Maybe it has happened to you that one day you found your buy box was gone.
The most annoying thing when you run an Amazon business is that your listing is hijacked by other sellers, and then your sales have dropped. If the quality of the hijackers’ product is too poor, it will bring some inexplicable negative reviews.
There is no way to avoid your product being hijacked, however, there are still have some methods you can take to reduce the chance of being hijacked. Just follow me to check the proven strategies.
What is Amazon Listing Hijacker?
An Amazon listing hijacker is another Amazon seller who has listed their product under your listing. They usually provide a fake version of your product and provide a cheaper price.
In this way, you will lose the buy box. This means that you no longer get any sales from your listing. What’s more, customers will leave negative reviews on your product listing because of their fake products.
Before Your Product Being Hijacked
1. Register Your Brand
With Amazon brand registration, there will is a unique model and factory number for each product ASIN, and it can also prevent hijackers from changing your listing.
You can refer to this article to know How to Register Your Brand in Amazon’s Brand Registry.
2. Join Amazon Exclusives program and Amazon Project Zero project
Amazon Exclusives Program gives sellers a higher level of brand protection and can detect unauthorized seller activities.
Amazon Project Zero Project access sellers use self-service tools without contacting the Amazon team to delete fake listings with one click.
3. Save your listing page
The best offense is a good defense.
After you create the product listing, take a screenshot to save the original complete page and the creation time.
In this way, when the product is hijacked, the information can prove that you are the original creator of the listing. You can ask the Amazon team to help you change the listing back.
4. Show brand name in your listing
Regardless of whether the seller’s product has a registered brand or not, you can design a brand name yourself and display it on the listing page. Such as putting it in the title or adding a logo to the product image.
5. Bundle your product
Sellers can add gifts to the original products or bundle your product
For example, if you sell knife sharpener products, you can offer extra knife sharpening gloves. If you sell insulated lunch boxes, you can give extra bowl brushes, chopsticks. In this way, your product is unique and others will not sell your products.
6. Provide a unique packing
In addition, you can also design some uniqueness on the packaging, such as printing the UPC code of the product and sticking it in an inconspicuous place to facilitate consumers to distinguish between true and false.
After Your Product Being Hijacked
1. Lower the price of your products
If you lose the buy box, the most important first step you can do is to check your product and lower the price if possible. In this way, you can get back the buy box.
Please pay attention to the price of your own products. Don’t lower the price and even lose the profit.
2. Contact the hijacker
After encountering the hijacker, you can send an email to warn them to remove it. In the warning email, be justified and reasonable, but not too gentle.
There is some hijacker will not continue to sell the product after receiving your email. As long as you are sincere and strong in the warning email, the hijacker will also consider the safety of their account and stop the hijacking. Of course, you will encounter some rogue hijackers who will ignore your warning.
3. Send a lawyer’s letter
The seller can directly use a third-party account to send a lawyer’s letter to the seller through the Ask a question button. Because the seller cannot identify whether the letter is true and false, at the same time, they will consider their own interests. Generally, Sellers do not love war.
4. Test Buy
Knowing yourself and the enemy is the key to victory on the battlefield.
To confirm whether the hijacker is really selling the same product as you, it is best to record all the details of the other party’s product, including color, size, weight, packaging, etc. And you have to understand the differences or similarities between the opponent’s product and your product.
Once you find they provide the fake product, you can file an A to Z complaint to Amazon. Just use the terms “fake”, “not authentic” or “counterfeit” in your claim, Amazon will take down their listing within a few days if goes well.
5. Report to Amazon
Once you find they provide the fake product, you can file an A to Z complaint to Amazon. Of course, it is necessary for you to provide detailed information about hijackers.
There are many sellers whose complaints have not received a response from Amazon. Generally, it is because the information you provide is inaccurate and unclear, and Amazon does not clearly understand the status of your complaint.
I recommend you to provide more detailed information, including:
●The difference between the hijacker’s product and your product (including color, weight, size, etc.)
●Whether received any comments or complaints about the hijacker’s products.
●Communication records with the hijacker.
●Your brand and trademark certification records.
●Photos related to the selling product (to explain to Amazon the difference between selling the product and how it affects the buyer’s product satisfaction)
Amazon is a well-known customer-oriented company. If you can convince Amazon about how hijackers’ products affect and reduce buyers’ satisfaction, then you must have succeeded.
6. Complaint about the fraudulent account
If there are quite a lot of accounts for hijacking, and the products are uniform and ultra-low prices.
In the case of such obvious fraudulent intentions, the seller can directly complain that it is a fraudulent account to Amazon. You can send the complaint to Jeff at the same time, Amazon usually closes this account quickly.
Buy Box Monitoring To Prevent Listing Hijacker
Login to your Captain BI account. If you have not an account, 30 days free trial for you now.
Select “Seller Tools”- “Buy Box Monitoring”.
Add the product to the monitoring list.
Buy Box monitoring tool is able to continuously monitor an unlimited amount of ASINs and listings. Once your products are hijacked, the tool will help you to track and respond to the threat.
Final
As long as sellers have brand awareness and learn more about relevant protective measures, they can use powerful “weapons” to defend their legitimate rights and interests when they are hijacked.