How do I create a Plan of Action?
Your appeal should always include a Plan of Action that shows you have identified the problems in your selling and/or inventory management practices and addresses how you will change your practices to resolve them. Below are a few examples to illustrate this.
Performance Issues
Example 1: The notice from Seller Performance indicates your selling privileges were removed due to a high order defect rate.
Action: Check your customer metrics page to determine which metric (negative feedback, A-to-z Guarantee claims, and/or credit card chargebacks) does not meet our performance target. You may find, for instance, that your percentage of negative feedback does not meet the target. As you evaluate your account, you may want to read all of the feedback comments left for you by buyers. If comments reflect a lack of response from you to buyer e-mails, your Plan of Action may include scheduling time every day to respond to all buyer correspondence.
Example 2: The notice from Seller Performance indicates that your selling privileges were removed due to a high late shipment rate and your customer metrics show that the late shipment rate does not meet our performance target.
Action: After you’ve shipped your orders and confirmed 100% of the shipments, you could review your feedback and order fulfillment practices. You may find that the shipping lead times you set may have been too short. Your Plan of Action may include changing those lead times to something more realistic for your fulfillment processes.
Example 3: The notice received from Seller Performance indicates that your selling privileges were removed due to a high pre-fulfillment order cancel rate and your customer metrics show that your cancel rate does not meet our performance target.
Action: You could review your inventory management and/or inventory control processes. You may find that your high cancel rate is due to being chronically out of stock of listed items. Your Plan of Action may include monitoring your inventory daily to make sure you never list items you cannot ship immediately.
When evaluating your selling practices, here are some areas you may want to review:
Setting shipping lead times – are you setting shipping lead times that are too short?
Communication with buyers – are you effectively responding to buyer questions and doing so promptly and politely?
Stocking inventory – are you consistently running out of inventory and cancelling orders?
Listings – are you describing your items accurately in your listing comments?
Policy Violations
If your selling privileges were removed for violations of our policies, review your inventory to determine whether it includes Prohibited Content and/or Restricted Products, and compare your selling practices with our Selling Policies.
Example: The notice from Seller Performance indicates that your selling privileges were removed for selling promotional versions of media (prohibited on Amazon.com).
Action: You could review your inventory and your inventory intake process. You may find that your supplier includes promo CDs in their shipments. Your Plan of Action might include immediately removing those items from your inventory, and then making changes to ensure you review your inventory regularly to remove promotional media.