250
Account Health Rating needed for 6 months to qualify for Account Health Assurance
72 hours
to respond to the specialist under Account Health Assurance and avoid deactivation
365 days
of supplier invoices an authenticity appeal has to cover
Key takeaways
- The appeal goes through Account Health (Reactivate your account) or the Appeal button in Performance Notifications, nowhere else.
- The plan of action has three parts: root cause, what you already did with dates, and one named control that prevents a repeat.
- There is no universal appeal deadline: sellers report 17 days in some notices and 90 in others. Use the one in yours.
- Account Health Assurance needs a rating of 250 or higher for at least 6 months, max 10 days below, plus an emergency phone number.
- Listing Protection keeps the listing live until Amazon decides, for all U.S. Account Health Assurance sellers by the end of 2026.
If your Amazon seller account is deactivated, the appeal is not a letter of apology. It is a document that has to answer one question: what changed so this does not happen again.
An Amazon seller account suspended appeal goes through one place, says the same three things every time, and lives or dies on whether you can prove the second and third of them. Here is the whole path, with the numbers that hold.
Deactivated, suspended, or at risk: they are not the same
- At risk. The Account Health page shows the violation and a countdown. You can still sell.
- Deactivated. Your offers come down and disbursements stop. Amazon calls this deactivation; sellers call it a suspension.
- Denied after appeal. The route narrows. Several notices warn that a limited number of unsuccessful appeals ends it.
Which one you are in decides how fast you have to move, and the notice in Performance Notifications is the only place that says.
Where the appeal goes
Two doors, same submission:
- Account Health, top of the page, the Reactivate your account button.
- Performance Notifications, the Appeal button next to the message that deactivated you.
If Amazon comes back asking for more, the View Appeal button on Account Health is where the extra documents go. There is no email address that works better, and sellers who post the old policy mailboxes in the Seller Forums report mixed results.
The three parts, and what each one actually means
Amazon asks for a plan of action in three sections. The names are plain and the mistake is always the same: sellers write three paragraphs of section one.
- Root cause. Not the complaint restated. The thing in your operation that let it happen: a supplier you did not vet, a repackaging setting left on, a handling time you could not meet in December.
- What you have already done. Past tense, with dates. Units removed, listings closed, a supplier dropped, a setting changed on a given day.
- What prevents a repeat. A specific control, not a promise to be careful. A check that runs every week beats an intention.
Sellers in the forums report consistently that plans blaming the buyer, the carrier, a competitor or Seller Support get declined. The root cause has to be yours, because that is the only kind you can fix.
The documents are the appeal
For most deactivation reasons the plan is the cover letter and the evidence is the case.
- Authenticity or inauthentic complaints: supplier invoices issued in the last 365 days that reflect your sales volume for that period, with the supplier's name, phone number, address and website, authentic and unaltered. Prices may be redacted. A licence to sell is not proof of authenticity.
- Intellectual property complaints: proof the product does not infringe, usually a letter of authorisation from the rights owner. A retraction from the complainant closes the case faster than any appeal.
- Condition complaints: the sourcing chain plus whatever you changed in packaging or returns handling. For why a used sold as new complaint starts in your returns settings, the same logic applies to compliance documents.
- Metric based deactivations: the number, its trend, and the operational change behind it. See how the score is built in the Amazon account health rating.
The deadline is in your notice, and only there
This is where most published advice goes wrong. Sellers quote 17 days from one notice and 90 days from another, for what looks like the same request. Both are real; they appear in different notices. Amazon does not publish one universal appeal window, so the number that applies to you is the number in your own Performance Notification. Read it before you start collecting documents, because collecting is the slow part.
Funds are the second clock. Sellers report balances held through the appeal and for a stretch after reinstatement, commonly described as around 90 days. If your money is already sitting still, why all your money is in account level reserve explains the mechanism.
Do not open a second account
Amazon's notices say directly that creating a new account will delay reactivation and may lead to permanent closure. It is the one action that turns a recoverable deactivation into a closed one.
The part you can only do before you need it
Two Amazon programmes decide how bad a violation gets, and both are earned in advance.
Account Health Assurance. Amazon's announcement sets eligibility at a professional selling account, an Account Health Rating of 250 or higher for at least six months with no more than 10 days below that threshold, and a valid emergency contact number on file. Enrolment is automatic and free once you qualify. What it buys: when an issue would otherwise deactivate you, an account health specialist calls, and if you respond within 72 hours and work the issue, the account is not deactivated. Serious violations such as fraud are excluded, and Amazon can remove you from the programme.
Listing Protection. On September 29, 2026, in its Accelerate 2026 recap, Amazon described a programme where, in Claire O'Donnell's words, in most cases your listing stays active until Amazon issues a decision. It reaches all Account Health Assurance sellers in the U.S. by the end of 2026 and the rest of the world in 2027.
Both hang off the same rating, and the six month requirement is the whole point: the Account Health Rating that protects you in April is the one you are carrying today. That is the only part of this article you can act on while nothing is wrong.
A worked example of the timing
Say a complaint arrives on a Monday and your notice gives 17 days.
- Day 0: read the notice, write down the exact policy named and the exact deadline.
- Day 1: request invoices from the supplier covering the last 365 days, and add up the units. This is the step that takes a week if the supplier is in another timezone.
- Day 3 to 10: documents arrive. Check that invoiced units cover units sold. If they do not, go back before you submit.
- Day 11: write the three sections. Root cause in two sentences, corrective actions with dates, one named control for prevention.
- Day 12: submit once, complete, through Account Health.
- Day 14 onward: if Amazon asks for more, answer through View Appeal, not by reopening a new case.
The deadline is not the hard part. The supplier is.
What to keep so this is a two day job
- A rolling 365 days of supplier invoices per ASIN, with the supplier block complete.
- Your Account Health Rating history, so you can see whether you are inside the 250 line and for how long.
- A current emergency contact number, which is the cheapest eligibility requirement anyone ever skips.
- Exported Performance Notifications, because the deadline that matters is written there and nowhere else.
“In most cases, your listing stays active until we issue a decision, and your business keeps running while we review.”
Claire O'Donnell, VP Selling Partner Trust, Amazon
Sources
- Amazon Seller Central: Protect your account from deactivation with Account Health Assurance sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Selling Partners: At Accelerate 2026, Amazon shares new AI tools (29-09-2026) sellingpartners.aboutamazon.com
- Amazon Seller Forums: How To: Appeal Account Suspension sellercentral.amazon.com
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.
