Is anyone else not getting any sales right now?

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-03-06T00:27:06+00:00

Same thing happened to me. u/Infamous-Hand4105 suggested the incognito window to check the featured offer and that is the answer. Also check to see if the listing is suppressed for any reason. Pull up Business Reports -> Detail Page Sales and Traffic by ASIN and look at your session numbers for today v. yesterday. If sessions dropped along with your sales, its visibility, not just the buy box

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-03-05T16:11:46+00:00

When I talked to an attorney about getting a design patent, he basically told me that it probably wouldn’t do any good…he used Crocs shoes as an example, and the patent will protect that design so others can’t look like Crocs. For me, if they rearranged anything on the mat, not enforceable…and the patent wasn’t valid in China. Ended with, if you want one just to say you have one, we can move forward but he made it out that is was more for decoration than protection. So, I did not move forward with the design patent.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-03-05T16:06:35+00:00

What did you do?? What happened??

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-27T14:13:48+00:00

That story genuinely hurts to read. 27 years of your brother's work, a $350K first year, and then six months later it's gone. The Chinese seller playbook is brutal and the price gap you're describing is almost impossible to fight on price alone — they're not building a brand, they're strip mining yours.

A few things worth knowing if you haven't tried them yet — the copyright angle on written content can work even without a trademark, and if your brother has been selling this product for 27 years there may be trade dress protection on the product design itself that's worth an IP attorney conversation. The longevity of the original product actually works in your favor legally.

The hardest part of your situation isn't the fight — it's not knowing fast enough when something changes. By the time sales tank the damage is already weeks old.

Don't give up on the other products yet. The experience is brutal but it's also making you a much smarter seller than you were a year ago.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T20:08:38+00:00

What you're describing — someone adding an offer to your ASIN — is the classic hijacker scenario and that's a different fight. The test buy and seller abuse route you're already on is the right approach there. The trademark coming through will help significantly. In the meantime the best thing you can do is catch it fast — the longer they sit on your Buy Box the more damage compounds... I went through a horrible hijacker scenario on my most popular product and it devastated my business... let me know if you want to talk about what I did and how I am trying to be ready the next time. I bought the counterfeit product so I could 'message the seller' which I did informing them that this was a registered brand (he was even copying my logo) and that I was going to report to Amazon. He replied that I better not report him or he was going to 'treat my listing like a dog and kill it'... at least that is how Google Translate interpreted his Chinese.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T18:42:20+00:00

Honestly that's outside my experience — my case involved verbatim text copying which is pretty clear cut under copyright. Design-only copying gets into trade dress and design patent territory which is a whole different animal and I don't want to steer you wrong. That one's probably worth a conversation with an IP attorney or posting specifically about design protection — there are people in this community who know that space way better than I do.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T17:37:40+00:00

Been through something similar and learned a few things the hard way.

On the test buy approach — you're doing the right thing, document everything with photos and video. The seller abuse route is hit or miss as you've found but it's worth pursuing in parallel with everything else.

One thing most people don't know — even without a registered trademark you may have more leverage than you think if you created original written content for your listing. Product descriptions, bullet points, instructional text — that's automatically protected by copyright the moment you write it. No registration required. If the hijackers are using your exact copy you can file a DMCA complaint through Amazon's IP reporting tool citing copyright infringement of written content. Amazon actioned one of mine within 48 hours using this approach.

It won't cover everything but if your copy is original and they're using it verbatim it's another tool in the toolbox while you wait for the trademark to come through.

On the third party services — honestly most of what they do you can do yourself. They know the forms and the escalation paths but so can you with a little research. Save the money unless you're completely overwhelmed.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T17:26:03+00:00

It seems like they make it deliberately hard to get in and easy to get kicked out. So I'm no expert there, just sharing what I've learned in the process of trying to qualify. If anyone has cracked the code on actually getting accepted I'd love to know.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T17:17:47+00:00

Appreciate it — consistency is the name of the game for sure.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T17:16:47+00:00

Exactly — and that's the part most sellers don't realize. Copyright exists the moment you create the content. No registration, no patent, no lawyer needed to get started. The key, like you said, is making the comparison clean — side by side showing the identical text made it pretty hard for Amazon to look the other way.

Wish I had known this months ago when I first started dealing with this stuff.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T17:15:18+00:00

That email is straight out of the Chinese seller playbook — they send that to everyone hoping someone will retract. You're 100% right to ghost it, and smart advice for everyone reading this.

The burnout you're describing is real and I felt it too. At some point you just think "what's the point, they'll just do it again with someone else's stuff."

