Counterfeit Claims Gone Wrong: How Brands Get Themselves Suspended

Sellers keep calling Amazon Account Health hoping for clarity, yet the more they call, the more confused they get. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down why sellers are getting stuck in an endless loop of mixed messages, contradictory guidance, and copy-paste appeal denials that explain absolutely nothing.

Cyber Five is finally behind us — and for once, the sky didn’t fall. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down what actually happened across Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the peak week that followed, and explains why abuse attempts were lower this year, how Amazon’s internal teams seem to be improving their detection game, and why seller-led reporting is becoming a real force multiplier inside the marketplace. He also digs into the problems that did surface, suspicious refund spikes, targeted negative review attacks, and illicit keyword injections, and what sellers must do to escalate those issues correctly without wasting time on dead-end Support cases.

This Holiday season, enforcement teams are in full zero-tolerance mode, and sellers are getting hit for mistakes they didn’t even realize were violations. If you think “gray areas” still exist, or that Amazon is too busy to notice what you’re doing this week, you’re already in trouble.In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down exactly what Amazon is cracking down on this Black Friday: abuse reports that boomerang back onto your own account, sloppy listing edits made under pressure, appeals that miss the point, and compliance shortcuts that get flagged instantly during peak season. When enforcement is this aggressive, one wrong move can drop your top ASIN (and your Q4 revenue) with no warning.

Too many brands are going scorched-earth on Amazon and it’s blowing up in their faces. In this episode, Chris McCabe explains why aggressive tactics against resellers, sloppy counterfeit claims, and “secret” removal services are triggering enforcement actions against the brand itself. Chris breaks down where sellers go wrong: unproven counterfeit allegations, missing test-buy evidence, misuse of Brand Registry, and blind trust in consultants who won’t disclose their methods.

Evasive listing tweaks are triggering suspensions at record speed. One tiny change to a title, one “quick fix” from a VA, or one unnoticed ASIN edit can flip your entire account from green to red overnight. In this episode, Chris breaks down the exact behaviors setting off Amazon’s enforcement systems: misbranding, hidden detail-page edits, restricted-product evasion, illicit ASIN merges, brand registry mismatches, and competitor-driven sabotage you might not catch until it’s too late.

Some sellers are finding out the hard way that Amazon’s AI has no idea what their products are. Chris and Leah dig into what’s really breaking down inside Amazon’s compliance system, how bad categorization, automation, and silence from support teams are creating a perfect storm right before Q4.

We’re already in Q4 (peak chaos season) and Amazon is rolling out massive layoffs. When 30,000 people leave in the middle of the busiest quarter of the year, sellers could feel it first. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down what these cuts actually mean for sellers, how internal churn impacts Account Health and enforcement, and what you can do now to stay ahead of the fallout.

It’s Q4, and “escalation” is officially the most overused word in Sellerland.Everyone’s talking about “taking it up the chain,” but most sellers are just sending the same broken appeal to more inboxes. In this episode, Chris and Leah break down what a real Amazon escalation is, and what it’s not.

When one Amazon marketplace goes down, they can all go down. In this episode, Chris McCabe and Leah McHugh break down how international marketplace issues—like Brazil verification failures, account linkage, and Build International Listings (BIL) errors—are deactivating U.S. seller accounts right before Q4.

Think you’re “mostly” following Amazon’s rules? In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down why “almost compliant” is a fast route to suspension in Amazon’s new zero-tolerance era. Amazon’s patience for gray-area behavior is officially gone.Chris explains what really triggers enforcement, how to build a bulletproof appeal, and why relying on shortcuts, masterminds, or cheap Fiverr fixes is a guaranteed way to lose your account in 2025.