Amazon Launches Account Health Assurance Program for Eligible Sellers: Dec 2022

Maintaining account health is an ongoing project for all Amazon Sellers. It's almost inevitable that at some point, you'll log into your Seller Central account, to see the dreaded alert: Your Account Has Been Deactivated.

With the recent announcement of Amazon’s new program Account Health Assurance (AHA), eligible sellers won’t need to worry about their account being deactivated out of the blue anymore.

What is Account Health Assurance?

AHA is a newly launched program for sellers who have historically maintained a healthy account. The program provides additional support from Amazon’s account health specialist team, giving sellers an opportunity to find the root cause of the problem, and resolve it without your account being deactivated (and without a major disruption to sales).

In Amazon’s words:

“With Account Health Assurance, we won’t deactivate your selling account as long as you work with us to resolve any issues.”

To become eligible, sellers must maintain an Account Health Rating (ARA) of 250 or greater for the past 6 months. Sellers must also be sure to enter an emergency contact number, allowing Amazon to directly contact you if a critical problem arises (which would have otherwise resulted in deactivation). Check your eligibility by clicking here.

How to maintain AHA eligibility

Earlier this year, we covered why Your Account Health Rating Matters - discussing what Healthy, At-Risk and Unhealthy account ratings are, and how sellers can improve their rating. Now, your AHR matters more than ever, as it determines your eligibility for the AHA program.

To maintain AHA eligibility, sellers must quickly work to resolve policy violations and warnings by submitting all required appeals and resolving all performance violations before the specified date shown on the Account Health Policy Violations page.

Pros & Cons of AHA for sellers

Although this new program seems promising, and it appears that Amazon launched it to help provide peace of mind against account deactivation – some sellers have voiced that the eligibility is unattainable for their business. Multiple complaints have been voiced within Seller Forums – including sellers expressing frustration with the fact that maintaining a good ARA will be nearly impossible for them, and in turn, they’ll never become eligible for AHA.

Pros:

• AHA rewards eligible sellers with:
• Protection against account deactivation
• Elimination of worry around unexpected account deactivation
• Provides a better pathway to avoid potential account-wide disruptions of sales
• 3-Day Grace period when critical violations occur
• ARA provides all sellers with:
• A more granular understanding of account health performance
• Easier prioritization by providing Level of Impact – knowing whether a violation has a critical, high, medium, or low impact on your account
• 4 Points for every 200 Orders successfully fulfilled through Amazon.com

Cons:

• Sellers with low sales volumes that also commit repeat high impact policy violations will struggle to keep an active account due to the nature of ARA and the fact that they will likely be ineligible for the AHA Program.
• Climbing your way out of a Deactivated or At-Risk account may prove to be more difficult than before, as we can foresee the potential of Amazon becoming even less forgiving when it comes to reinstating deactivated accounts, with the argument that they’ve removed all prior barriers for sellers by implementing these changes.
• 2-8 Points removed for each violation occurring in the account (on average).

If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on your account health dashboard, it’s never too late to start. Retail Bloom specializes in Account Health maintenance and has a dedicated team waiting to unpack and work to resolve any issues you’re facing when it comes to Amazon account health.

With the constant updates in online marketplaces, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest changes. If you are a client looking for additional information, contact your strategist or if you are interested in learning more about how Retail Bloom can assist your brand efforts in online marketplaces, schedule a consultation with our team. 

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