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Are my messages following Amazon’s Buyer-Seller Messaging Terms of Service?
Are my messages following Amazon’s Buyer-Seller Messaging Terms of Service?

Double-check that your Communication Center messages are compliant with Amazon’s Terms of Service before you change their status to “active”

Seller Labs avatar
Written by Seller Labs
Updated over a week ago

Using Amazon’s Buyer-Seller Messaging Service

The Buyer-Seller Messaging Service lets you communicate with buyers in the Amazon marketplace via Seller Central or your personal or business email. You can contact a buyer directly from your seller account on Seller Central or by using your authorized email account (if you have the buyer's encrypted email address that was previously generated by Buyer-Seller Messaging). Either way, your correspondence will be visible on the Buyer-Seller Messages page.

Important: In general, you can contact buyers only to complete orders or to respond to customer service questions. You cannot contact buyers for marketing or promotional purposes (including via email, physical mail, telephone, or otherwise). For more information, see the Guidelines for contacting buyers section in Buyer-Seller Messaging Service overview.

If the buyer you are trying to contact has opted out of receiving messages, you can contact them based on the qualifications for sending a critical message. For more information, see Send a critical message to a buyer.

Buyer-Seller Messaging is the only approved method for communicating with buyers on Amazon.

Clarification to Communication Guidelines from Amazon

In general, you may contact a buyer who has purchased from you on Amazon only to complete an order or to respond to a customer service inquiry. You may not contact buyers in any way for marketing or promotional purposes, including via email, physical mail, telephone, or otherwise.

If you send a permitted message to a buyer, your message may not include any of the following:

Note: In any communication you have with buyers (including shipping box inserts), you cannot ask them to leave a positive customer review for your product, or to leave a review only if they had a positive experience with your product. Similarly, you cannot ask only customers who had a positive experience with your product to leave a review. It is also prohibited to offer them any compensation for a review, including money or gift cards, free or discounted products, refunds or reimbursements, or any other future benefits.

Direct and Indirect Communication Guidelines

Direct Communication

  1. Shipment Confirmation email

  2. Order Unavailable email

  3. Return Confirmation email

Indirect Communication

Amazon communicates order-related information to buyers through their "Your Account" updates. These updates include information such as when an order has been shipped (with the tracking number) or when a refund has been processed. These updates are based on shipping confirmations and refunds initiated using Manage Orders or the following feeds:

  1. Shipping Confirmation feed

  2. Order Adjustments feed

Amazon requires sellers to confirm shipment of all orders, either by using the Manage Orders feature in Seller Central or by uploading a Shipping Confirmation feed. Once a shipment has been confirmed, Amazon will send a confirmation email to the buyer. 

Be sure to include the Amazon order ID in your communications to buyers and on the shipment packing slips.

Authentic Buyer-Seller Communications

Buyers who want to contact sellers can do so by clicking the seller name link on the product detail page. This link opens a page that, in addition to displaying all of your products and your returns policy, also provides a link to your customer service email.

When a buyer emails you, they receive a confirmation that the email is sent and that you, the seller, will be contacting them.

When you receive email from a buyer via your customer service link, it will contain only plain text. There should not be any images, Flash animation, or hyperlinks. If you receive an email from a buyer that is not plain text and yet appears to be coming from Amazon, do not respond to the email or click any links or images in the email. If the email from the buyer encourages you to click or paste a link into your browser, or that asks you to go to another website, do not perform this action. For information about how to recognize suspicious email, see Security and Your Account.

Note: While Amazon directs buyer messages to you, we do not review the content. Carefully review each message before you reply to it. As a reminder, the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement explicitly states that payment and refunds for sales on Amazon are to be made solely through Amazon Payments!

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