Amazon Account Health Rating: How the Score Works

The Amazon account health rating is the number that decides whether you keep selling. It sits at the top of the Account Health page in Seller Central, it runs from 0 to 1,000, and it is the closest thing Amazon gives you to a running verdict on your selling account. Most sellers look at it once, see a green number, and never open it again. That is the mistake: the rating is not a grade on how well you sell. It is a balance of policy compliance, and it moves without anyone telling you.

What the Amazon account health rating measures

The Account Health Rating program policy describes the AHR as a color coded score that gives a near real time status of your account and tells you whether the selling account in that store is at risk of deactivation.

Two things follow from that, and both matter.

First, the rating is per store. A Healthy rating in the United States does not travel to your account in Germany. Each store has its own number and its own violations.

Second, the rating is about policy compliance, not about customer satisfaction. Late shipments and defective orders live in the performance metrics right below it, and they can deactivate you on their own. They are not what the AHR number is built from.

How the account health rating score is calculated

Amazon describes the arithmetic in plain terms.

Every new selling account starts at 200.

You gain 4 points for every 200 orders you fulfilled successfully over the last 180 days. That is the only lever that pushes the number up on its own, and it is slow on purpose: volume buys you margin against mistakes, but it takes half a year of it.

Points come off each time a new policy violation is found, and go back on when you address that violation successfully. Violations carry one of four severity levels: critical, high, medium and low. Deductions for the non critical levels typically run between 2 and 8 points. A critical violation does not deduct anything: it takes the rating to zero.

If you violate the same policy again, in some cases the deduction doubles on the repeat.

That last rule is the one that catches people. The first suppressed listing for a restricted product claim costs you a few points. The third one costs multiples of that, for exactly the same mistake.

The three zones, and where the line really is

• Healthy. 200 or above. The number shows in green.
• At Risk. Below 200 and above 100. The page turns yellow and carries a banner telling you the account is at risk of deactivation.
• Deactivation eligible. Below 100. The account can be deactivated, and the only route back is a plan of action.

Read the middle band again. At Risk starts the moment you go under 200, and 200 is where every account begins. A brand new seller with zero orders and zero violations is sitting exactly on the floor. There is no cushion until you have fulfilled orders to build one.

The performance metrics that sit next to the rating

The AHR is not the whole Account Health page. The Order Performance program policy sets the targets that can restrict or deactivate your selling privileges independently of the rating:

• Order Defect Rate under 1 percent, measured over a 60 day window. It counts orders with negative feedback, an A to z Guarantee claim or a service chargeback.
• Late Shipment Rate under 4 percent, for seller fulfilled orders.
• Pre fulfilment Cancellation Rate under 2.5 percent, measured over a 7 day window, counting every order you cancelled before shipping.
• Valid Tracking Rate above 95 percent for seller fulfilled orders, by category. Fall below it and Amazon can restrict your ability to sell non FBA items in that category.

If you run Seller Fulfilled Prime or ship to Amazon Business buyers, there are two more clocks on you: the Prime badge speed thresholds that moved in July and the business hour delivery rate with its 14 day window.

Is your account health rating slipping?

See my numbers

A worked example, end to end

Take a seller who fulfilled 3,000 orders in the last 180 days.

• 3,000 orders is 15 blocks of 200, so 60 points earned.
• Starting score 200, plus 60, gives an account health rating of 260.
• Two medium severity policy violations land in August at 4 points each. 260 minus 8 is 252.
• The same policy is violated a third time in September and the deduction doubles to 8. The rating is now 244.

Nothing about that seller's customer experience changed. No order shipped late. The rating fell 16 points and crossed under 250, which is the bar that Account Health Assurance asks you to hold. The safety net switched off and no email said so.

That is the practical reason to watch the number: the distance between 260 and 244 is invisible in your sales reports and decisive in your account.

What to do when the rating drops

1. Open Performance, then Account Health, and read the violation list, not the number. The number is a summary. The list tells you which policy, which ASIN and what Amazon wants.
2. Fix the underlying cause first. Points come back when the violation is addressed successfully, not when you reply.
3. If the violation is wrong, dispute it through the same page. A removed violation returns its points.
4. If the account is already deactivated, the appeal is formally a plan of action. In Seller Central, go to Account Health and use Reactivate your account. Rejections are not final: you address the stated reason and resubmit.
5. Use the Call me now button on the Account Health Dashboard. It puts you on the phone with an Account Health specialist instead of in a ticket queue.

Note the difference between an account level problem and a listing level one. Amazon increasingly acts on the offer instead of the whole account, which is what happened when OTDR moved to listing level deactivation. A suppressed ASIN and a deactivated account are not the same emergency.

The 250 bar above the 200 floor

There is a second line above the Healthy threshold. The Account Health Assurance FAQ sets enrolment at an AHR of 250 or higher held for at least 6 months, with no more than 10 days spent below that threshold, a Professional selling account and a valid emergency contact number on file. Enrolment is automatic when you qualify.

What it buys you: when an issue arises that would otherwise deactivate the account, a specialist reaches out first. If Amazon can reach you within 72 hours and you work with them, the account is not deactivated. Serious violations such as fraud are excluded.

So the real target is not 200. It is 250 held for half a year. Hold it and the programme holds you: a specialist calls before anything is switched off.

The short version

Treat the account health rating as a balance, not a grade. It starts at 200, climbs 4 points per 200 fulfilled orders over 180 days, and falls 2 to 8 points per violation with repeats costing more. Healthy is 200 and up, At Risk is 100 to 199, and under 100 the account can be deactivated. The number that actually protects you is 250, held for six months.

#account health#seller#Seller Central#compliance

👋Hey! I'm Amara

Press at SellerKey.co

☕ Espresso. Never a latte macchiato.

I cover Amazon fee and policy changes: what changed, when it applies and where Amazon published it.

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