Can Amazon Catalog Withstand ASIN Hijackers?

Amazon's robust product catalog and customer product reviews were major factors in its meteoric rise, but both systems remain under attack by sellers trying to game the system. There have been many articles about the vulnerability of Amazon product reviews to manipulation by unscrupulous actors trying to get a competitive edge, but less attention is being paid to the problem of hijacked ASINs that impact the quality of the catalog.

ASINs are Amazon's version of UPC codes and ISBNs that identify products. A new ASIN is created when an item is uploaded to Amazon's catalog. An existing ASIN can be modified by the brand/seller, but should never be changed to represent a different product.

Sellers have complained about hijacked products pages for a long time, and a recent discussion on the Amazon boards shows the problem remains a serious challenge to sellers.

The original poster (OP) titled the thread, "Unscrupulous sellers hijacking old listings and changing the listing to their brand." The seller explained they had listed a generic USB cable for sale in 2013, but that recently, a brand was able to successfully alter the listing with its own brand name, and then file infringement complaints against all of the offers by other sellers - including the OP who had created the ASIN as a generic.

According to sellers posting on the thread, the problem is not limited to generic items or old ASINs. And in some cases, sellers say hijackers change a listing to make it become a completely unrelated item, and as a result, product reviews no longer match the product described.

Not only does such behavior threaten the integrity of Amazon's product catalog, but as the OP described, hijackers can turn around and file Intellectual Property infringement complaints against legitimate sellers. One seller even said a hijacker changed their old ASIN for a sold-out product to a product that was restricted by the FDA, and as a result, Amazon issued them a violation for having such a product in their inventory.

The challenge for sellers doesn't necessarily end there - last year, we wrote about complaints that some sellers were using intimidation to protect ASINs. (Amazon told EcommerceBytes at the time that it does not tolerate abusive behavior.)

This post from 2015 serves as a reminder that hijacked ASINs is not a new problem. But since there are only anecdotal reports from sellers, it's difficult to know the scale of the problem and if it's getting better or worse over time.

But since a search for "amazon hijacked asins" on Google shows ads for services to "stop listing hijack" and "remove hijackers from listings," we suspect it remains a significant problem for Amazon and its sellers.

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