The new Account Health Rating system gives more insight into exactly where your account stands than the old Red, Yellow, Green system.
While the numerical system can tell you how close you are to a critical threshold, it’s probably not too likely to prevent you from crossing it if an unexpected enforcement arises.
However, by understanding how it works, you can know more about what it takes to dig out of a an unhealthy hole.
Info from Amazon about how the AHR calculations work:
Your AHR Gains 4 points for every 200 units sold.
This means that a high velocity seller is going to add points to their AHR much faster than a slow velocity seller.
A high velocity seller will be able to absorb significantly more penalties, and dig their way out of a hole, more quickly than a slow velocity seller.
- Examples:
- (1,000 Units sold in a month / 200) x 4 = 20 AHR Points
- (5,000 units sold in a month / 200) x 4 = 100 AHR points.
Your AHR loses 4 points for every violation.
Each violation will chip away at your score, but violations of the same type ococuring repeatedly will drain it even faster.
Each additional violation of the same type will deduct twice the points as the previous violation.
Points deducted for repeated # of similar violations
- 1 = -4 Points
- 2 = -8 Points
- 3 = -16 Points
- 4 = -32 Points
- 5 = -64 Points
5 violations of the same type = -4 – 8 – 16 – 32 – 64 = -116 Points
A worrisome potential side effect of this policy:
What is scary about this is that your account rating can evaporate instantly if multiple complaints come in at the same time.
If you have 200 points on your account, 5 successive violations could almost instantly queue your account up for automatic suspension.
Even worse:
- You may be unable to fix the issues before your account is suspended.
- You may know what the issue is, and be trying to fix it, and seller support won’t be able to help you in time.
How is Amazon dealing with this risk of rapid shutdown?
While Amazon has said they will not provide any further clarity on this issue and how the AHR works, they have taken additional steps to prevent accounts from being automatically shut off.
Amazon announced a new, free benefit for sellers called Account Health Assurance, which formalizes our commitment to not deactivate a seller’s account as long as they work with us to resolve any issues.
How do you qualify for Account Health Assurance?
Although AHA guarantees that your account wont be rapidly shut down, it also has some slightly confusing policy requirements.
One of those AHA policy requirements is that you maintain a good Account Health Rating. It seems counterintuitive that you need to maintain a good AHR in order to qualify for AHA, since a poor AHR is often what results in your account being shut down.
We’ll provide more details on the nuances and requirements and update this page and they become available.
If you need help maintaining a good Account Health Rating, resolving outstanding policy violations, or ensuring that your account is enrolled in Account Health Assurance (and won’t be shut off unexpectedly) contact us for a chat and let’s discuss how we can help out.