Update: An Amazon spokesperson reached out to us regarding this piece, and offered the following statement:
Yesterday’s email was sent in error and all impacted listings were reinstated within hours.
We've asked the individual for further clarification on the matter, and we will let you know if we receive a response. In particular, we're curious whether or not this is still something Amazon intends to follow through on in the future -- it would be a bit odd (and unlikely) if the notice you'll see below was merely an unfortunate series of typos.
The original story follows below...
If all or a portion of your income comes through the sale of used video games or video game consoles on Amazon, we might have some bad news for you today. According to reports within the Amazon Seller Forums, the retail giant is now requiring approval before "Nintendo products" can be sold on the website.
Sellers are learning about these new rules through official notices being sent out by Amazon. An excerpt from one such notice reads as follows:
Dear seller,
Please read this email carefully. The listing information described below may affect your ability to sell certain products.
As part of our ongoing efforts to provide the best possible customer experience, we are implementing approval requirements for Nintendo products.
What does this mean for me?
Effective on 2019-10-31, you will need approval to list the affected products. If you do not obtain approval to sell these products prior to 2019-10-31, your listings for these products will be removed.
As you may have noticed, the effective date for these enforcement rules is October 31, 2019, which was yesterday. For many Amazon sellers, this notice was received on the very same day, giving them little to no time to react to the situation. With that said, it seems Amazon has not enforced this rule across the board yet -- some sellers are affected while others are not.
Of course, Amazon may have staggered the delivery of these messages (and this seller simply got unlucky with the timing), but other sellers say they received little to no warning as well.
While we are not sure precisely who is responsible for these new rules -- it could be Amazon, or it could be Nintendo -- we can make a solid guess about why they now exist. It seems likely that either Amazon or Nintendo (or perhaps both) are attempting to crack down on the unauthorized sale or reproduction of counterfeit Nintendo games and game consoles.
If you're an Amazon seller who wants to keep shipping out Nintendo products, you'll need to receive approval to do so by performing the following steps:
- First, visit your Seller Central menu's Inventory interface.
- Next, click "Add a Product" and search for the ASIN of the item you want to list.
- Click the "Listing limitations apply" link next to the appropriate search result.
- Click the "Request Approval" button.
It's unclear what criteria Amazon expects its Nintendo product sellers to fill in order to receive approval, but not selling counterfeit goods is probably a good place to start. If you're an Amazon seller affected by this change, please feel free to drop us a line in the comments with your thoughts and insight.
Image credit: Shutterstock
