Ultimate Guide about Amazon Listing Hijacking

What is Amazon Listing Hijacking?

When third-party sellers hijack your product listing, they typically make a counterfeit version of your product with a lower price and inferior quality. They list their product under your Amazon listing. These sellers compete with you in price and drive you out of the Buy Box. This means that your sales from your listing will decrease. In addition, as the customers will purchase these cheap and fake products, they would find that they have low quality. So they become dissatisfied and put negative reviews on your listing, which can affect your Amazon FBA Business.

You should know that Amazon Listing hijacking is different from Amazon reselling. Someone who buys your products and then decides to resell them is not a hijacker; they are known as resellers. Usually, hijackers try to sell a fake version of your product. Therefore, you need to go forward to remove hijackers on your Amazon listing as soon as you see them on your listing.

A primary concern among all Amazon sellers is that their listings will be hijacked. According to the 2022 State of the Amazon Seller Report, %48 of sellers are worried that their Amazon listing would be copied by hijackers.

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How to Stop Amazon Hijackers?

There are some ways that you can protect your Amazon listing against Amazon Hijackers:

• Branding Your Amazon Products.

Having your brand and/or logo on your product and its package is the first step to prevent Amazon listing hijacking. Along with the pictures showing the products being sold, you also need to have your brand and/or logo clearly visible on your listing. Stealing Amazon listing is much less happening for the products, which have clear evidence of branding in the photography.

With unique packaging and unique designs, you can brand your products. So it will be distinguishable from other products, and consequently, it would be harder to make a copy from them by hijackers. Many Amazon sellers think of saving money by avoiding branding their products. But this may cause future problems with hijackers, while you have very little recourse against them.

• Trademarking Your Amazon Products.

Another way to protect your products against stealing Amazon listing is to trademark your brand. You will defend your trademark legally against any hijacker that wants to use or copy your brand name with its own name.

You should know that you can write a violation by relying on your trademark in a country where you have registered a trademark. For example, for US registered trademarks, you can report a violation on Amazon.com, and to remove a hijacker on amazon.de, you need to have a registered trademark in Germany.

• Bundling Your Amazon Products.

You also can defense against Amazon listing hijacking by bundling your Amazon products. While bundling, it is essential to package and various complimentary products together to have one unique product. You can make it more difficult for hijackers to duplicate your products by differentiating them with an individual bundle. Amazon will immediately remove the product which is listed under your listing and doesn’t match your bundle exactly.

• Creating a Website for Your Amazon Products.

Having a website with your brand name in URL is another way to protect your Amazon listing. In addition, list your products with EAN, UPC, and/or FNSU barcodes. You don’t need a complex website. It is enough to have a web page that your brand is shown and your products can be published. You can use this website to verify your product and brand. It is also possible to claim that the listed products by hijackers are counterfeit.

• Offering a Refund Guarantee

The last option would be offering your customer a Refund Guarantee, which will persuade them to buy your products as they see your Trademark or brand name.

How to know if Another Seller Hijacked Your Listing Products?

There are specific signs that you can notice someone is stealing an Amazon listing.

• A person who is not a licensed reseller starts selling on your Amazon listing
• The Buy Box for your product listing is claimed by someone
• You see the number of negative reviews has increased suddenly

How to Report a Fake Item to Amazon?

It is necessary to remove hijackers from your Amazon listing as soon as you discover them. In Seller Central’s help files, you can find Amazon Anti-counterfeiting Policy. In this section, it is clearly mentioned that Amazon does not tolerate the selling of fake products on its platform.

By clicking on the “notify us” link, you will see Amazon’s Report Infringement policy and form. Now fill out an infringement claim form. Within 24 hours Amazon will react to your claim, and the offer will be removed. In addition, Amazon’s Seller Performance Team will send you an email with this content “… seller listing you identified… appears to have been removed from Amazon.com. We trust this will bring this matter to a close.”

Another way that you can report a seller violation to Amazon under the counterfeit policy of Amazon is to ask a friend to buy the fake product. As you receive the product, and by taking photos, make evidence to prove this item is fake and doesn’t have your brand. Then, send an email to [email protected] and attach your photos. Your email should include your order number and storefront URL. Amazon will respond to you in 48 hours.

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Final Thought

Amazon Hijackers or piggy packers are the ones who use your Amazon price listing instead of creating their own listing. They undercut your price to steal your Buy Box. Mainly, their quality is lower than yours, which causes customers to become discontented and put negative reviews. By branding and having a trademark, you can stop the hijackers. Bundling your Amazon products and designing a website for them are the other ways to defend against Amazon listing hijacking. The last attempt could be offering a Money Back Guarantee. You should monitor your Amazon listing closely to notice another seller hijacked your listing products and report it to Amazon as soon as possible. Also if you wanna know more about online arbitrage sourcing list, deals and etc. follow our blog.