Currently MBA's account suspension/termination policies and procedures are not transparent. Especially to professional content creators whose livelihoods depend on the MBA program, this is a concern and cause of ongoing anxiety. It is quite easy to accidentally violate the content policy. For example, I recently submitted four designs for pregnant women, using the keyword 'maternity', which led to these designs being rejected and my receiving the standard rejection/warning email.
While I agree that it is very important for MBA to enforce their content policy, I feel that a more transparent approach would benefit both MBA as well as content creators, as it would encourage the latter to commit more firmly to MBA and help them to learn from their mistakes.
Not all policy violations are malicious, and I'm sure that MBA does distinguish severe, intentional breaches from accidental, minor ones. However, content creators are left in the dark regarding the extent to which breaches affect the good standing of their account. I am sure that most designers who have been on MBA for a while have had designs rejected and wondered how these rejections would have affected the 'good standing' of their account.
To solve this problem, I propose the introduction of a points system such as this:
- Each designer gets an initial default amount of points, e.g. 100 points.
- Policy breaches result in the deduction of points proportional to their severity (severe breaches could, of course, still be punished with immediate account suspension/termination).
- The designer gets informed by MBA in the rejection email as to the effect of the rejection on his/her total points, which would provide a direct measure of the 'good standing' of the account.
- Designers whose account is below the maximum 100 points can earn points through good compliance over a period of time (e.g. 10 points per month of no violations), up to the point maximum.
- Designers can check their accounts standing at any time online - including their history of non-compliance. This would also make it easier for Amazon to justify suspension/termination.
Finally, I also would like to propose a 'Check Description Compliance' button (e.g. on the submission page) that designers can click before submitting a design to scan their descriptions for prohibited words. Assuming that MBA already has a database of such terms, trademarks, etc., implementing this button should be quite easy and would make the reviewing task easier for MBA.
