Most sellers think they’re playing a "cat and mouse" game with Amazon’s TOS, but many times they're actually playing with federal law.

In this episode, Chris McCabe sits down with Andrew Smith of Swapt to unpack one of the hottest and most misunderstood topics in eCommerce right now: how brands can encourage repeat purchases, improve customer education, and build long-term growth without crossing compliance lines.

Questions for Andrew? Reach out at https://swaptqr.com/ or reach out to him directly at [email protected]

Join us in NYC on Thursday, Feb 12 for an in-person, hands-on meetup built for serious brand owners navigating tighter enforcement and intensifying competition. See Andrew Swapt LIVE for his session on "How to Increase Customer Loyalty on Amazon." Tickets + details: https://luma.com/bgw413hl

Amazon enforcement is getting stricter, and a lot of sellers are still getting tripped up by the same avoidable compliance gaps. In this episode, Chris McCabe and Leah McHugh talk about what’s actually causing suspensions right now, why “longer appeals” often backfire, and how the rise of AI-generated advice is leading sellers to submit misinformation (including completely made-up “laws”) into cases.

Are you losing thousands in daily revenue due to an Amazon ASIN deactivation? In this episode, Chris and Leah dive into the "compliance trenches" to discuss why so many Amazon sellers are failing their appeals in early 2026, breaking down the most expensive mistakes sellers make when hit with restricted product flags or safety concerns.

Is ChatGPT helping or hurting your Amazon appeal? Many sellers are now using AI tools to scrape the web for information on how to handle specific ASIN takedowns or account suspensions. They treat ChatGPT like a crystal ball, asking it to predict the viability of an appeal. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down this alarming trend of Amazon sellers outsourcing their judgment to ChatGPT and then acting surprised when Amazon sends back a boilerplate denial. AI tools scrape the internet. The internet is full of confused sellers, failed appeals, and bad assumptions. If you base your strategy on that, you’re stacking the deck against yourself.

Is your Amazon Account Health strategy simply "waiting it out"? In this episode, Chris McCabe exposes the dangerous reality of the "180-Day Roll-Off" strategy. Many sellers believe that if they ignore a violation for six months, it simply vanishes. The truth? That violation is likely sitting dormant in your history, ready to trigger a suspension the moment a new complaint comes in. We are seeing Amazon teams pull data from as far back as 2023 to justify suspensions today. If you are sitting on your hands or clicking "Acknowledge" just to clear your dashboard, you are painting a target on your back.

Amazon doesn’t “keep reviewing” your appeal. They decide whether you’re serious, competent, or confused, and they decide it fast. Once you submit a weak, rushed, or inconsistent appeal, your case drops into the generic-denial lane. From there, every follow-up gets skimmed, recycled, and dismissed while your sales bleed out during Q4 and beyond. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down why changing strategy mid-appeal, outsourcing blindly, or sending AI-generated filler destroys credibility with reviewers and quietly eliminates escalation leverage.

Sellers keep calling Amazon Account Health hoping for clarity, yet the more they call, the more confused they get. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down why sellers are getting stuck in an endless loop of mixed messages, contradictory guidance, and copy-paste appeal denials that explain absolutely nothing.

Cyber Five is finally behind us — and for once, the sky didn’t fall. In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down what actually happened across Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the peak week that followed, and explains why abuse attempts were lower this year, how Amazon’s internal teams seem to be improving their detection game, and why seller-led reporting is becoming a real force multiplier inside the marketplace. He also digs into the problems that did surface, suspicious refund spikes, targeted negative review attacks, and illicit keyword injections, and what sellers must do to escalate those issues correctly without wasting time on dead-end Support cases.

This Holiday season, enforcement teams are in full zero-tolerance mode, and sellers are getting hit for mistakes they didn’t even realize were violations. If you think “gray areas” still exist, or that Amazon is too busy to notice what you’re doing this week, you’re already in trouble.

In this episode, Chris McCabe breaks down exactly what Amazon is cracking down on this Black Friday: abuse reports that boomerang back onto your own account, sloppy listing edits made under pressure, appeals that miss the point, and compliance shortcuts that get flagged instantly during peak season. When enforcement is this aggressive, one wrong move can drop your top ASIN (and your Q4 revenue) with no warning.

Too many brands are going scorched-earth on Amazon and it’s blowing up in their faces. In this episode, Chris McCabe explains why aggressive tactics against resellers, sloppy counterfeit claims, and “secret” removal services are triggering enforcement actions against the brand itself. Chris breaks down where sellers go wrong: unproven counterfeit allegations, missing test-buy evidence, misuse of Brand Registry, and blind trust in consultants who won’t disclose their methods.