Sellers who treat Amazon as a serious sales channel can't afford to find out their account has gone into "at-risk" status the day Amazon emails to say so. By then, listings have lost rank, ads have throttled, and the path back to "green" takes weeks of careful remediation.
The good news: Amazon has substantially improved the visibility you have into your account health since this post first ran. The bad news: more of your performance depends on it than ever. Here's what to check, when to check it, and what's changed in 2026.
In 2022 Amazon rolled out the Account Health Rating as the primary at-risk signal for seller accounts. AHR is a 0–1000 scale that distills your overall compliance and customer experience into one number:
AHR weighs three categories: customer service performance (order defect rate, valid tracking rate, on-time delivery), product policy compliance (intellectual property claims, restricted product violations, suspected inauthentic complaints), and shipping performance (late shipment rate, pre-fulfillment cancel rate). FBA shields most shipping signals; sellers running FBM or SFP carry more direct exposure.
Inventory Performance Index (IPI) still exists, but it's specifically about FBA inventory health rather than overall account risk. The 2024–2026 IPI thresholds:
The mistake we still see often: sellers focus on IPI and assume their account is healthy. AHR is the metric to watch first.
The right cadence depends on the size and volume of your Amazon operation:
The dashboard lives at Performance → Account Health in Seller Central. It now includes a notifications panel that flags incidents the moment they're logged.
Amazon's account-health dashboard has grown more detailed. The metrics that move AHR most:
The Buy Box — the "Add to Cart" box that drives the overwhelming majority of Amazon purchases — is still awarded based on a combination of price, fulfillment method (FBA wins, broadly), seller performance, and inventory availability. Account health is woven through all of those factors. The Buy Box drives the clear majority of Amazon transactions, and category-level variation aside, losing it on a hero SKU means losing the bulk of that listing's revenue almost overnight.
A drop in account health that you don't catch quickly can mean losing the Buy Box on hero SKUs — which means losing nearly all sales on those listings until the account recovers.
Amazon's Early Reviewer Program ended in March 2021. If your old marketing playbook still references "$60 for 5 reviews," it's time to update.
The Amazon-sanctioned review paths today:
Anything outside these paths — paid reviews, friends-and-family reviews, incentivized reviews — risks suspension. Amazon's enforcement has been increasingly aggressive on review manipulation, and a single confirmed incident can be terminal.
Listings with A+ Content (formerly Enhanced Brand Content) consistently outperform listings without it. Comparison charts, brand-story modules, additional imagery, and (for Premium A+ Content available to higher-tier Brand Registry sellers) video, hotspot modules, and Q&A modules all add up.
If you're already healthy on AHR and your ads are humming, A+ Content is usually the next biggest lever.
If your AHR is already at risk, or if you're scaling fast enough that one bad month could put it there, that's typically when an outside Amazon team pays for itself. The right partner has done the recovery and remediation work many times before, knows which Amazon policy teams to escalate to, and can put proactive monitoring in place so issues don't escalate without notice.
Major Tom's eCommerce strategy team works with brands across Amazon US, Canada, and international marketplaces. For Wild Grapes, our combined account-health and growth approach contributed to a 98% increase in monthly Amazon sales — including the listing optimization and ad strategy that drove five of their products onto the first results page for their core terms.
Want to talk through your account's health and where to focus next? Get in touch with our eCommerce team.
Amazon's Account Health Rating (AHR) runs on a 0–1000 scale and combines three categories: customer service performance (order defect rate, valid tracking rate, on-time delivery), product policy compliance (IP complaints, restricted product violations, inauthentic complaints), and shipping performance (late shipment rate, pre-fulfillment cancel rate). Each open policy violation reduces your score; clean periods recover it.
200–1000 keeps your account out of immediate suspension risk. Most established sellers operate well above 500. Below 200 puts your account in "At Risk" status, which means a single further policy issue can trigger a suspension. The goal isn't just to stay above 200 — it's to operate with enough buffer that one bad customer complaint doesn't put you in jeopardy.
Daily during high-volume periods, product launches, or any active warning. Weekly for established sellers with consistent performance. Monthly only if you have automated alerts that ping you on threshold breaches. Amazon Account Health Assurance, a paid service for qualifying sellers, gives earlier notice of policy issues and is worth considering for higher-volume accounts.
AHR measures customer service performance (order defect rate, valid tracking, on-time delivery), product policy compliance (intellectual property complaints, restricted products, suspected inauthentic complaints), and shipping performance (late shipment rate, pre-fulfillment cancel rate). It's the primary signal Amazon uses to decide whether your account is at risk of suspension. Inventory Performance Index (IPI), a separate metric, governs FBA storage allowances rather than overall account risk.
Address each open policy violation in the Account Health dashboard with a Plan of Action that explains the root cause, the immediate corrective steps you've taken, and the systemic changes you'll make to prevent recurrence. For shipping-related issues, move affected SKUs to FBA where Amazon controls fulfillment. For IP and inauthentic complaints, work with rights holders or provide invoices to resolve the claim. Don't ignore notifications — Amazon's enforcement tightens quickly once an account is in At Risk status.
If your AHR is at risk, if your Buy Box win rate has dropped without explanation, if a suspension has already been issued, or if your Amazon business is scaling fast enough that one bad month could put your account in jeopardy. The right partner has navigated Amazon's policy enforcement before, knows the right escalation channels, and can put proactive monitoring in place. Major Tom's eCommerce strategy team works with brands across Amazon's North American and international marketplaces — get in touch through our eCommerce strategy page.
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