Everything You Wanted to Know About eGrowth Partners but Were Afraid to Ask…
Normally I write about Amazon suspension and reinstatement issues in my blog, but this week I thought I’d address some of the most common questions we get from clients about eGrowth Partners.
Q: Who will handle my reinstatement?
A: You will work with a US-based consultant who has been personally hired and trained by me. My team members have many years – some have decades – of experience in business, compliance, crisis and consulting. For example, Brad Tucker comes to us with years of experience in Compliance, working on fraud detection cases for several credit card companies. He specializes in infringement cases. Veronica Perez and Roy Miller each have decades of experience in business consulting and doing crisis work. They handle inauthentic, safety, product quality, performance and other issues for our clients. These are just three members of our highly experienced consulting team.
I act as trouble-shooter when we get a particularly thorny issue or if Amazon is not reading our appeals and my team needs to brainstorm a different approach. I often make suggestions and edit appeals even though I’m not working with the client directly. I still write appeals, of course, for expedites and really difficult cases. I also write most of our company’s “indignant” letters when Amazon is breaking its own rules and policies.
I’m very proud of our track record of successes for our clients. More than 95% of our clients are successfully reinstated. We are very persistent and have developed our approaches from the trenches. We see what works and what doesn’t. We adapt when Amazon changes the rules.
Because we see so many suspensions, we have a huge internal database of knowledge to draw on for our clients, as well as consulting with each other.
Q: What does your team in the Philippines do?
A: Our Philippines team mostly does admin work and reports. When you sign up with us, one of them will get you set up and retrieve and organize reports we need to conduct your assessment. For our ongoing Get Clean Stay Clean© clients, they analyze our clients’ accounts every week, remove negative feedback, conduct reconciliations, ask for reimbursements, etc. They also gather account data so we can write appeals. Our receptionist, two of my assistants and our marketing team are in the Philippines.
Because they are less expensive resources, we are able to keep costs down for our services on these time-consuming tasks. They are all college graduates and some have Ph.Ds. They are not, however, consultants. So, when an Amazon policy question comes up, they ask our consulting team for guidance so they can provide our GCSC clients with the best answer and support possible. At eGrowth Partners, it’s truly a team effort.
Q: Do you use templates?
A: No. Our appeals are custom written to address the client’s specific situation. This is because a winning appeal for one client may fail for another. Certainly, we have processes and approaches that we know are successful and we apply these where appropriate, but the reason a client is suspended varies widely. Amazon wants to know that our client understands what happened and has fixed it not only for the current situation but for future situations. In addition, Amazon is constantly changing. Something that worked last week might not work next week. We find ourselves adapting frequently.
Q: How much does it cost to work with you?
A: Be sure to check our website for the latest prices. Reinstatements start at $2500. If your case is related to a trademark, copyright, patent infringement or counterfeit, there may be an additional charge if we need to bring in our partner Jeffrey Breloski of ATLawIP. He’s an amazing IP attorney who has helped many of our clients negotiate with rights holders. We have exclusive flat fee packages with him that save our clients money.
Q: Did you work for Amazon?
A: No. I’m a seller like you. I learned what I know by doing and learning. I meet as many Amazonians as possible to learn more about Amazon and how to decrease seller pain points. Because I have a 25+ year background as a business consultant, crisis communications specialist and turnaround advisor, I understand how businesses get into trouble – and how they get out. This puts me – and my team – in a position to help clients make the fundamental business operations changes many of them need to make in order to stay compliant with Amazon’s standards and policies.
Q: Do you have insider contacts at Amazon?
A: I have contacts who help me understand Amazon better, but none of my contacts will flip a switch for a client and reinstate them for us. We also have lists of high-level contacts to whom we can appeal on behalf of our clients. They do have the power to flip the switch but they don’t know who we are as all our appeals come from our clients, not from us.
Sometimes we’ve gotten to work with our clients’ strategic account managers or with a loan officer which has helped us gain access to more information about their accounts and suspensions, but we start from the same place as our clients: The dreaded suspension notice. The difference is we’ve seen a lot more reinstatements and we have a good understanding of how Amazon works and what they are looking for from their sellers. We know what to look for inside our clients’ accounts and we have a shared database of previously successful reinstatements to help us think through issues and solutions with our clients.
When you hear people brag about their contacts inside of Amazon, take it with a grain of salt. If it is true, then those contacts are placing their careers in jeopardy to help a friend. In many cases I’ve found it is not true. They’ve found a good name and title to send appeals to, but there is no relationship and they are not actually able to get account annotations. This means they’ve researched, which we have too. Ultimately, we are not reliant on the goodwill of people inside the company…people who could get in trouble for talking to us. We are successful without that.
Q: How is eGrowth Partners different from other consulting companies?
A: We are the most experienced team in the industry, having handled thousands of suspensions. We don’t rely on ever-changing contacts at Amazon. We rely on what we know about Amazon and what has worked for our other clients. Our team has an extensive business and consulting background which helps us guide our clients to changes they might need to make in their businesses. We’ve developed a list of internal emails over time which we use to escalate appeals for our clients. Most importantly, we have a track record of success. There are many “pop-up” reinstatement businesses right now – many with fraudulent claims on their websites. They are taking people’s money and not getting them reinstated. We find this very frustrating. By the time they come to us, some of our clients have spent thousands of dollars needlessly.
Three times I’ve had pop-up competitors steal my blog posts and other intellectual property in an effort to trick sellers. This is despicable. There are a lot of shysters out there with slick websites. One clue to look out for – they use the Amazon logo, colors, name and branding to market their site, which is prohibited. If they are violating Amazon’s trademarks and copyrights on their own website, do you want them talking to Amazon about your infringement issues?
A lot of them will claim five or 10 years’ experience in the business. That’s simply not true. When I started this business in 2014 there were two other providers of reinstatement services. I keep a close eye on my competitors and I’m well aware of when there’s a new kid in town.
We take on the hard cases and fight for our clients. We are so successful with this that several of our competitors refer their cases to us when they can’t get them reinstated. Last week a competitor sent a client to talk to me at Retail Global because they were stuck. This happens fairly regularly. Another competitor refers its account issues to us. These are both good companies. They care more about their clients’ welfare than their own egos.
Lastly, we are mission based. As a seller myself, I’m passionate about getting sellers reinstated. My entire team is motivated by injustice and getting our clients back from the brink. We fight dirty seller tricks, file complaints on our clients’ behalf, and work to get Amazon to understand seller pain points. This mission is why I speak at so many conferences and webinars for free and why I wrote my book Suspension Prevention: Get Reinstated and Protect Your Amazon Seller Account. We want to help make things better for all sellers, not just our clients.
CHECK OUT OUR EXPANDED INFRINGEMENT/IP SERVICES!
We are happy to have joined with Jeffrey Breloski of ATLawIP to help our clients resolve their infringement problems on Amazon, eBay, their own websites and other platforms. Sometimes you need a lawyer to get rights owners to take your calls and retract their complaints. Jeffrey has years of experience helping sellers and brands navigate the world of intellectual property rights. In addition to reinstatements, we are able to offer trademark filings, lawsuit filings and more for our clients at a reduced rate.
