Knowing Walmart’s policies and guidelines is important to avoid getting suspended. In this post, we’ll provide valuable tips on preventing Walmart account suspensions and steps to take if your account is suspended.
Your Walmart account may get suspended for several reasons, but the most common one is violating the Walmart Seller Policy agreement. This agreement includes various sections such as returns policy, customer care requirements, and more.
(1) Monitor your performance standards regularly to ensure they are within the accepted threshold.
- There are several key performance metrics: cancel rate, on-time delivery rate, valid tracking rate, refund rate, and seller response rate.
- If you fail to meet one or more standards, you will receive an email alert with instructions on improving the metrics. If you do not immediately address the issue, your account will be at risk of suspension.
- You can monitor your metrics on Walmart Seller Center > Analytics > Performance > Orders & Fulfillment tab.
| Performance Metric | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Cancel Rate The percentage of orders you cancel after receiving the order from Walmart. Details: Marketplace Order Cancellations. | below 2% |
| On-Time Delivery Rate (OTD) The percentage of orders delivered on or before the Expected Delivery Date. Details: Carrier Methods and Shipping Best Practices for On-Time Delivery. | above 95% |
| Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) The percentage of orders with valid tracking information provided. | above 99% |
| Refund Rate The percentage of orders refunded for reasons the seller is responsible for, such as an item damaged or incorrect item received. Details: Performance Dashboard — Order & Fulfillment Insights. | below 6% |
| Seller Response Rate The percentage of customer inquiries responded to within 48 hours of receipt. Details: Message Center – Manage Customer Contacts and Inquiries. | above 95% |
Expert tip: if you find it hard to meet Walmart performance standards, consider using Walmart Fulfillment Service (WFS) and not worry about the shipping metrics.
(2) Do not ship your products from other retailers or take advantage of selling arbitrage.
- Any account suspected of arbitrage will be suspended immediately and might be terminated.
- Walmart expects all sellers to own their inventory.
Expert tip: always ship items in unbranded boxes and envelopes unless the item ships in the manufacturer’s packaging.
Ensure you understand and comply with the rules in this Shipping and Refunds FAQ.
(3) Review Walmart’s product policy to ensure your items do not violate it.
- Regularly review Walmart’s product policy, especially if you sell items from Food, Medicine, and Baby categories.
- Offer products that are new, authentic, and that you are entitled to sell.
(4) Provide excellent customer service.
- Transparently describe your products to provide all the information required from the customer’s standpoint. This includes accurate images, titles, attributes, and descriptions.
- Provide timely responses to customer questions.
Expert tip: familiarize yourself with the Message Center. If you receive many similar questions from customers, you might need to update your product descriptions or use message templates. Learn more.
My Walmart account is suspended. What now?
Walmart always sends warning notices to the Business Management contact listed on your Partner Profile and gives you some time to adhere to the requirements provided in the warning message. If you fail to meet these requirements for an extended period, you will be at risk of receiving Walmart suspension.
Each Walmart suspension case is unique. Some sellers might be suspended for 14 days, and others can face the threat of account termination. You should receive all details about your suspension and requirements in the email from Walmart support. In general, if your account was suspended due to the failure to maintain the Seller Performance Standards, you can follow these steps to file an appeal:
- Review your past and current performance (Analytics > Performance tab) and look for ways to improve. If you are a GeekSeller user and unsure how to improve it, contact us. We can review your account and help you communicate with Walmart.
- Based on your findings, create a Business Plan of Action consisting of detailed steps you will take to address the issues. You must show Walmart that you understand the root cause of it and that you will prevent it in the future.
- If you are using or planning to use external services like GeekSeller or Deliverr you can mention that you will work with them to improve your performance.
- Once you have created a plan of action, you can file an appeal as you would open a regular support case on Walmart Seller Center. On the category selection screen select: My Account > Performance Issues > Appealing Account Suspension.
Please keep in mind not all of the sellers are eligible for appeal. Check the suspension email you received from Walmart to find out if you can file it.
Expert tip: Each seller will see the different appeal questions based on the reason for the suspension. This is crucial to be as specific as possible in your answers.
After your account is reinstated, you must apply the steps outlined in your plan of action to improve your performance. If you fail to do that, your account will be suspended again or even terminated.
Need assistance with your Walmart account?
If you are a GeekSeller user, we can help you identify the issues on your account, create a plan of action and contact Walmart for additional information. We can also help you adhere to the business plan of action to avoid suspension in the future. If you are not a GeekSeller user, you can contact us for more information ad advice at support@geekseller.com or book a live demo.
Hello, Walmart suspended my account and I was wondering if you can help out to solving this issue, the reason it’s policy violation: invalid partner information. Some days before that suspended my account they sent me an email and that email said that my address was incorrect and they can’t sent returns, I checked in my address was good, even until today I received 2 returns
Hello Diego,
You will need to open a support case with Walmart and explain the situation. Also, ensure that the address you provided is valid according to the USPS. Sometimes, even a small typo can cause it to be marked as incorrect, even if it doesn’t prevent packages from being delivered. You might also want to check this post. I’m not sure if it applies to your situation, but it might be helpful just in case you are unable to log in to your account to create the support case with Walmart support.
