Quick answer. Amazon Account Health Assurance (AHA) is a benefit for professional sellers who keep a high Account Health Rating. Amazon says you qualify when your AHR stays at 250 or higher for at least 6 months, with no more than 10 days below 250, and you have a valid emergency contact number on file. Enrollment is automatic. Once you are enrolled, Amazon says it will no longer deactivate your account as long as you work with its team within 72 hours of being contacted. You lose AHA by letting your AHR sit below 250 for more than 10 consecutive days, missing the 72-hour window, leaving issues unresolved, repeating the same violations, or breaking regulatory obligations. AHA never protects fraud.
Most sellers hear about Account Health Assurance after a scare, when it is too late to qualify. AHA takes half a year of clean selling to earn and under two weeks of neglect to lose. You cannot apply for it, buy it, or ask a support agent to switch it on.
We cover what Amazon says about the program, what changes once you are in, the exact ways sellers drop out, and how to run an account so the rating climbs past 250 and stays there. The full mechanics of the rating are in our guide to the Account Health Rating, which covers how points are scored. If you want a team watching the dashboard with you, see our Amazon account health maintenance service.
What Account Health Assurance is, in Amazon’s words
Amazon’s help page describes AHA as a benefit for professional sellers who consistently achieve a high Account Health Rating (AHR). The promise is short. With AHA, Amazon says it will no longer deactivate your selling account as long as you work with Amazon within 72 hours of being contacted to resolve the issue.
Three points matter.
- It is a benefit tied to a score, not a service plan. There is no fee or application.
- The protection is conditional. It applies “as long as” you engage within 72 hours.
- It does not override fraud enforcement. Amazon states that regardless of AHA status it may remove you from the program and deactivate the account immediately if it believes you have engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, illegal, or otherwise harmful activity, as set out in the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement.
Who can be in the program at all
AHA is limited to professional sellers, so Individual plan accounts cannot join. Amazon also says that if your Account Health page does not yet show a numeric AHR, you are not eligible.
The eligibility rules, one condition at a time
You need all of these at the same time.
| Condition | What Amazon says | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Selling plan | Professional sellers | Individual plan accounts are outside the program. |
| Rating level | AHR of 250 or higher | Green starts at 200. AHA asks for 50 points more than the bottom of green. |
| Duration | For at least 6 months | A single good month does not qualify. The score has to hold. |
| Tolerance | No more than 10 days below 250 | Short dips are allowed, but only a few days in total across the qualifying period. |
| Contact | A valid emergency contact number on file | Amazon will not finish enrollment without a reachable, verified number. |
| Score type | A numeric AHR must be showing | No numeric score means no eligibility yet. |
Why 250 is harder than it looks
On Amazon’s scale the AHR runs from 0 to 1,000, new sellers start at 200, and the score reflects the last 180 days of policy adherence and selling activity. Green (“Healthy”) covers 200 to 1,000, yellow (“At Risk”) covers 100 to 199, and red (“Unhealthy”) is 99 or lower. A seller at 210 is healthy by Amazon’s definition and still nowhere near AHA.
Amazon’s AHR FAQ outlines the formula. Violation point values depend on severity and typically range from two to eight. Critical violations bring the score to zero. Repeat violations of the same policy can double in value. To account for business size, sellers gain four points for every 200 successful orders fulfilled over the last 180 days. Sellers with seller-fulfilled orders can also earn points from Buyer Contact Rate, Average Contact Response Time and Buyer Dissatisfaction Rate. Amazon adds that the formula and point values may change.
A worked example of the climb
Take a hypothetical new professional seller at the starting score of 200 with no violations. To reach 250 from order volume alone, the account needs 50 more points. At four points per 200 orders, that is 12.5 blocks of 200, so roughly 2,600 successful orders inside a rolling 180-day window, with nothing taken away. Now add one medium violation worth, say, six points. The account needs about 300 more successful orders just to cancel it, and that violation stays in the 180-day window until it is addressed or ages out. This illustration follows Amazon’s published outline and is not a real account. Volume lifts the score slowly, violations pull it down fast, and the 180-day window means both effects fade if you stop selling.
