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Comment by ab_testing | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think a competitor did that. I think it might be due to a mislabeled BOM or some other issue. Can this person do the same to another competitors item. Can a regular person do it for any item at Amazon. If not then it probably due to some other issue and not a competitor item.

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It's happened to us multiple times and it's always a competitor trying to get out listings taken down. They look for any data fields on a listing that haven't been filled out by the seller (most likely because they didn't seem relevant to the product) and then they'll add words to these fields that the algorithms will pick up and cause the listing to be suspended. You can try to prevent it by making sure you are Brand Registered and uploading a flat file containing a value for every single field. Amazon will eventually reactivate listings that are attacked in this way but you can lose a lot of time and money waiting.

The three different substances that Amazon said the item contained were

* methoxetamine, a synthetic hallucinogen

* jimson weed, a literal weed from the Americas that causes severe hallucinations and paralysis

* coca leaves, a traditional Andean herbal stimulant that are the natural source of cocaine

None of these items are related or similar at all, and none of them would be used in making belts. Seems like a difficult error to make through mislabeling!

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