- The Ins and Outs of Test Buying and Serial Number Tracking
- How Unauthorized Sellers Beat Amazon Vendor Central at the Buy Box to Ruin Your E Commerce Brand Reputation
- How to Spot Unauthorized Sellers with Multiple Accounts on the Same Listing
Table of contents
How to Deal With MAP Violations And Map Violators
How Bad Is the Unauthorized Seller Problem on Amazon?
Online Brand Protection, minimum advertised price map and map enforcing on Amazon, Walmart, or many of the other major marketplaces can be both a complex and simple process. On one hand, there are multitudes of details that are important to know to get a strong grasp on your marketplace and map violations. But then again, the philosophies behind brand protection can be whittled down to just a few key concepts. Let’s keep a competitive price for your brand and make sure your sellers are adhering to map compliance.
This particular article is not a comprehensive breakdown of online brand protection. To find that, we recommend reading some of our other definitive guides (Types of unauthorized Sellers and How Grey Market Sales Really Work) on related map policy violation and minimum advertised price protection.
Instead this article is a collection of both easy and advanced tips & tricks we’ve picked up along the way to help you answer some of the unsolved mysteries you may be experiencing along the road to a cleaner digital marketplace. Here’s the thing, major retailers are serious about product pricing.
Remember that you are never alone on this journey. If there are any questions you still have after combing through our articles, please feel free to contact us via our email address or phone, and we will help you in whatever way we can to get to the bottom line and protect your brand. The last thing you want is a price war with your own thirdparty sellers – that will affect your profit margins!
The Do's and Don'ts of Serial Number Tracing & Test Buying
What do you do when your electronic Cease & Desist letters didn’t work? You need to find out who this unauthorized seller is, since it’s unlikely they use their full name or actual business name (although some do). The most obvious next step is a test buy.
There are two ways to do this. If your brand’s product has serial numbering on each package or unit, you are in great shape. Buy the product from each unauthorized seller and track the serial number. Now you have a starting point for your investigation.
Either a distributor has a leak in the supply chain, a retailer had to get rid of excess inventory, or a guy uses a retail store, kiosk, or expo booth as a front to sell the product online where it is far more profitable (or else there is a shadow hierarchy which we describe in another article).
But it’s not enough to have serial numbering. If you have your serial number printed on a box in ink, it can easily be removed with nail polish remover and a Q-tip. We recommend having your serial numbers etched on to the product itself, if possible. This is much more difficult to scratch off. Now, if they decide to remove the inked serial number, but can’t remove the etched serial number, you have product tampering which can be a misdemeanor and no longer a civil breach of contract case. Very easy to scare the unauthorized seller off now, or go all in by using a legal team to stop the person or company violating your MAP.
Brand Alignment Quick Tip
“Learn the difference between and FBA and FBM seller. An FBM seller’s return label address can be one of the most valuable investigative clues you have”.
The second option is to purchase the product FBM or Seller-Fulfilled Prime, if possible. Let’s say you have an unauthorized seller who sells your product FBA. Take a look at the rest of the inventory, even if it is other brands they are selling. Try to find something that they are selling FBM and purchase it.
Do your best to purchase something priced around the Buy Box so they do not get suspicious. In that situation, the worst thing that will happen is that they cancel the order and mark down your name and address, in which case you will need to purchase another product under a different customer account (of which you should have several in multiple zip codes). Mail forwarding services are easy to find.
Be sure not to use your company’s public address or zip code since that is easy to check. If the address is connected to your company on Google in any way, use a different one. Note that the seller may not even have the high-priced FBM item in stock, since many sellers will list an item at an unsellable minimum advertised price map for the sole purpose of tracking analytics to see if it is worth it for future inventory.
When you receive the FBM item, check the return address label. If they are smart they won’t list their actual address, but they are still likely to use a PO Box or send from a zip code near their physical location. Now you have a lead, and the brand can check their distributor list to see if they have anybody in that area. Of course, If you have been reading our other articles you will realize that it can be a false lead, but any info is better than nothing.