The emergency contact number is a hard requirement
Amazon says that if you meet the rating requirement but have no emergency contact number, it will email you that you are eligible and ask for the contact information before enrolling you. The number has to be verified, not just entered. Open the Notification Preferences page, find the Emergency Notification widget, and check the color tag. Green means verified and red means it needs verification. Then complete the one-time code verification.
Related guides. Amazon GTIN Exemption and Amazon Account Suspended? How to Keep Your Business Running in the First Weeks
How enrollment works once you qualify
Amazon says enrollment is automatic. If you qualify, you get an email and your enrollment status appears on the Account Health page. If you do not qualify yet, Amazon says it continuously reviews accounts and enrolls sellers as soon as they qualify, with an email and an alert on the Account Health page. You can follow your progress on the AHA eligibility page in Seller Central, which also counts the days your AHR has spent below 250.
What changes once you are enrolled
The program changes how a deactivation-level issue is handled, how fast you must respond and, for US sellers, the review options on listing enforcements.
Protection from deactivation while you work the issue
For a seller outside the program, Amazon’s AHR FAQ describes the critical violation path. The AHR turns red and shows zero, and there is a three-day grace period to address the violation before the account is deactivated. For a seller inside AHA, Amazon says that if an issue could lead to deactivation, it keeps the account active and you keep selling while you work together to resolve it, provided you engage within 72 hours of being contacted.
AHA does not remove the issue. It changes the conditions under which you fix it. You work the problem while still trading, instead of appealing from a deactivated account with funds and listings frozen.
Dedicated contact within 72 hours
Amazon says it needs to speak with an AHA seller within 72 hours to resolve an issue promptly. You receive a phone call and an email with instructions. If you miss the first call, Amazon says it will try again, or you can call the team directly with the “Call me Now” button on the Account Health page. You can also submit a plan on the Account Health page for how you will resolve the issue, though Amazon may still ask to speak by phone if it needs more information.
Outside AHA, Amazon says professional sellers can reach Account Health Support at any time through Contact us or Call me now on the Account Health page. For more on reaching the right team, see our guide on how to contact Amazon Seller Performance.
Seller Challenges for listing enforcements
Amazon’s Seller Challenge FAQ says US-based AHA sellers can request an enhanced review of specific enforcements or decisions after multiple attempts to resolve them. Amazon sets these rules.
- AHA sellers receive three Seller Challenges initially, and each failed challenge replenishes after six months.
- Challenges apply only to eligible listing-level enforcements, marked by a Seller Challenge icon and text.
- You start one from the Product Policy Compliance page by beginning a response to an issue and selecting the Seller Challenge option.
- Amazon says it aims to respond to all cases with a decision within 48 hours.
- You can have several challenges open at once, but only one challenge per enforcement.
- A listing that was deactivated when you started the challenge stays deactivated while the challenge is reviewed.
- If you lose AHA, you lose access to unused challenges until you regain eligibility.
Challenges are limited and a failed one takes six months to come back, so save them for enforcements where you have strong evidence and have already tried the normal path. Amazon says that even without a challenge you keep every other existing remediation path for listing issues.
| Situation | Without AHA | With AHA (as Amazon describes it) |
|---|---|---|
| Issue that could cause deactivation | Critical violation. Score to zero, three-day grace period, then deactivation if not addressed | Account kept active while you work with Amazon, if you engage within 72 hours |
| Who reaches out | A specialist may call. You can use Call me now | Phone call and email with instructions. Retry if missed |
| Listing enforcement you dispute | Standard appeal and dispute paths | Standard paths plus Seller Challenges (US) on eligible enforcements |
| Fraud, deception, illegal or harmful activity | Immediate deactivation possible | Removal from AHA and immediate deactivation possible |
For a closely related case, read How to Keep Up With Amazon Policy Changes Before They Become Violations
What Account Health Assurance does not cover
AHA is not immunity. It leaves the following enforcement in place.
