Policy violation or warning
Amazon Account Health Rating: what moves the score and what to fix first
The Account Health Rating is the one number that tells you whether Amazon is about to deactivate you. It is also the only warning most sellers get. If your AHR is amber, you are in the window where fixing things is cheap and quick. If you wait until it is red, you are no longer managing a score, you are writing an appeal, and that is a far worse position to negotiate from.
Updated 30 July 2026 · 8 min read
How the rating works
The AHR is a single score, shown in Account Health in Seller Central, that weighs your open policy violations against your recent sales volume. Two sellers with the same number of violations can sit in different bands, because a violation carries less weight against high volume than against low.
Account Health Rating
- Healthy
- No action needed. Keep violations closing faster than they open.
- At risk
- The warning window. Deactivation is possible and this is the cheapest point to act.
- Unhealthy
- Deactivation is likely or already applied. You are now appealing, not managing.
Amazon publishes the numeric thresholds in Seller Central and revises them, so read your own dashboard rather than a figure quoted elsewhere.
What weighs heaviest
Not all violations cost the same. Fixing three cosmetic listing issues while an authenticity complaint sits open is the most common way sellers spend a week and move the score by nothing.
- Product authenticity and intellectual property complaints. The heaviest category, and the one most likely to trigger deactivation on its own.
- Product safety and condition complaints. Serious, and often accompanied by a listing block until documents are provided.
- Restricted product policy violations. Weighted heavily because Amazon treats them as compliance rather than quality.
- Customer product reviews policy and other conduct violations. Review manipulation is treated as severe and is frequently non-negotiable.
- Listing policy violations. Real, but lighter, and usually the fastest to clear because the fix is editing the detail page.
The order to work in
A violation opens
A complaint, a policy notice, or a metric breach lands in Account Health.
The rating drops into At risk
Amazon emails a warning. This is the point at which most sellers do nothing, because nothing has broken yet.
More violations accumulate
Nothing is being closed, so weight builds. Sales volume no longer offsets it.
Deactivation
Selling privileges are removed, disbursements are held, and the same problems now need a Plan of Action instead of an edit.
Every step before the last one is reversible in a day or two. The last one takes weeks.
- 1
List every open violation and sort by weight, not by ease
Account Health shows each one with its status. Work top down from authenticity and IP, even though those are the slow ones. Clearing five easy listing flags does not offset one open counterfeit complaint.
- 2
Close what can be closed by editing
Listing policy violations, prohibited claims, wrong category, image issues. These often clear within days of correction and they are free wins while the heavier work runs.
- 3
Appeal the heavy ones properly, once each
Authenticity complaints need invoices, IP complaints usually need a retraction from the rights owner. Thin appeals on these do not close them and they burn your credibility for the resubmission.
- 4
Fix the metrics feeding the score
Order defect rate, late shipment rate, and cancellation rate sit alongside violations. A metric breach is an operational fix: handling times, carrier choice, inventory accuracy.
- 5
Enrol in Account Health Assurance if you are eligible
Where available, this gives you a call with an account health specialist and a commitment not to deactivate before speaking to you. It is worth setting up while your rating is healthy, because it is the difference between a phone call and a suspension email.
What does not raise the score
- Selling more. Volume changes the weighting slightly, but a growing account with open authenticity complaints is a bigger target, not a safer one.
- Deleting the listings involved. The violation stays open and you lose the sales history your appeal needs.
- Opening a second account. Amazon links accounts by tax details, banking, address, and device, and a related account normally means both are deactivated.
- Repeated identical appeals. They do not close the violation and they slow the review of your next submission.
- Waiting. Violations do age out eventually, but the deactivation threshold is usually reached long before the ageing helps.
Common questions
What is a good Amazon Account Health Rating?
+
Anything in the healthy band with no open violations of substance. Amazon publishes the numeric thresholds in Seller Central and changes them from time to time, so treat your own dashboard as the source rather than a number quoted in a forum.
How quickly can a low AHR recover?
+
Listing policy violations often clear within days of the correction. Authenticity and IP complaints take as long as the appeal or the rights owner takes, which can be weeks. The score moves as items close, so the recovery speed is really the speed of your slowest open violation.
Will Amazon deactivate me without warning if my AHR drops?
+
Amazon normally emails warnings as the rating falls, and sellers enrolled in Account Health Assurance are told they will get a specialist call first. Severe single violations, such as a safety or fraud issue, can still lead to immediate action.
Do closed violations still count against me?
+
Closed and aged-out violations stop weighing on the current rating, which is why resolving items is the only reliable way to raise it. The record remains visible to Amazon, so a pattern still matters in how future issues are judged.
Related guides
Marketplace policies and performance targets change. Check the current policy page on Amazon before acting on anything here, and treat this guide as general information rather than legal advice. No outcome can be guaranteed on any appeal.