Amazon gives sellers new ‘holistic’ metric to check account health
Amazon is helping sellers diagnose their account health with a new “holistic” metric so they can see if their account is at risk of being suspended for accumulated policy violations.
The new version of the Account Health Rating (AHR) metric does not change existing Amazon policies, but rather aggregates violations of certain Amazon policies into a single score that shows sellers the overall health status of their account : “Healthy”, “At risk”. or “unhealthy”.
Amazon had launched the Account Health Rating feature in 2020 which included “at risk” and “critical” designations.
An Amazon spokesperson told EcommerceBytes on Thursday, “Account Health Rating allows sellers to better understand exactly where their account health is, better prioritize potential issues, and ensure the status of their account stays healthy so sellers can focus their energy on selling products and growing their businesses.
A help page provides some basic information:
“AHR is a color-coded score that ranges from 0-1000 and provides near real-time status of your account health, letting you know if your seller account at a particular store is at risk of being disabled Points will be lost upon detection of any new policy violations associated with your seller account, and points will be earned when you successfully correct these violations.
“To ensure your account health is assessed in the context of your business size, points are also awarded when a minimum number of orders are fulfilled. All new sellers start with a score of 200, and over time Over time, sellers will see a score that accurately reflects their account health based on policy compliance and sales activity over the past 180 days.
“If your AHR is green (“Healthy”, based on a score of 200-1000), it means that your account is not at risk of being deactivated based on policies including the score. If your AHR is yellow (“To risk”, based on a score of 100 to 199), your account is at risk of being deactivated. When your AHR is red (“unhealthy”, based on a score of 99 or less), your account is either eligible for deactivation, is already disabled.”
When calculating the AHR, Amazon assigns a number of points to each policy violation based on the severity of the violation (critical, high, medium, and low) taking into account factors such as the extent to which the violation negatively impacts the customer experience and whether the violation of the policy violates applicable laws and regulations.
Additionally, violating the policy more than once can be disastrous:
“Multiple violations of the same policy impact your account health in two ways. First, the point values associated with violations included in your AHR increase each time that policy is violated. This means that repeated violations will result in faster degradation of your AHR, with repeated higher severity violations having the most impact.
“Second, your account may be immediately disabled if you reach the maximum number of repeat violations of Infringement Policies or Restricted Products Policies within a 180-day period, regardless of your AHR. In most cases, the number maximum number of repeat violations is five for violation-related policies and two for restricted product policies.”
Amazon will begin rolling out the new version of the Account Health Rating in August to sellers in its stores in the United States and Canada, and to sellers in its other stores globally in 2023.
Amazon blogged about the new seller account health metric on the corporate blog and published an opinion on the Amazon Seller Announcement Board. Sellers are usually quick to respond to such announcements, but Thursday afternoon there was no comment; that might change when the new version comes out in August.
Amazon explained how the new version of the Account Health Rating was a response to seller feedback:
- First, rather than a list of policy violations that could lead to their account being suspended, sellers have asked to understand exactly where they stand overall – the new account health rating is this holistic metric and will be the determining factor for account suspension based on the rollup. policy violations.
- Second, if there are any outstanding policy violations that negatively impact the account health rating, a seller will be able to see the severity level of each violation – ensuring they give the prioritize the most important issues first.
- Third, sellers asked for more help in adhering to Amazon’s policies. That’s why Amazon makes it easy for sellers to contact the company whenever they need support or have questions, and Amazon’s team of dedicated account health specialists are ready to help sellers. by phone or email to get their account back on track.
Ina Steiner
