How To Delete Amazon Seller Account
How to delete amazon seller account
Selling on Amazon isn’t for everyone. Some people may be moving on to more profitable careers or have decided to stop selling on Amazon totally. As long as your Amazon seller account is active, you’ll probably get some charges here and there. If you’ve decided to no longer sell, it’s probably best to delete your account.
You can delete your account, but there needs to be several actions taken to make it complete.
Why are you choosing to delete your Amazon seller account?
You need to evaluate the reason why you are deleting your account. Many problems that people have can be solved, but deleting your account opens up more issues. Once you actually delete your Amazon seller account, it will be very difficult for you to ever get it back. Amazon keeps a record of your data, so if you sign up for a new seller account in the future, Amazon will immediately flag it.
Many people who have issues with their account like suspensions may try to do this. Amazon takes this very seriously and they will ban you from ever selling on Amazon again. Don’t ever do this. If you are choosing to delete your account for personal reasons, you have to keep in mind the consequences that can occur.
Taking a permanent action like deleting your Amazon seller account for temporary situations is not a good idea. If you decide to delete your account, you need to have the mindset that you will never sell on Amazon again.
Steps that need to be taken prior to deleting your Amazon seller account?
Closing your Amazon account won’t take a few days. You need to proactively plan this out, so that no problems occur when you actually close the account. The more business you have on Amazon, the more tricky it can become. Sellers who are new to Amazon won’t face as many issues when closing their account. Some of the primary steps you need to take before deleting your account include:
Suspending your listings:
You cannot delete your account without fully stopping your business operations. This means you need to suspend all of your listings to make sure you are not making any more sales on Amazon.
If you continue to make sales, you cannot delete your account. Even if your listings are inactive, you still have to process returns. Once all the returns gets sorted out, your listings are down permanently.
Fulfill any orders:
You must fulfill all outstanding orders prior to deleting your account. Amazon sellers often have orders to fulfill, so that responsibility continues until your final sale is made. Once you fulfill any outstanding orders, double-check your listings so you don’t get any more.
Zero balance:
Your Amazon account has to zero out before it is permanently deleted. If Amazon owes you a balance, you will likely be paid in the next 2 weeks.
If you owe Amazon money, you must pay it out before your account is deleted. This is crucial especially for new sellers.
New sellers often don’t have sales on their account, so they have to pay for any plans they signed up for along with fees. This must be done or you’ll keep getting recurring fees and you can’t close your account.
Return or dispose inventory:
If you use FBA for your Amazon business, you have to send a request to get your products delivered back to you or disposed by Amazon. This is one of the final steps and it ensures you have no products in Amazon’s warehouses. You can check out the removal process on Amazon here.
Other actions you need to take before deleting your Amazon account include:
- Resolve all transactions with buyers
- Ensure your bank info is valid to receive your final payment from Amazon
- Resolve any performance notification errors like suspensions/deactivations
What happens after your Amazon seller account is deleted?
Lose access to all seller privileges:
This may seem like common sense, but you will actually lose all the abilities you had on Seller Central. This means that if you’re doing taxes in the future and wanted to see your sales, order history, etc., you won’t be able to.
This is a huge downside to having closed accounts. Make sure you take all the necessary information with you prior to permanently deleting your Amazon seller account.
All marketplaces will be closed:
If you shut down your U.S. Amazon seller account, you will also lose your Canada and Mexico account. This is a huge problem for sellers that are looking to only close one marketplace. Make sure you are closing one marketplace and not all of them. It will be very difficult to reverse in the future.
90 day period after last sale:
Amazon will not allow you to fully close your account until 90 days after your final sale. If you have an ongoing Amazon business, it may take a few weeks before you completely empty out your inventory. This means it will likely take probably a 100+ days for Amazon sellers with existing businesses to completely delete their account.
The quicker you suspend your listings, the faster the 90-day period starts. Amazon does this to make sure all things related to your Amazon seller account are resolved prior to you leaving the platform. You can’t decide to ignore everything and quit today because you feel like it.
How to close your Amazon seller account?
To delete your Amazon seller account, login to the Seller Central page (sellercentral.amazon.com). Once you’re in Seller Central, go to settings and then account info. At the bottom right of the account info page, you should see an account management panel. It looks like this:
Click on close amazon seller account. You will see a new pop up page that’ll ask you if you’d like to downgrade to an individual plan, close an account in one marketplace or all the places.
This pop up page may vary depending on the kind of account you had. Mine is a professional selling account, so this is what shows up.
You should choose request account closure to continue. Once you do this you’ll be asked why you want to close the account. You can give a brief explanation and continue to close the account.
Once you’ve bypassed all of the automated parts of closing your Amazon seller account, you will receive an email from Amazon.
The email from Amazon will notify you that your seller account has been closed and any further steps you need to take. From this point, you’re done with selling on Amazon. If there’s an issue like Amazon holding money, it will take some time to resolve. You can launch a case within Seller Central or email Amazon seller support.