Fraud and harmful activity
Amazon states in both the AHA FAQ and the AHR pages that it may deactivate an account immediately if it suspects fraudulent, deceptive, illegal or otherwise harmful activity. The AHR FAQ adds activity that attempts to circumvent Amazon’s systems and violations of policies outside the AHR. AHA removes none of that.
Order performance metrics
The Order Performance program policy sets its own standards and consequences. They are an Order Defect Rate under 1 percent over 60 days, a Cancellation Rate under 2.5 percent over 7 days for seller-fulfilled orders, a Late Shipment Rate under 4 percent over 10-day or 30-day periods, a Valid Tracking Rate above 95 percent over 30 days, and an On-Time Delivery Rate of at least 90 percent without promise extensions for seller-fulfilled products. Missing them can restrict selling privileges. Amazon’s AHA page does not say the program suspends these standards, so plan as if every metric applies in full. Our guides on Order Defect Rate and late shipment suspensions cover each metric.
How sellers lose Account Health Assurance
Amazon lists the conditions for staying eligible, and each one is also a way out.
- Letting the AHR fall below 250 for more than 10 consecutive days. The wording changes between qualifying, which allows no more than 10 days below 250 over the qualifying period, and staying in, which counts consecutive days.
- Losing a verified emergency contact number. A changed phone number that was never re-verified counts.
- Failing regulatory compliance obligations in the Amazon stores where you operate.
- Not engaging within 72 hours of being told Amazon needs to work with you on an issue.
- Not fully resolving issues when working with Account Health Support.
- Repeating the same policy compliance issues.
The seasonal seller rule
Amazon addresses seasonal businesses directly. If your AHR drops below 250 after enrollment because you fulfilled fewer orders, but you have no policy violations on your Account Health page, Amazon says you stay enrolled for an additional 180 days even with an AHR below 250. If a new policy violation arrives during that period, you must appeal and resolve it within 10 days or lose access to AHA. The eligibility page tracks how many days your AHR has stayed below 250.
A seasonal seller with even one unresolved low-severity violation does not get this cushion.
Repeat violations are the quiet exit
Amazon’s AHR FAQ explains that repeat violations of the same policy carry rising point values, and that reaching the maximum number of repeats for one policy within 180 days can put the account at immediate risk of deactivation. The maximum is five for infringement-related policies and two for restricted products policies. Amazon also says violations removed after a successful appeal, where you did not dispute that the activity happened, may still count toward the repeat threshold. An AHA seller takes a second penalty, because repeating the same policy issue is itself a reason to lose the program.
Regulatory compliance outside Amazon’s own policies
The requirement to meet all regulatory compliance obligations reaches beyond Amazon’s rulebook. One US example is the INFORM Consumers Act. The Federal Trade Commission explains that online marketplaces must collect bank, tax ID and contact information from high-volume third-party sellers, verify it, and require sellers to certify at least once a year that it is current or update it. They must also suspend future sales activity if a seller does not supply required information within 10 days of being notified. A seller who lets this information go stale creates exactly the kind of issue AHA’s conditions describe. Which laws apply depends on your products and business. This article is educational information, not legal advice.
How to verify where you stand, step by step
Check AHA status in Seller Central instead of assuming it. A weekly check catches drift before it costs you.
| Question | Where to check | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| What is my AHR today? | Account Health page, per store | A numeric score, its color band, and whether it is at or above 250 |
| Am I enrolled in AHA? | Account Health page and your email | Enrollment status on the page. The enrollment email from Amazon |
| How close am I to qualifying or losing it? | AHA eligibility page in Seller Central | Progress toward eligibility and the count of days below 250 |
| Is my emergency number verified? | Notification Preferences, Emergency Notification widget | Green tag means verified. Red means complete the one-time code |
| Which violations are pulling the score down? | Account Health page, policy compliance section | Each violation, its severity, and any item labeled as a repeat in the Impact column |
| Are my order metrics in range? | Customer Service Performance and Shipping Performance on the Account Health page | ODR under 1%, CR under 2.5%, LSR under 4%, VTR above 95%, OTDR at least 90% |
| Can I use a Seller Challenge here? | Product Policy Compliance page | The Seller Challenge icon and text on the specific enforcement |
When something goes wrong, diagnose, correct and prevent
The method is the same whether you are taking Amazon’s call as an AHA member or climbing back to 250.