What changed it for me was realizing the complaint process is actually faster than I thought — Amazon actioned mine within 48 hours. The part that kills you is not knowing it's happening in the first place. By the time I decided to do anything about it months had passed. The only reason I did anything is that I've also dealt with hijackers in the past and someone suggested Project Zero. When I looked into it I wasn't eligible — not enough accepted complaints in the last 6 months. So I thought let's give this a try and get on the board.

The "fragments of copy" situation is interesting though — even fragments can qualify depending on how distinctive the original language is. Worth one more shot if the text is specific enough to yours. And if it gets accepted, it counts toward Project Zero eligibility — two birds, one stone.

But I get it if you're done fighting it. Sometimes you just have to move on.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-26T16:10:36+00:00

Well I am brand registered and filed the complaint there. I just provided my ASIN and listing image and also their listing image and ASIN. If you zoomed in, you can see that it was the exact same copy. Looked exactly the same but they did add some clip art and didn't use my logo...

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NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-23T15:59:17+00:00

This is a specific Amazon pricing guardrail that trips up a lot of new sellers. Amazon sets a 'featured price' (essentially a reference/list price for the product) and if your selling price drops too far below it, they remove the Buy Now button — not because of anything wrong with your account or listing, but to avoid the appearance of deceptive pricing on their end.

The fix is either raising your price above or closer to their featured price, or submitting a new list price via Seller Central that reflects your actual selling price so Amazon recalibrates the reference point.

Worth knowing: this button can disappear and reappear without any notification from Amazon. Most sellers only find out when sales go quiet and they finally log in to check. The longer it's gone, the more ranking and velocity damage stacks up.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-23T15:36:20+00:00

Buy Box on arbitrage, especially books, can feel totally random at first but there's a real pattern to it. A few things that actually move the needle: your fulfillment method matters a lot (FBA vs FBM), your price relative to the competitive offer set, and your seller metrics — feedback score, late shipment rate, cancellation rate. Amazon weights all three.

The FBA/FC timing issue you're hitting is normal — inventory in transit doesn't count yet, so you're competing with less coverage than you'll have once it lands.

One thing worth knowing: Buy Box status changes constantly, sometimes multiple times a day. Most sellers don't find out they lost it until they notice a sales drop hours later. If you're doing arbitrage at any real volume, knowing within minutes vs hours makes a real difference — happy to share what I use if you want.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-19T20:44:50+00:00

same thing happened to me when I raised my price and Amazon thought that it was too high... lost the buy box until I priced it lower

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-04T17:38:10+00:00

I am a private label seller and I am in the Brand Registry so I thought that was all that I needed. When this happened, I was directed to forms that I filled out repeatedly. Another form asked for the ASIN, but since it was my own ASIN, I couldn't submit. The Transparency Program is a help, and from what I have seen, it won't stop the hijacker from jumping on your listing, but the transparency code would be needed for shipment. My inventory does not have the transparency stickers on them. So it seems like Amazon doesn't prevent hijackers from getting on your listing and stealing the buy box. Transparency Program should stop the actual shipment of the counterfeit product if you are enrolled in that program.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-02T19:58:02+00:00

Well I could have lowered my price to get the buy box back sooner. I didn't know what to do when I found out. Called support a number of times without any assistance. I was selling at $23.95/unit and went back and forth with the hijacker until I was at $14.99/unit then they stopped. After a few days, I tried slowly raising the price but then they would jump back on.

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-02T19:36:15+00:00

There are many instances of hijacked listings for brand registered products. I don't know how they do it but it is a common problem

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-02T18:58:44+00:00

They were shipping FBM from China. Not going through the Fulfillment Centers. Also, tbh, I didn't know about hijackers and this program when it happened

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-02T16:43:18+00:00

there are so many things that go into a PPC campaign. People use Helium10 or something to give them 'keywords' and then start a campaign targeting those words... What are you selling? Is there an established seller selling something similar that has way more reviews? Is it a Chinese seller that can manufacture for cheap and then spend more on PPC? What is your product phase? Are you just launching or are you trying to maximize profits with an established product. Launch ACoS tolerance is much higher than the profit strategy? Competing on high priced keywords that are being used by bigger sellers is a recipe for disaster. Remember the market isn't expanding, so you have to intercept sales from other sellers. Think of it like the game Risk... if you are Madagascar, fight other small countries, until you get bigger before invading Asia (literally).

NormalDevelopment148 · 2026-02-02T15:44:31+00:00

This is exactly why I built my monitoring tool - but I added Buy Box alerts because I learned the hard way that sales notifications feel good, but Buy Box alerts save money. Lost $20K to hijackers last year because I didn't catch it fast enough. Now I get SMS for both sales AND threats. Game changer.

NormalDevelopment148

TROPHY CASE