Now there is a big caveat regarding test buying on Amazon. FBA fulfillment centers have something called commingling of inventory as an option. What that means is that if Seller A sends 10 units of a product to FBA and Seller B sends 5 units of the same product to FBA, the items get mixed. So it does not matter whom you buy from, Amazon takes a random product from those 15 units and packages it.
So it is possible that you buy one unit from each seller and both items come back with serial numbers that trace back to only Seller A. You may now think both seller accounts are the same user, when they are not. You are still identifying an unauthorized seller, so it is still a big win for you, but you may not be getting the complete picture. Purchasing two units from each seller is a solution but can be pricey since Amazon does not like it if a customer has too many returns.
Commingling is an option for sellers, and not required, but it is very common and you should always be aware of it. If you file a trademark violation on the item, then the correct seller will be penalized, so do not worry about that. FBM and Seller-Fulfilled Prime purchases would be the obvious work-around here. As you can imagine, if the brand is selling their product themselves on FBA, it is not a good look for the item to be commingled with unauthorized sellers, as that can lead to poor reviews and brand reputation since the customer will not know the difference. We always recommend that the brand and it’s authorized sellers turn off commingling when doing FBA to protect your MAP guidelines.
How Unauthorized Sellers Beat Amazon Resellers Vendor Central at the Buy Box
Many brands think they hit the home run by being accepted to the Amazon Vendor Central program. They think they are home safe and that Amazon will take care of their listings from here on out. But if their brand is not brand gated, nothing has changed for them regarding unauthorized sellers.
Nothing stops companies from competing with Amazon on the buy box. Of course, it is not smart practice for resellers to compete with Amazon on price since Amazon can do whatever they want with the buy box algorithm. Amazon gets lower distributor pricing than most if not all distributors due to the quantity they purchase, so the reseller might have to take a loss to compete, and if they can compete Amazon doesn’t mind temporarily taking a loss themselves to keep the buy box.
But that doesn’t mean you are in the clear from unauthorised reselling. If you have come to a MAP pricing agreement with Amazon, nothing stops other resellers from violating MAP price on most listings and winning the buy box. Which is why you need map pricing enforcement. We have seen so many listings where Amazon has the product listed at something like $129.95 while the buy box price is $49.95 by an FBA seller, especially in beauty categories or kiosk products that have large wholesale to MSRP margins where brand reputation and image is paramount. Amazon also knows how many items the FBA seller has in stock so they may allow the FBA seller to sell out their inventory at a lower price instead of competing and taking a loss if that’s what their algorithm chooses.
Arbitrage specialists have their own complex techniques to win the buy box. They use price history apps like Keepa and CamelCamelCamel to monitor how often Amazon goes out of stock on certain items. If they find a listing that fits their algorithm, they will purchase the item in bulk and send it to FBA and sit pretty behind Amazon’s buy box price. If it is a high selling listing, as soon as Amazon goes out of stock, the arbitrage seller will sell a large quantity of items at a higher price and turn a nice profit before Amazon gets items back in stock. What if these items are counterfeit? Poorly packaged? Returns? Those are bad reviews for your listing page that can affect future sales.
To understand how much money these unauthorized sellers can make during these Amazon out of stock gaps, see the example below. Using the Keepa extension I chose a random top selling listing for a computer monitor. According to JungleScout this item sells around 9,384 items per month at $66.49 for $623,942 in monthly revenue. Below is the price history for the last year.
That orange shading is all the times Amazon had this item in stock. The white gaps in the orange is when Amazon was out of stock and an FBA or FBM seller had the Buy Box. Let’s zoom in on one of those time periods.
The last time Amazon was out of stock for this item was March 21st to March 26th of this year. The blue line represents the price of the item. You can see that the moment Amazon went out of stock, the price jumped $5-7 as the FBA sellers took the Buy Box. That is what online arbitrage looks like. Now how profitable were these 5 days for the FBA sellers? Let’s do the math. $623,942 divided by 30 days is $20,798 per day. Multiplied by 5 that is $103,990 and 1,564 units sold. That’s a nice 5 day turn out. Don’t allow unauthorized sellers to profit from your brand and ruin your brands value reputation like this.