Read the page and diagnose the root cause
Start with the dated capture of the page and the notice. Separate policy violations, which are discrete events on specific ASINs, from performance metrics such as ODR and late shipment. The first need catalog work and the second need operational work. Rank every item by how close it is to action. Amazon says critical violations immediately qualify an account for deactivation, high-severity violations have minimal tolerance, and low-severity ones are tolerated when infrequent. Then look for the shared cause. Five “used sold as new” reports may trace back to one returns process that relists opened items. For each item, name the part of your operation that allowed it. “Our supplier sent the wrong item” is a symptom. “We accepted a supplier change without inspecting the first shipment” is a root cause you control.
Corrective actions already taken, with proof
List what you have already done, not what you plan to do. That might be removing the listing content, pulling the affected units, refunding the affected buyers, updating the detail page or replacing the carrier integration. Attach evidence that each step happened, such as dated screenshots, removal order confirmations, corrected listing captures and genuine invoices from your actual suppliers. If a document you need does not exist, say so plainly and explain what you can provide instead. Never create, edit or “tidy up” a document to fill a gap. A false document turns a fixable issue into a far more serious one.
Preventive controls with an owner and a date
Each preventive step names the control, the person who owns it, and when it started. “A second person checks every new listing’s condition field before it goes live, owned by our catalog lead, in place since a stated date” is a control. “We will be more careful” is not. Preventive controls stop the repeat violations that drive both the AHR and AHA eligibility. Our guide to writing a plan of action that gets read covers the structure.
Dispute or appeal, pick the honest path
Amazon’s AHR FAQ separates the two. A dispute is for violations detected in error, backed by evidence that the violation did not happen. An appeal is for cases where you did violate the policy, it was not intentional, and Amazon decides it should be forgiven. Amazon notes that appealed violations you did not dispute may still count toward the repeat threshold. Disputing something that did happen to protect the count is a false statement to Amazon.
Stuck below 250, or is the 72-hour clock running?
Send us the case and we will tell you plainly what is holding the score down.
Keeping the rating and the metrics in range
Qualifying for AHA comes down to two habits held for six months, few violations and steady fulfillment.
Policy hygiene on the catalog
Most violations that keep a score below 250 are catalog problems. Check condition fields, especially on returned inventory. Remove links that send customers to outside websites. Keep restricted and prohibited items out of the catalog before listing, not after a flag. List only brands you have the right to sell, backed by genuine invoices from the actual supplier. Amazon’s repeat thresholds of five for infringement and two for restricted products within 180 days leave little room in the categories that hurt most.
Seller-fulfilled settings to review
Amazon’s Order Performance policy says that starting June 29, 2026, sellers must set accurate handling time for seller-fulfilled SKUs, meaning actual handling time consistently matches the configured time. Amazon recommends Automated Handling Time, which sets handling times from recent shipping history and provides late shipment rate protection. If you manage SKUs individually, Amazon says it monitors them over 30 days and flags SKUs where you consistently ship at least a day faster than stated. Check your Shipping settings so a handling time mismatch does not quietly raise late shipment exposure. Seller-fulfilled sellers should also watch cancellations. See our guide on pre-fulfillment cancellation rate.
Common mistakes that cost sellers the program
- Treating green as good enough. Healthy starts at 200. A seller who stops at 200 never builds the 50-point buffer AHA needs.
