Amazon Blog Series: The Legitimate Ungating Trick

Following on from the last post about the current state of Amazon, I wanted to go into something that has recently caused confusion for a lot of sellers, myself included.

Over the past few weeks, many of us have noticed that Amazon has started to re-gate brands that we were already approved to sell. One minute, everything seems fine, and the next day, you are re-gated on everything. It has caused a lot of panic among sellers, and at first, I thought the same thing as everyone else, that this was the start of Amazon cracking down and removing brand approvals.

When I first saw it, I was genuinely frustrated and concerned. I thought I was going to have to start from scratch, buying stock for invoices again and reapplying for every single brand. But after testing it and doing some troubleshooting, I found something that works. It is completely legitimate and saves a huge amount of time, money and stress.

The Problem

When sourcing using SellerAmp (SAS), you might find that it says you are gated for a brand that you know you were previously approved for.

You click “manually ungate,” it takes you to Amazon, and it asks you to submit an invoice for approval. This has been happening for smaller brands too, not just big names. It seems like Amazon has implemented a full re-gate on brand, even when you are already ungated.

It makes you think that you have lost your approval and need to reapply with an invoice but you actually don’t have to do this!

The Trick

After testing this on multiple ASINs, I found a legitimate workaround that bypasses the unnecessary invoice request about 80 percent of the time.

Here is the exact process:

1. Find the product that SAS or another sourcing tool says you are gated for.
2. Copy the ASIN of that product.
3. Go into Seller Central and open Add Products.
4. Paste the ASIN into the search bar and click to add it.
5. Amazon will tell you that you need approval to sell the item.
6. Click the yellow option which usually takes you to the Invoice page
7. This should then take you to the listing page

In most cases, this will take you straight to the listing page and allow you to sell the product. You will notice that you never had to upload an invoice. It automatically approves your listing.

If it does not take you through and instead asks for an invoice, that means you are actually gated and will need a legitimate invoice to get approval.

Why It Works

This seems to be a glitch in Amazon’s system that has re-gated a lot of people on certain brands, but you are auto ungated when adding to inventory.

I have shared this method with several people I work with, and it has worked for most of them. It has saved a huge amount of time and prevented people from wasting money buying unnecessary stock just to get ungated again.

The success rate has been around 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent of cases are situations where the seller truly does need to provide invoices and apply for approval again.