How to Spot Unauthorized Sellers with Multiple Accounts on the Same Listing
First, you need to think like an unauthorized seller. If you don’t have any ethics, why would you share 50% of the Buy Box when you can get 90%? Well, that’s what many unauthorized sellers do. Amazon has a very, very strict rule: the same seller cannot sell the same listing under multiple Amazon accounts. If you violate that rule, you’re done. All of your violating accounts are suspended. But that doesn’t stop some of these sellers.
They open dozens of Amazon accounts, using dozens of business checking accounts under a multitude of LLC names, which in some states you can get online for $50 in less than an hour. They then begin the process of category ungating, sometimes using forged invoices (easily done with Photoshop or even MS Paint).
The Buy Box process is very simple. The lowest FBA price shares the Buy Box (and nowadays Seller Fulfilled Prime is eligible as well). If two or more sellers have the same price, they split the Buy Box 50/50 traffic-wise (if there are 3 sellers then 33/33/33, etc.), rather than sales-wise, although the sales balance themselves out over time. You will always see many sellers at the same low price since they are using automatic price matching. They prefer to price match, because automatic price decreases, even by $0.01, lead to a race to the bottom and it is always better to share a loaf of bread rather than have none at all.
Often, when you see a popular listing with 10 FBA sellers sharing the Buy Box, it is not uncommon for 5 to 9 of them to be the same seller under multiple accounts, especially if it is a top-selling listing. Now how do you identify these sellers? It’s important to know if your brand has 10 violators or 2. Big difference in work load.
There are a couple ways to identify them. The quickest way is to click on their profile and look at their other listings. Amazon automatically sorts their other products by top-selling, so these sellers will often sell the same top products on multiple accounts; they are too lazy to mix up the accounts with different products or else have way too many products to organize this. So when you see 8 accounts sharing the Buy Box on a certain brand of lipstick, and also sharing a Buy Box on a bundle of batteries (a totally different brand or category), chances are you just spotted one person or distributor with multiple accounts.
Your best weapon is the amount of work they have to do to hide themselves. If you have 10,000 products on 3 different Amazon accounts, it’s difficult to track them unless you have many employees doing the grunt work. Let’s consider a hair dryer with 40 sellers with a Buy Box price of $29.95. On the 2nd page of sellers we might find 3 different FBA sellers with a price of $42.37. What are the odds that 3 different sellers have the same awkward price that has no chance of getting a sale? What you are seeing is one person or distributor who set the same minimum price on his automatic price matching on all 3 accounts, and due to the sheer number of products he has for sale, forgot about or never noticed that he no longer has the Buy Box on this item. Check the other products on these accounts and you’ll find that they share hundreds of the same listings and brands.
Once you’ve identified these sellers, contact Seller Performance on Amazon and let them know. They might not do anything for a while, but you might be surprised months later when all the accounts suddenly have no products for sale – protecting your brand identity! 😉 If these are unauthorized sellers or MAP violators, you have just dealt a death blow to their business for a long time.
Thank you for reading our post, “How to Deal With MAP Violators And Map Violations – Tips & Tricks.” We hope it was helpful.
Let us Take Care of Your MAP Monitoring & Enforcement
The first step in removing the different types of unauthorized sellers is spotting them on your listings and that is exactly what the Brand Alignment Monitoring Dashboard will do for you. With price updates every 3 hours and inventory totals for every seller on every listing, you will get the most complete picture possible of your brand on every major online marketplace.
Of course, the most important step in removing unauthorized sellers is prevention and enforcement. This is where Brand Alignment is leagues above the competition.
Clear over 80% of unauthorized sellers: Brand Alignment will make a custom strategy for your brand to ensure the highest rates of removal.
Control Your Authorized Channels: Daily emails informing you of authorized channel violations and price cascading events.
Will Enforcement Solutions Work for My Brand?
We have had our 80%-90%+ enforcement rates in every single industry we have worked in. That includes the following:
- Consumer Electronics
- Apparel and Shoes
- Pharmaceuticals
- Health & Beauty
- Sports & Outdoors
- Mobile Phone Accessories
- And More
As you are already aware, each industry has their own bells and whistles. Please contact us if you have any specific questions about enforcement in your industry.
