Amazon to Archive Orders Older than 2 Years

Amazon will begin archiving older orders beginning in September. That gives sellers about a month to download orders if they need access to buyer information. 

However, Amazon did not remind sellers about laws regulating the storage of buyer names and personally identifiable information (PII), such as the EU's GDPR (see this EcommerceBytes article from 2018).

Amazon published the following announcement on July 28, 2023:

"Starting in September 2023, orders older than two years will be archived on a monthly basis.

"To ensure data security and a safe customer experience, archived orders don't contain buyers' personally identifiable information such as names, phone numbers, addresses, and gift messages.

"If you require any buyer information for accounting or tax purposes, make sure that you download it by the end of August, or within two years of the order placement.

"Archived orders still contain many other data fields, including purchase date, product name, ASIN, quantity, price, tax, customer charged shipping fee, and sales channel."

One seller responding to the Amazon announcement was unclear on whether Amazon would allow sellers to access orders older than 2 years or not. "Like most announcements, this one is a bit opaque, but are you saying we will ALWAYS be able to pull up ANY order by order #, but after two years this will not contain "names, phone numbers, addresses, and gift messages." But all other info will be there?"

The seller also wondered if the entire archived order reports would be searchable by order #, or if sellers would only able able to search by order # by discrete months.

For sellers concerned about storing buyer PII themselves, check out this guide from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - note it was published in 2016.

Whichever platform on which you sell, how long do you keep order history, and do you find it necessary to keep buyer data (PII) related to orders for longer than 2 years?

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