A short while ago, I wrote a review about Thompson & Holt and why so many Amazon sellers were turning to them when their accounts were suspended.
A few days ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Craig, one of the managing partners at Thompson and Holt, to find out what made them tick and why they were successful in helping so many businesses.
I found the company to be very open with what causes seller suspensions on Amazon and surprisingly, in this market, very open with what you can do to prevent or fix these issues.
Please introduce yourself and who you are.
I’m Craig Gedey, I’m from the UK and I’m the Managing Partner in Thompson and Holt. My passion is helping businesses reach their goals, I believe that with the right attitude and dedication anyone can succeed in business.
At Thompson and Holt we help small and large Amazon Sellers when they need help with any compliance issues relating to their Amazon account allowing them to carry on running their online business.
What is Amazon seller suspension?
An Amazon Seller Suspension is when an Amazon Seller Account is suspended by Amazon.
There are many reasons why your account may be suspended the most common are policy violations, seller performance issues, verification issues, IP and copyright issues. Most of these can be avoided or easily rectified.
How did you come up with the business idea?
In 2014, a friend was selling on Amazon and it was going really well for him, eventually, he earned enough money from the Amazon business to leave his full-time job and focus on his Amazon business.
Then one day his account was suspended for selling inauthentic items. He was devastated and he tried by himself to reinstate his account.
His forte was building businesses, his downside was that he paid very little attention to detail. He was suspended for about a month when I offered to review his appeals.
It was obvious from the outset what Amazon were looking for, unfortunately, he couldn’t see the wood for the trees and with my help, his account was reinstated 2 weeks later.
This was just the beginning, over the next few months word started to spread about how we knew how to reinstate accounts, it started with helping friends with small issues on Amazon such as suspended ASINs and then we started to help friends or friends and then it took off.
In 2016 we formally established Thompson and Holt and started to charge for our services.
How long have you been in business?
Thompson and Holt was officially registered with Companies House in November 2016. We’re now a team of 7 and are looking to follow Amazons growth into new countries.
How many Amazon accounts have you helped to be reinstated?
Since we started to collect data on reinstatements we have helped over 4,300 Sellers but this is likely to be many more.
Why should suspended sellers use a service rather than do it themselves?
The most common mistake we see Sellers make is that they ‘listen to their mate’ or they download a template from a website or forum and submit it to Amazon.
You would be surprised at the number of times we have seen appeals submitted to Amazon for the wrong suspension.
Sellers can appeal themselves and many Sellers successfully appeal their own suspensions, our main selling point is that we have experience and know what Amazon are looking for and how to present it to Amazon.
What is the biggest cause of accounts to be suspended?
Inauthentic Items. The best piece of advice I can give Sellers is “keep hold of your invoices”.
If your supplier doesn’t have invoices, shop elsewhere. If you have the invoices that are in your name then suspensions can be resolved in hours rather than days.
What can Amazon sellers do to prevent an account suspension?
Some basic tips which Amazon Sellers should already know
1. keep invoices
2. respond to customer messages
3. resolve any notifications/complaints immediately
4. carry out due diligence when sourcing products
Amazon provides Sellers with their account metrics on Seller Central, Sellers should check this daily and resolve any issues. While Sellers can never prevent suspensions they can minimise the impact, for example, keeping invoices.
Thompson and Holt also offer a Monitor & Protect service that alerts Sellers about any potential issues that could cause a suspension, our team are on hand to offer advice to resolve these issues.
Should the worst happen we will also write appeals and action plans to help reinstate products and accounts.
Summary
If you run an Amazon account of any sort, you could do a lot worse than talking to Thompson and Holt and seeing if they can help you with their monitor and protect service.
Thank you, Craig, for being so open with how the business runs, and for the information. I know a lot of Amazon sellers will be able to use to the information you have provided.
