On Thursday, Amazon emailed sellers informing them that as of the 31st of October (the day the email arrived) they would need approval to list Nintendo products.
“Dear seller,
Please read this email carefully. The listing information described below may affect your ability to sell certain products.
As part of our ongoing efforts to provide the best possible customer experience, we are implementing approval requirements for Nintendo products.
What does this mean for me?
Effective on 2019-10-31, you will need approval to list the affected products. If you do not obtain approval to sell these products prior to 2019-10-31, your listings for these products will be removed.
Why am I receiving this message?
You are receiving this message because you have sold affected products in the past. There is no penalty associated with this action.
How do I seek approval to sell the affected products?
If you would like to seek approval to sell the affected products, complete the following steps to start the application process:
In Seller Central, click the Inventory menu, and then select Add a Product .
Search for the ASIN you want to sell.
In the search results, click the Listing limitations apply link next to the ASIN.
Click the Request Approval button to start the application process.
We appreciate your cooperation in this important matter, and thank you for selling on Amazon.”
– Regards, Amazon Services
Naturally this lit up the Amazon message boards with concerned sellers wondering what they’d do with their stock of Nintendo products, how it would impact their businesses and if (and how) they could get approval with zero notice. This was made even worse as sellers tried to get approval when they received the response “You are not approved to list this product and we are not accepting applications at this time”.
The following day, Amazon told sellers that it was all a mistake and the email was sent in error:
“Hello Sellers,
Yesterday’s email was sent in error and all impacted listings were reinstated within hours. We apologize for the confusion.”
– Susan, SEAmod, Amazon Forums Moderator
So, for Nintendo sellers it is back to business as usual, but this does open up the question as to merchant’s reliance on Amazon as a platform. Even if the email was sent in error, someone had to have composed it so there may yet be a restriction on selling Nintendo products or at the very least we should expect to see increasing restrictions on selling multiple other manufacturers products on Amazon in the future.
With the Amazon Brand Registry, a manufacturer can easily restrict sales of their goods to approved merchants only and if one day they bring in a mandate then you’ll want to be on the approved reseller list. If you have manufacturers who are major suppliers to your online business, it makes sense to become an approved supplier to protect your business and ensure if they do become users of the Amazon Brand Registry that you can continue to trade on the marketplace.
2 Responses
We have had this in the past with Amazon Microsoft and Sony mainly.
You had to send an invoice from an Official supplier think it was last 3 months and obtain a letter, which was fine for us They would not however accept anything from overstocks suppliers, which we will use also.
There is still a ton of counterfeit 3ds carts etc on Amazon and even more on eBay anyway.
Margin is hard to get on Amazon these days in that industry due to the fees and it is overpriced now and there are a lot better places for gaming products than Amazon.
We’ve has this today with hundreds of toy / game lines that we list. We’ve been selling these products and brands for many years with full approval of the manufacturers but all of a sudden, overnight hundreds of listings have been restricted to ‘FBA only’ despite competitors continuing to sell these items.
After contacting Amazon they only say that we need to apply for approval for these to be unlocked but they aren’t currently accepting applications.