Amazon’s Secret Seller Performance Crackdown Is Quietly Killing Mid-Tier Accounts

It started as scattered complaints on Seller Central forums in late July 2026. By mid-August, private Slack channels used by Amazon aggregator operators and agency leaders were lighting up with a consistent story: mid-tier FBA sellers — those doing between $500K and $5M annually — were receiving account health notifications and, in some cases, full suspensions, with no clear policy citation and unusually short appeal windows. Sources close to the matter say the sweep is being driven by Amazon’s Selling Partner Trust and Seller Identity Verification (SIV) teams, which have reportedly been given expanded enforcement authority as part of an internal initiative called Project Meridian — a name that has surfaced in at least three separate conversations with sellers and agency operators who asked not to be named.

Amazon has not publicly confirmed any such initiative. A spokesperson declined to comment on specific enforcement programs. But the pattern of suspensions — concentrated in the home goods, health and personal care, and automotive accessories categories — is hard to dismiss as coincidence. Unconfirmed estimates from aggregator operators suggest the sweep may have affected as many as 800 to 1,200 seller accounts across North America and Europe between July 14 and August 22, 2026.

What Is Amazon’s ‘Project Meridian’ and Is It Real?

The name Project Meridian has not appeared in any official Amazon communication. But it has reportedly surfaced in internal Slack messages shared by at least two former Amazon vendor managers who now work on the agency side. One source, a senior account strategist at a top-20 Amazon agency who declined to be named, described the program as “a cross-functional audit combining review velocity anomalies, refund rate signals, and supply chain inconsistencies — all run through a new ML scoring layer.”

“What’s different this time is the score threshold got lowered. Sellers who would have been flagged and warned six months ago are now getting suspended outright. The appeals process hasn’t caught up with the enforcement speed.”
— Senior account strategist at a major Amazon agency, speaking on background

Carina McLeod, founder of eCommerce Nurse and one of the most widely cited Amazon account health consultants in the industry, told Ecommerce Times she has seen a “notable uptick” in inbound inquiries from sellers facing what she describes as “opaque suspension letters with compressed response timelines.” She declined to confirm or deny the Project Meridian label specifically, but said the enforcement pattern is consistent with Amazon tightening its review authenticity and account linkage signals simultaneously.

Which Seller Categories Are Being Hit Hardest?

According to multiple aggregator operators and agency leaders who spoke with Ecommerce Times on background, the suspensions are not distributed evenly. The categories drawing the most enforcement activity reportedly include:

• Health and personal care: Sellers with high review velocity in Q1 2026, particularly those who used third-party vine programs or off-Amazon review generation tools.
• Home goods and kitchen: Accounts allegedly flagged for inconsistent supplier documentation submitted during SIV re-verification requests.
• Automotive accessories: A category that sources say has seen elevated counterfeit complaints, triggering broader account-level audits even for legitimate sellers.
• Private label accounts with multiple brand registry filings: Sellers managing three or more brand registry enrollments under a single seller entity are reportedly being flagged for “brand ownership anomalies.”

Jason Boyce, founder of Avenue7Media and a longtime Amazon seller advocate, said publicly on a LinkedIn post last week that he is “deeply concerned” about what he characterized as due process issues. “When enforcement outpaces transparency, legitimate sellers get caught in the net alongside bad actors,” Boyce wrote, adding that his team is actively working appeals for several affected clients. He confirmed to Ecommerce Times that at least four of those clients have been waiting more than 21 days for appeal responses — well beyond the 17-day window Amazon’s own Account Health dashboard indicates.

Are Aggregators Lobbying Amazon Behind the Scenes?

Sources close to several major Amazon aggregators — including at least one in the Thrasio orbit and one connected to Perch — say that aggregator legal and compliance teams have been in direct contact with Amazon’s Strategic Account Services representatives, pressing for clarity on the appeal process and asking whether aggregator-owned accounts are being scored differently than independent sellers. Thrasio and Perch declined to comment for this article.

