. All the sudden without warning, my account was suspended. When I called in customer service, they told me because my prices were too low and that could be the reason but they are not 100 percent certain. How can having low prices suspended your account. We still have not been given a reason and they indicated that they will stop responding  and this action is permanent. I am not a big conspiry person but I truly think that this was because our prices were really good and it was having an impact of some of the big names. The reason I could afford low prices is because I got the products straight from the manufacturer in bulk.

My prices were actually better than the big companies below:
http://www.amazon.ca/eforcity-Electronics/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A667823011%2Ck%3AeForCity

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=A2EUQ1WTGCTBG2&me=A1A4WDMXI70UAF

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_4_1?me=A1A4WDMXI70UAF&rh=p_4%3AGTMax&ie=UTF8&qid=1348766484

Email send to indicate that it was suspended was sent to my gmail.

How it start:

1st Email: 17-Sep-12
Review:

Hello from Amazon.

We are writing to let you know that we are conducting a review of your Amazon.ca selling account. During the review, a rolling reserve will be applied to funds in your seller account.

The reserve will be equivalent to your gross sales amount for the preceding 7 days. Based on your order volume, the amount of the reserve may change daily.

You can view your account balance and reserve amount in the Payments section of your seller account. When your account balance exceeds the reserve amount, funds will be available per your disbursement schedule.

Account reviews are intended to ensure the timely shipment of orders and compliance with our selling policies. Please continue to fulfill orders and list only items that you are able to ship by or before the Expected Ship Date.

For information on how you may be able to expedite this review, search on “Velocity Limits and Account Reviews” in seller Help.

We will notify you by e-mail when our account review is complete.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Regards,

Seller Performance Team
Amazon.ca
http://www.amazon.ca
At this point, we did not see anything wrong with our account and we thought it was a routine review. As a result, we did not do anything because we were not told the reason expect to make sure everything shipped on time. We have meet or beat our timelines 99 percent of the time.

2nd Email - 24-Sep-12
Review:

Hello from Amazon.
We are writing to let you know that we are conducting a review of your Amazon.ca selling account. During the review, a rolling reserve will be applied to funds in your seller account.

The reserve will be equivalent to your gross sales amount for the preceding 7 days. Based on your order volume, the amount of the reserve may change daily.

You can view your account balance and reserve amount in the Payments section of your seller account. When your account balance exceeds the reserve amount, funds will be available per your disbursement schedule.

Account reviews are intended to ensure the timely shipment of orders and compliance with our selling policies. Please continue to fulfill orders and list only items that you are able to ship by or before the Expected Ship Date.

For information on how you may be able to expedite this review, search on “Velocity Limits and Account Reviews” in seller Help.

We will notify you by e-mail when our account review is complete.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Regards,
Seller Performance Team Amazon.ca http://www.amazon.ca

Email 3: Account Suspended:
Hello from Amazon.

We are writing to let you know we have removed your Amazon.ca selling privileges, canceled your listings, and placed a temporary hold on any funds in your seller account. Any new selling accounts you open will be closed.

We took this action because your seller account failed our seller account review process.

Per the terms of the selling agreement you entered into with Amazon Services, we reserve the right to limit or remove selling privileges as we deem appropriate.

We encourage you to take appropriate steps to resolve any pending orders. Note that any amounts paid as a result of A-to-z Guarantee claims and chargebacks may be deducted from your seller account.

After 90 days, the hold will be removed and any remaining funds will be available per your settlement schedule. In addition, balance and settlement information will be available in the Payments section of your seller account. If you have questions about these funds, please write to payments-investigate@amazon.ca.

While we appreciate your interest in selling on Amazon.ca, the removal of your selling privileges is a permanent action.

Regards,

Seller Performance Team
Amazon.ca
http://www.amazon.ca 
After spending hours with the team looking at why it could have been suspended we decided to call customer service. Customer service told us that our account has been suspended but they do not know the reason why. The person also indicated on the phone that it maybe because our prices are 'too low'. We decided to appeal based on the information we recieved.
Hello Sir/Madam,

I am writing to appeal your decision to suspend my account. After carefully reviewing the e-mail notification of suspension, there does not seem to be a clear indication to why my account was suspended. I have always made it a priority to abide by the terms and conditions that Amazon has and your notification was a shock to me. I have had no warnings or emails prior to this suspension which gave me a chance to know the issue and resolve it as I always want to follow Amazon terms and continue selling on Amazon.

Today morning, I called seller support and they indicated that my account could be suspended because of price irregularities on certain products (some of them are 10 cents + 5.54 shipping while competitors are selling same product for $5 + free shipping). The reason for my pricing irregularities is because my shipping costs alone is $5.54 which makes my total cost always over $5.54. I did not know how to manually change the shipping costs so I had to decrease the product price. I did not know that this was a violation to the terms of Amazon and I was unaware of the process to manually change shipping charges to adjust for price irregularities. I have understood why this is an issue as it affects Amazon's commission calculations and I have learned how I can change this to abide by your conditions.

In terms of seller performance I have a score of "good" in all aspects of performance check lists and the percentages continue to improve. I am new to selling on amazon as I only began selling here about a month ago and I apogize for this mistake as I will not make it again. In terms of my unshipped items majority have already been shipped and I constantly update the orders within the appropriate time frame. Please advise if there are any other changes that I have to make or if there are any other issues with my account that I need to resolve to have my account activated again. I am reviewing the entire inventory and any misclassified items have been removed. Anything that we add now will be reviewed twice before adding on amazon.

I am sorry for the inconvience that I might have caused you. Please help me have this activated again!

Look forward to hearing from you.

Amar


They replied without any clear indication of why it was suspended.

Hello from Amazon.ca.

Thank you for writing about your selling account.

We regret that your account has failed our review process.  Your account has been blocked and you are not eligible to sell on our site. Please note that we will be unable to correspond further about this situation.

While we appreciate your interest, the blocking of this account is a permanent action. Any new accounts that are created will be blocked as well.  Please understand that we take such steps in the interest of maintaining a free and fair venue for all participants.

Regards,

Seller Performance Team
Amazon.cahttp://www.amazon.ca


My performance on Amazon has been all green.  Please see below.

Could someone please advice on what we can do in order to resolve this issue?
Can I sue?
https://www.google.ca/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=can+i+sue+amazon&oq=can+i+sue+amazon&gs_l=hp.3..0j0i22.485.3545.0.3717.18.14.1.0.0.0.343.3107.0j5j7j2.14.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.fYgok8Ltrm4&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=9cc645ddff627fc0&biw=1280&bih=822


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120410002116AAR61Fq

As of end of this day, we will ship out all the outstanding products. Any help you provide will be much appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Best Regards,
Amar
Maple Leaf Supplier