Amazon are warning sellers that having promotional or company details in product descriptions will lead to a suppressed ASIN in search.
The idea of a product description on Amazon is that it should be about the product. It’s not the place for shipping information, marketing your business with seller details or any other superfluous information. If you are not describing the product then the information shouldn’t be there.
The reason that this is important is that your IPI score will be impacted and that could affect your ability to sell on Amazon with FBA. Your IPI score measures inventory health (low stock, over stock, stranded inventory where it’s not selling due to a listing problem etc)
So far this year, Amazon have raised the IPI minimum threshold requirement to from 350 to 500. Sellers with an IPI score below 500 will be subject to limits effective from the 1st of September 2020 through to the end of the year. If you’ve got a suppressed ASIN due to non-product details in your descriptions, it’s time to get them amended and back live and selling.
“To provide a good customer experience, it’s important for your listings to meet our product attribute requirements. Please review our guidelines below before creating your listings.
For Product Descriptions and bullet points, do not include your name, email address, website URL, company-specific information, details about another product you sell, or promotional language such as “sale” or “free shipping.” Our listings policy also prohibits including seller, company, or shipping information on product detail pages.
In order to create a better customer experience, we have begun suppressing listings from our store that violate Amazon’s Product Detail Page Rules, and Seller Code of Conduct. If an ASIN is suppressed for a violation, you will be notified through the performance notifications in Seller Central.
You can fix the product information to remove the disallowed text through the edit link in MYI or via bulk update with feeds. Once the listing is corrected, your listing will be automatically reinstated within 24 hours and the ASIN will be active.”
– Amazon
2 Responses
I can understand why Amazon has done this. Which is to keep consumers on Amazon,s own site and not wandering off to check out the companies own website, to see if the product is cheaper.
The problem sellers have with their listing information is that Amazon employs artificial intelligence which knows in seconds if a company is in breech of Amazon seller policies.
Is this the same AI that suppressed an ASIN for a ceramic mug with the message “Tea tastes much better with Cat Hair” as you are not allowed to sell animal fur on Amazon!!
I had a sales rep from Amazon, sorry i mean Account Manager, call me yesterday about putting stuff into FBA.
I have no problem with the high Standards that Amazon set, its the way they go about enforcing them which usually catches quite a few innocent sellers and trying to get them to understand they have got it wrong is neigh on impossible.