- An emergency number nobody answers. The 72-hour window is short. Verify the number and have whoever answers escalate the same day.
- Letting low-severity items pile up. A stream of repeats drags the score and breaks the rule against repeating the same issue.
- Appealing instead of fixing. Clearing an item without changing the process makes the next one a repeat.
- Spending Seller Challenges early. Three to start and six months to replenish a failed one. Save them for strong cases.
- Assuming AHA covers every store and metric. The rating is per store, Seller Challenge is US-only for now, and the order performance standards still apply.
A repeatable routine for staying above 250
Sellers who keep AHA do nothing dramatic. They run the same small routine every week and every quarter.
- Weekly. Dated capture of the Account Health page for each store. AHR and days below 250 from the eligibility page. Every open violation listed, ranked and assigned. Order metrics against targets. Emergency number tag checked.
- On any new violation. Diagnose the cause the same week, decide honestly between dispute and appeal, document corrective steps with evidence, and add a preventive control with an owner and a date.
- On any contact from Amazon. Respond within 72 hours by phone, Call me Now, or a written plan on the Account Health page, with the evidence ready.
- Monthly. Look for clusters and repeats across the log. Audit returns relisting, supplier changes and listing edits, the usual sources of repeats.
- Quarterly. Confirm business, tax and contact information is current. Review handling times and carrier tracking. Reread Amazon’s AHA and AHR pages for changes, since Amazon says the formula and point values may change.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Account Health Assurance?
It is a benefit Amazon offers professional sellers who consistently keep a high Account Health Rating. Amazon says it will not deactivate an enrolled account as long as the seller works with Amazon within 72 hours of being contacted to resolve the issue.
What AHR score do I need for AHA?
Amazon says you need an AHR of 250 or higher for at least 6 months, with no more than 10 days below 250, plus a valid emergency contact number on file.
Can I lose AHA after I am enrolled?
Yes. To stay in, keep the AHR from falling below 250 for more than 10 consecutive days, keep a verified emergency contact, meet regulatory obligations, engage within 72 hours, fully resolve issues, and avoid repeating the same policy issues.
What happens if my sales drop in the off season?
If the score falls below 250 after enrollment and you have no policy violations, Amazon says you stay enrolled for an additional 180 days. A new violation during that time must be appealed and resolved within 10 days.
Does AHA protect me from a counterfeit or fraud finding?
No. Amazon says it may remove you from AHA and deactivate the account immediately if it believes you engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, illegal or otherwise harmful activity.
What is a Seller Challenge?
It is an enhanced review of an eligible listing-level enforcement, currently for US-based AHA sellers. Amazon gives three to start, replenishes each failed one after six months, and says it aims to respond within 48 hours.
I am not in AHA. Can I still get account health help?
Yes. Amazon says professional sellers can reach Account Health Support at any time through Contact us or Call me now on the Account Health page.
Get Help With Amazon Account Health and AHA Eligibility
If your score keeps stalling below 250, repeat violations keep appearing, or Amazon has contacted you and the 72-hour clock is running, a structured review of the whole Account Health page usually finds the cause faster than working item by item. You can submit your case for review, or book a consultation to plan the work before it becomes urgent. For ongoing monitoring, see our Amazon account health maintenance service.
This article is educational information based on Amazon’s published Seller Central help pages and US government guidance as read at the time of writing. It is not legal advice and does not guarantee any outcome, enrollment or timeline. Amazon may change its programs, thresholds and formulas at any time. Confirm current rules in Seller Central before acting.
If the account itself is restricted, start with our Amazon suspension service. You can also see all our marketplace suspension services.
Sources
- Amazon Seller Central: Account Health Assurance, frequently asked questions
- Amazon Seller Central: Account Health Rating program policy
- Amazon Seller Central: Account Health Rating frequently asked questions
- Amazon Seller Central: Seller Challenge FAQ
- Amazon Seller Central: Order Performance program policy
- Federal Trade Commission: Informing Businesses about the INFORM Consumers Act
