Offers appearing under **Other Sellers on Amazon** on your own listing mean one of three things — and they need completely different responses.

**Diagnose before you act.** Sending a cease-and-desist to Amazon Warehouse achieves nothing except wasting the week you needed.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-hijackers-explainer-38bad5c9.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and seventy-one seconds on telling the three cases apart, the four removal methods in order of strength, and verifying removal rather than trusting a closed case.*

## **Three things it could be**

### **1. A hijacker selling counterfeits**

**Poorly made knock-offs on your listing.** They take your sales, attract bad reviews that attach permanently to your ASIN, and damage the brand.

**The clearest signal is in your reviews:** complaints describing a product that is not the one you sell. Wrong material, wrong size, missing parts, poor build — from buyers who genuinely received something else.

**This is the one you attack with everything.**

### **2. A legitimate reseller**

**Selling your actual product**, sourced somewhere real.

**Quality is intact, but they take your sales**, and winning the Buy Box back usually means cutting price — which costs you margin on every unit, not just theirs.

**You cannot report them for counterfeiting, because they are not counterfeiting.** Only serialisation keeps them off the listing.

### **3. Amazon Warehouse**

**Amazon reselling sellable customer returns**, in a condition other than New.

**Not a problem to solve.** It is a normal consequence of returns — see [**Reducing Your Return Rate**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/reducing-your-return-rate) if the volume bothers you.

## **What it costs while it runs**

**You lose the Buy Box**, so orders placed on your listing go to them.

**Negative reviews accumulate** on your ASIN from customers who bought a counterfeit — see [**Why a Rating Drop Costs More Than It Looks**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-a-rating-drop-costs-more).

**Brand image and repeat purchase suffer.**

**And winning the Buy Box back means cutting price**, which reduces profit on every unit you sell — not just the ones they took.

![Buy Box and rating, watched per product](/kb-assets/shot-prod-table-6c206b.png)

**A hijacking shows up first as a Buy Box loss and a rating slide, often before you notice the offer itself** — see [**Find the Variation Dragging Your Rating Down**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/find-the-variation-dragging-your-rating). Noticing it from a monthly review means a month of lost sales and permanent reviews.

## **The four methods, in order of strength**

### **1. Project Zero — the strongest**

**Self-service removal.** Enrolled brands remove a hijacker from their listing **without needing Amazon's approval on each case**.

**That is the whole difference.** Every other method is a request that Amazon may or may not action, at a speed you do not control.

**Eligibility requirements are not especially demanding.** If you are eligible, enrol — it changes hijacking from a multi-week case into a same-day action.

### **2. Cease and desist**

**A message through Seller Central telling them to stop.**

**It works more often than it should**, because the recipient worries about account suspension and frequently just removes the offer.

**Free, immediate, and worth sending while slower methods run.**

### **3. Test buy and IP violation report**

**Buy the unit yourself**, so you have evidence of what they are actually shipping.

**Then file through Report a Violation in Brand Registry, or the Report Infringement form.**

**If Amazon confirms infringement, the seller is removed.**

**The test buy is the part people skip and the part that makes the report credible.** A report without evidence is an assertion.

### **4. Transparency**

**Product serialisation.** Every unit carries a unique code, and **a product enrolled in Transparency cannot be listed or shipped on Amazon without a valid code**.

**This is prevention rather than removal**, and it is the only thing that stops legitimate resellers as well as counterfeiters.

**Slower to set up, because it changes your packaging and your supplier's process.** Worth it on products that are repeatedly targeted.

## **Which to use**

| Situation | Methods |
|---|---|
| **Counterfeit hijacker** | All four — Project Zero, cease and desist, IP report, Transparency |
| **Legitimate reseller** | Project Zero, Transparency only |
| **Amazon Warehouse** | None needed |

**Run them in parallel, not in sequence.** Send the cease and desist today, file the IP report today, and let Project Zero remove them immediately if you have it.

## **Verify the removal**

**Open your product detail page and look below the Buy Box.**

**If the New & Used offers section shows no other sellers, they are gone.**

**Check it yourself rather than trusting the case status.** A closed case is not the same as a removed offer — see [**Escalating an Amazon Case**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/escalating-an-amazon-case).

**And re-check periodically.** Removed hijackers return, frequently under a new seller name.

## **Common mistakes**

**Acting before diagnosing**, and treating a reseller or Amazon Warehouse as a counterfeiter.

**Filing an IP report without a test buy.**

**Running the methods one at a time**, when they can all run at once.

**Cutting price to win the Buy Box back**, and leaving it cut after they are gone.

**Not enrolling in Project Zero** while eligible, and handling every incident as a case.

**Checking once.** They come back.

## **Related**

- [**Why a Rating Drop Costs More Than It Looks**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-a-rating-drop-costs-more) — the review damage a hijacker leaves behind.
- [**Escalating an Amazon Case**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/escalating-an-amazon-case) — when the report stalls.
- [**Short-Term Rating Recovery**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/short-term-rating-recovery) — repairing the rating afterwards.