Building up a successful brand on Amazon takes a lot of hard work. And the hard work doesn’t end when you’ve reached a level of success; maintaining that success takes a lot of work, too. Keeping your products well-supplied and your customers happy is part of the maintenance process, as is fending off competitors battling with you for views and sales in your market space.
Many of these competing sellers are honest and hard-working sellers just like you. But unfortunately, there are also plenty of sellers on Amazon who doesn’t play by the rules and attempt to take down opposing stores and brands by any means necessary. Amazon listing hijackers are among these shady characters who could put your product listings at risk, and Amazon hijacker alerts are one of your best weapons in fighting them.
Fortunately, there’s a solution in the form of Amazon hijacker alerts.
Related: Thwart Amazon Hijackers by Owning the Buy Box.
What is an Amazon Listing Hijacker?
The most common type of Amazon listing hijacking is when another seller hops on your product listing and begins selling a knock-off of your product. Multiple sellers on established SKUs from popular brands are quite common, but if you have a unique brand and product, you should be the only seller of it unless you gave permission to another seller to purchase from you wholesale for reselling. The presence of another unauthorized seller on your unique brand is usually a sign that your product listing is being hijacked.
Another type of listing hijacking is when another seller, acting as a seller of your product, changes the listing title and details about your product. This can affect sellers of both unique products and of shared SKUs as an inaccurate product listing will create confusion for potential buyers. Without Amazon hijacker alerts, you may not notice these changes before multiple sales are made.
Why is Hijacking a Problem?
If left unchecked, Amazon listing hijackers can do some serious damage to your product listing and brand reputation. In most cases, a hijacker will come in on your listing at a lower price than yours to win the buy box from you. Now all of your advertising and listing-optimization efforts will go towards sales for this competitor instead of you.
Worse yet, your customers won’t know the difference as they will be buying the product from the buy box as they always have before. But instead of getting the product that you have carefully created and monitored for quality assurance, they will receive this new seller’s knock-off version of it. If they have a bad experience with this knock-off product, they may leave a bad product review on your listing or personally swear off products with your brand name on them in the future.
Similar issues crop up when a listing title or description is changed without your knowledge. If a customer is expecting one thing and receives another based on a faulty product title, they will be frustrated and could direct that frustration onto you and your brand.
Stay on Top of These Threats With Amazon Hijacker Alerts From FeedbackWhiz
Trying to stay on top of all of your product listings to prevent listing hijackers can be overwhelming without help. Fortunately, FeedbackWhiz offers 24/7 Product Monitoring to provide you with immediate notice and Amazon hijacker alerts when something is out of the ordinary on one of your listings.
Hijacker Notification
FeedbackWhiz will give you an alert any time that another seller jumps on or off of your listing so that you can take appropriate action right away.
Buy Box Loss
This feature will give you an alert any time that you lose the buy box on one of your listings. This will give you the chance to adjust your pricing to win the buy box back and to investigate the seller that has taken it from you.
Item Title Notification
If any changes are made to the title on your product listing, you will be alerted. You can contact Amazon right away if the changes are erroneous or inaccurate to ensure that your listings are correct for your customers.
Product Review Monitoring
You will also have access to all of your product reviews and can set alerts for neutral or negative reviews. This is good practice at all times, but it can also be helpful in battling competitors who may leave fraudulent reviews on your products.
All of these features can be enabled or disabled for any of your products, based on your needs and preferences.
How Can You Combat a Hijacker on Your Listing?
Fortunately, there are some preemptive measures that you can take that will make you less vulnerable to Amazon listing hijackers. But regardless of what measures you take, you may still be targeted, and that’s where Amazon listing monitoring comes in. Reacting swiftly and addressing the problem as soon as possible gives you the best chance to limit the damage.
Preemptive measures against Amazon listing hijackers
The best thing that you can do for your private label products is to establish them as unique. If you haven’t already, be sure to register your brand with Amazon Brand Registry so that Amazon can recognize your brand if any issues arise. Any other legal documentation like trademarks or LLCs on your brand can also strengthen your case when it comes to proving that you should have the authority to keep other sellers off of your unique product listing.
To make yourself less of a target to hijackers, be sure that your brand’s name and/or logo are featured prominently on your product images. This will make your product more recognizable and less susceptible to knock-offs.
And don’t forget to take advantage of those wonderful FeedbackWhiz hijacker and product listing alerts.
What to do when dealing with a hijackers
If you have lost the buy box to a listing hijacker, try to win it back by lowering your price as soon as possible. Even if doing so costs you some profit in the short term, protecting your buyers from receiving compromised versions of your product and preventing the hijacker from earning information on your sales numbers outweighs those costs.
Next, file a copyright infringement claim on Amazon. Explain that you are the sole owner of this brand and that you have not authorized any other sellers of your product, and that you are concerned that this seller is infringing on your brand with counterfeit products. Provide any other relevant information that you can think of within this claim.
As an added layer of protection, before filing a counterfeit claim, you could attempt to contact the seller with an email expressing to them that you are the brand owner and that you do not authorize them to sell products with your brand’s name. They may remove their listing after receiving this email; if they don’t, you can include this correspondence in with your copyright claim.
Amazon takes claims of copyright infringement very seriously, so many unauthorized listings will be removed within 24 hours. FeedbackWhiz’s Amazon hijacker alerts will put you in a position to catch hijackers right away and to file these claims before they can compromise your brand. Try it out for yourself! New customers can try FeedbackWhiz for 30 days for free, no credit card required.
Editor’s Note: This article on Amazon hijacker alerts was originally published on February 10, 2020. It was updated on January 11, 2022.
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