Can Your Amazon Seller Account Be Deactivated for Responding to Buyers after 24 hours?

Coming from the holidays, we have a lot of buyer messages waiting to be answered and most of them are already over the 24-hour SLA target. But let’s be real—sellers can’t be expected to reply to buyers 24/7 especially on weekends and holidays.

However, Amazon really loves happy customers, and a big part of that is fast communication. If you don’t reply to buyer messages within 24 hours, it can hurt your Account Health Rating—and yes, if ignored long enough, it could lead to deactivation. Frankly speaking, I haven’t seen any deactivation notice with regards to replying to buyers for more than 24 hours. Just don’t ignore buyer messages for extended periods of time and you’ll be fine.

Amazon’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) requires sellers to respond promptly, even to messages that seem trivial or aren’t actual questions. Why? Because leaving customers hanging isn’t part of Amazon’s world-class service goals.

To avoid trouble, activate your store’s holiday settings or simply increase the handling time on a SKU level to manage buyers’ expectations about delivery time. You can also set-up auto responses if you’re using a 3rd party software to manage buyer messages.

Got questions? Drop a comment or send me an email.