Are There Any Risks Involved With Enforcement?
Brand Alignment gives the brand the option of using their own personal cease & desist letters or the option to customize Brand Alignment’s proven high performance Cease & Desist letters. These letters were crafted by Intellectual Property lawyers with a full focus on minimizing liability.
Any infringement complaints filed by Brand Alignment are done with the utmost care and transparency. We do not file counterfeit complaints without test buys and approval from the brand. Our trademark complaints are done with caution and all bases covered.
Finally, in this world, anybody can sue anybody for anything. But it does not mean it will stand up in court. There is nothing we can do to prevent frivolous lawsuits from disgruntled sellers. However, we do everything we can to prepare you to have any case against you quickly dismissed. Since 2018, we are proud to say that neither us or any of our brands have had any legal issues of any kind related to our service.
Brand Alignment vs The Competition
If you are new to shopping for a brand protection agency provider, it might be confusing to tell the difference between companies. It might sound like everybody offers the same type of monitoring and enforcement. This could not be further from the truth.
- Crawls marketplaces for pricing changes every 3 hours or 8x a day
- Markets monitored for price cascading are crawled every hour or 24x a day
- Sends a Cease & Desist letter to every unauthorized seller on Amazon
- Since 100% of all unauthorized sellers are contacted, Brand Alignment averages an 80%-90%+ Removal Rate
- Uses hundreds of proprietary investigative techniques to identify personal information of sellers and supply chain sources
The Competition
- Crawls marketplaces for pricing only 1x-4x a day
- Markets monitored for price cascading are crawled every 3 hours or 8x a day
- Requires YOU to send a Cease & Desist letter only if YOU have the email of the unauthorized seller
- Since only a small percentage of unauthorized sellers are contacted, the competition averages a 10%-30% removal rate
- Uses basic investigative techniques like Google searches or buying low quality lists in hopes of finding emails to send letters
How Much Money In Sales Are You Losing Each Year Due to a Lack of Quality Brand Protection?
- What is your current Buy Box Loss percentage? How much unsold inventory do you or your authorized channels have due to Buy Box loss?
- How much are you charged by Vendors for chargebacks related to price matching MAP violators?
- What effect do unauthorized sellers have on your Brand Integrity when they violate MAP policy or sell refurbished, returned, or used items as New?
- Are you dealing with unhappy authorized channels who have difficulty obtaining the Buy Box? Are you being turned down by potential authorized channels for not having better control of your MAP policy?
- Did you know that data shows that less sales are made from 3rd party sellers having the Buy Box than from Amazon having the Buy Box?
- What are your storage and warehousing costs from unsold inventory due to unauthorized sellers?
Frequently Asked Questions
How Long Does It Take to Get Started?
Our on-boarding period takes between 1-2 weeks depending on the amount of custom work required.
I Have More of a Counterfeit Problem Than a Grey Market Problem. Can You Help?
Currently, our specialty is grey market sales. If you are dealing primarily with counterfeits or knockoffs, we recommend speaking to a IP Takedown service instead. If you are interested in both, our services compliment IP Takedown software very well.
Do You Work With Third Party Vendors or Only Directly With Brands?
In the past we worked with 3rd party vendors, however due to liability concerns we now only work directly with brands. We do offer a referral commission so please feel free to contact us if a brand you work with needs help with brand protection.
What Are Your Enforcement Rates on Other Marketplaces Besides Amazon?
We do not offer removal guarantees for other marketplaces, however it is not uncommon to see removal rates on Walmart or Rakuten in the range of 50%-90%
My Grey Market Problem Extends Outside the USA. What Can You Offer?
We LOVE investigating international grey market trade. Contact us about the countries you would like to monitor and enforce, and we will be glad to help.
I Had a Bad Experience With My Last Brand Protection Provider, Why Will You Be Any Different?
We understand your concerns. We are aware of many unhappy brands who have worked in the past with our competitors.
We can talk all day about how we are different, but instead we would like to show you with our Brand Alignment Enforcement Guarantee. Contact us to learn more.
Protect What's Yours
Take the first step towards protecting your brand with tailored solutions by brand protection experts.
Emmanuel Frost 