“The aggregators with dedicated SAS Core accounts have a back channel that independent sellers simply don’t have. That asymmetry is getting worse, not better. If Project Meridian is real, it’s going to hit the $1M-to-$3M independent operator far harder than it hits a Thrasio brand.”
— Director of marketplace strategy at a multi-brand aggregator, speaking anonymously

The aggregator angle matters because it intersects with a separate, longer-running controversy: whether Amazon’s enforcement apparatus inadvertently protects larger, institutionally-connected sellers over independent operators. That debate has been simmering since at least 2024, when the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Amazon — still winding through appeals — put seller treatment under broader regulatory scrutiny.

What Tools Are Sellers Using to Detect Account Health Risk Early?

In response to the wave of suspensions, agency operators are reportedly doubling down on proactive account health monitoring. Several tools have seen a spike in inbound interest over the past six weeks, according to agency leaders who spoke with Ecommerce Times:

• Helium 10’s Account Audit feature has seen increased usage among agencies running multi-client dashboards, specifically its review velocity flagging module.
• GETIDA, the FBA audit and reimbursement platform, is reportedly fielding questions from sellers about whether reimbursement claim patterns could trigger enforcement flags — a question GETIDA’s team has been addressing in seller webinars.
• Eva Commerce, the AI-driven Amazon repricing and PPC platform, has added account health signal monitoring to its dashboard, which sources say was accelerated in response to client demand following the July suspension wave.
• Several agencies have reverted to manual supplier documentation audits, pulling invoices and COAs ahead of any SIV re-verification request rather than waiting for an Amazon prompt.

Vanessa Hung, founder of Online Seller Solutions and a frequent Amazon Accelerate speaker, posted a detailed thread on X in mid-August urging sellers to immediately audit their review generation history and confirm that any external tools used in 2025 and early 2026 are fully compliant with Amazon’s updated Community Guidelines. “This is not the time to assume your account is clean,” she wrote. “Audit first. Then sleep.”

Is Amazon’s Appeal Process Broken, or Just Overwhelmed?

Perhaps the most operationally damaging element of the alleged sweep — confirmed or not — is the reported collapse in appeal response times. Sellers and agencies describe submitting Plans of Action through Seller Central and receiving automated acknowledgments followed by extended silence. One aggregator compliance director, who asked not to be named, said their team submitted appeals for three suspended accounts on August 1 and had received no substantive response as of August 27.

“The appeal queue is clearly backed up. We’ve had success escalating through the Executive Seller Relations team — the old ‘Jeff’s email’ trick still works if you know how to write it — but that’s not a scalable option for a seller doing $800K a year without agency support.”
— Amazon agency principal, speaking on background

The reference to “Jeff’s email” — the longstanding seller community practice of escalating grievances to jeff@amazon.com, which routes to an executive escalation team — reflects how little the informal power dynamics of Seller Central have changed even as Amazon’s seller base has grown to more than 3 million active accounts globally.

What Should Sellers Do Right Now If They’re Caught in the Sweep?

Agency leaders and consultants who spoke with Ecommerce Times offered a consistent set of immediate operational recommendations for any seller receiving an Account Health notification or facing a suspension they believe is unjust:

• Pull your complete review history via a third-party tool like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout and flag any review that was generated through a program not explicitly blessed by Amazon’s current TOS.
• Compile a complete supplier documentation file — invoices, certificates of authenticity, and manufacturer authorization letters — before Amazon requests them. Being reactive adds days to your timeline.
• Do not submit a generic Plan of Action. Name the specific policy violation cited, address it directly, and include corrective actions with concrete dates.
• If your account generates more than $50K per month in revenue, consider engaging a specialist firm — eCommerce Nurse, Online Seller Solutions, or a similar outfit — rather than managing the appeal in-house.
• File an Executive Seller Relations escalation in parallel with your standard appeal if you have not received a response within 10 business days.

Whether Project Meridian is a real codename, a misattributed label, or simply a pattern that sellers have named themselves, the enforcement reality on the ground is producing genuine operational disruption. With Q4 2026 now less than five weeks away — and FBA inventory deadlines arriving fast — the timing could hardly be worse for the sellers caught in the middle. Amazon’s enforcement machine, as ever, does not pause for peak season.