Hello,
Walmart temporarily suspend my account due to arbitrage i was out of stock 1 item and i purchased from local retailer and send it to buyer now WM suspended my account and gave me option to appeal asking me to send Business plan. can you please help me Thanks
Hi Umair, It’s crucial to focus on direct sourcing and managing your inventory to comply with their standards. Walmart’s marketplace is designed for businesses that have established logistics and can maintain stock to fulfill orders promptly. Before considering Walmart as a platform, it’s advisable to grow your business to a significant size on other marketplaces, ensuring you have the infrastructure to succeed without resorting to arbitrage.
I am suspended from Walmart pickup and delivery. I have no idea why. If I got an email from you I missed seeing it or accidentally deleted it. Whatever I did it was in pure ignorance. Please shed some light on what happened.
Thank you.
Cindy Tugwell
Hello Cindy, You should open a support case with Walmart as soon as possible to obtain clarifications regarding the issue. I also recommend thoroughly reviewing your dashboard, particularly the performance section. Download the data to a file and examine your pickup and delivery statistics. You will need to prepare a detailed explanation about what happened and, if there is a mistake, present it to Walmart Support.
My Walmart account got suspended because of cancellation issue. There was a glitch from Walmart’s system that one of my item got a super low price and i got 8 orders from that item making me cancel all of them which made my cancellation rate higher. I already appealed for it. How long will it take for them to take action about this?
Herdy, this is a pretty slow time due to the holidays. I would expect to hear something from Walmart in early January.
Hello
My Walmart account is temporarily suspended due to
You have a high rate of orders with no carrier scans, resulting in failure to comply with Walmart Marketplace policy for On Time Delivery (OTD). Our policy requirement for all sellers is to maintain an OTD rate greater than or equal to 95%, which you have not been meeting.
Create a business plan of action – Detail steps you will take to correct the issue
Let me know if you can reinstate my account. The time line is 5 days.
thank you
Hello Yogesh, we need a bit more details to provide some suggestions. The main question is – is it your fault/mistake not meeting those requirements? Or is it due to a third party you have no control over? You need to determine the cause and explain how you will fix it or change to not make this happen again. We see “high rate of orders with no carrier scans” being an issue across many sellers using USPS. In such case, you should mention you did all you were supposed to do, but the carrier did not do what they should. You need to weigh options, and maybe consider using another carrier for the time being, or even better (Walmart will love to hear it!) you can start using WFS.
Hello,
Can we expect any suspensions from Walmart?
We are doing WFS and buying from suppliers and direct from some big sellers.
So shall we continue it?
Hi Khan, is there any specific section of Walmart’s agreement or Terms and Conditions that concerns you? You might want to contact a professional specializing in retail law, but you should be fine as long as you obtain products legally from suppliers and the brands and products you sell have no restrictions on reselling their goods.
Hello there,
My account was terminated by Walmart without any of fault and no warning. The webpage says we can’t even appeals for the termination. Is there any way that we get back our store? I lost almost $2000 inventory and $1000 in warehouse fee.
Thank you
Hello, Walmart has a helpful guide on their Seller Help Center that provides information on handling account suspensions. You can access this guide at the following link: https://sellerhelp.walmart.com/seller/s/guide?language=en_US&article=000007903.
hi sir
how are you
hope you are doing well
my walmart account has frozen temporarily due to late delivery of order.
I lost my earnings, did u do some favor with me to recover my account and get back my earnings.thanks
Hello, We recommend checking out our blog post on the most common suspension reasons and how to appeal, which you can find at the following link: https://www.geekseller.com/blog/walmart-suspension/.
Hi can you help me in regards to my walmart suspension policy violation competitor fulfillment what does it mean? what are the factors of this my store metrics are all good except the refund rate of 0.7% which is above 1% of the threshold. can you enlighten me on the specific suspension. thank you
Hi, this sounds like you used FBA to fulfill Walmart orders.
My account is suspended
Hello, Please try to follow the tips from our guide, at the bottom of the post https://www.geekseller.com/blog/walmart-suspension/.
hi can you help me, my acc was suspended due to high rate of cancellations due to address not serviceable issues! all my items are shipped out daily with tracking numbers to addresses on file and given to me from walmart on each order.. can you help me thank you, i opened a case but not sure how to fix this problem on my end
I believe the address not serviceable issues is related to the USPS only, did you use USPS? In such case you might want to switch to use other shipping carrier or just make sure you use the shipping labels provided by Walmart in their panel.
My account was suspended on September 1 due to high returns, I have filed 7 appeals and only a robot answer system answers me every 5 days saying that there is not enough information to restart it, we have made all the appeals based on Wamart’s recommendation.
very clear and specific, no one answers can you help me
This is one of the toughest suspensions, but high returns sound like an issue with the products or product description. I didn’t see your appeals, but you need to make sure you identify the cause of those returns. If the issue is product quality, you need to find another supplier/manufacturer and explain it to Walmart. If the issue is buyers receiving the wrong product, the problem might be poor product photos or descriptions, or mixed-up SKUs or UPCs. In this case, it’s crucial to understand the cause of the suspension and rigorously address it, providing detailed and realistic solutions to Walmart on how you will fix it. With this number of denied appeals, you might need to step back for a year or so, focus on growing on other marketplaces, get good reviews there, improve your products, and then reapply next year.