Amazon account health rating: What lowers it and how to fix it

What actually lowers your Amazon account health rating?

The account health rating (AHR) is a score that goes from 0 to 1,000, and this number tells you how well your account follows Amazon’s selling policies. The rating reflects policy adherence and selling activities over the last 180 days.

There are two factors that affect the score:

• Policy violations are what take points away: Each open violation ends up costing you points until it is resolved or moves out of the 180-day window.
• Successful orders add points back. The same recap says that you gain 4 points for every 200 successful orders in the last 180 days.

A critical violation is another story. Amazon says the rating turns red and drops to zero and you get a 3-day grace period to fix the issue before the account gets deactivated. And this situation is the one that should be treated as an emergency.

This same dashboard also shows shipping and customer service metrics next to the number. An Amazon staff guide for dashboards lists each with its target. A healthy AHR that is next to a failing delivery metric is still a problem because the metric can deactivate listings even if the score looks fine.

Why one bad week rarely tanks your score

The 180-day window works in your favor. One week is 7 of 180 days, less than 4% of the period the score reflects. What hurts is a violation that is left open because it keeps costing points for as long as it stays open.

Recovery with orders alone is slow. It takes 20 points to go from 180 to 200. At 4 points for every 200 successful orders, that is 20 ÷ 4 × 200, or 1,000 successful orders.

You need to treat them as rough numbers. The score also changes as old violation points and old orders move out of the 180-day window, so your real timeline will differ. The point holds either way: a smaller brand can’t sell its way out of a drop, so resolving the violation is faster.

How do you read your account health dashboard?

The rating is at the top, and there are three surrounding areas: policy compliance, shipping performance and customer service performance. The score bands below in the table are from an Amazon staff guide on Seller Forums. The last two columns are our treatment of each band.

First, read policy compliance because that’s what the score counts. Then look at the shipping and customer service, because every metric there has its own limit.

What does an account health rating of 200 mean?

200 is the lowest score in the Healthy Band. This means you are in good standing, but you have no buffer. If a new violation happens, it will cost you points that will move you right into “At Risk." This range is 100 to 199.

A brand at 200 with 20 orders a day gets about 4 points every 10 days. That is too slow to address a new violation. Use 200 as a floor and aim for 250 or higher. That is also the line for Account Health Assurance, which we cover below.

Which policy violations should you fix first?

Amazon’s staff guide says that the violations are sorted by severity, which go from critical (which can drop your score to zero at once) to low, and recommends working from the highest AHR impact down. We use the same order, with a deadline for each tier.

• First, sort each open violation by severity. The most dangerous warning is often not the last one.
• Work critical items within 24 hours. A critical violation allows you to have 3 days to fix things before you get deactivated, so everything else can wait.
• Fix the root cause before you respond. For a wrong attribute, you need to fix the source file or the next upload will repeat the violation.
• Log the fix before moving on. Make sure you write the date, the violation, the root cause, the fix, and evidence so you will have a record in case Amazon asks.
• Move to the next one. You should start on shipping metrics once the policy list is clear, so you can see which fix actually moved the score.

Many violations are really document requests, not mistakes. A defective-item complaint that required the instruction manual to appeal was an open item from an account health audit that we ran for a wearables brand.

Other open items were a listing wrongly flagged as a blood sugar device, product safety documents for the EU, and a declaration that Amazon needed in English. Most of this couldn’t be fixed from Seller Central alone, because they needed a file from the brand, so the job was to make a list of who sends what and by when.

How to appeal without starting from scratch

Your fix log from step 4 is the starting point for any appeal. It already holds the root cause, the fix and the evidence. To see the full process, make sure you check our guide on how to appeal an Amazon account suspension.

Which shipping and customer service metrics matter most?

All of these metrics are on the same dashboard as the AHR, and each has a limit. The first four are from the Amazon staff dashboard guide, while on-time delivery comes from Amazon’s OTDR policy.

If you ship your orders yourself (FBM), these limits apply to the listings themselves. Since August 31, 2026, Amazon has disabled individual FBM offers that miss the cancellation, late shipment, order defect or on-time delivery limits.

For OTDR, the listings that have the biggest impact on the drop get deactivated since February 28, 2026, unless that rate is far below 90% or continues to miss, in which case all seller-fulfilled listings can be removed. OTDR does not count FBA orders.

If you are doing your own orders, make sure to fix these metrics in the following order:

• First comes order defect rate. This metric measures customer harm, so respond to every open customer issue within 24 hours.
• Second, on-time delivery and late shipment. Set your handling and transit times to match what your warehouse and carrier do. A one-day handling time on a two-day warehouse results in late shipments and a 2- to 4-day transit promise on a 5- to 6-day carrier results in late deliveries.
• Third, valid tracking rate. All the shipments must be tracked via a carrier that is already recognized by Amazon. This is usually the fastest way to resolve the issue.
• Cancellation rate last. Sync inventory across channels so you stop selling units you no longer have.

What account health problems have we fixed recently?

There are three account health problems that we fixed for the brands that we manage in September and October 2026. None of these started with a big drop in the score; instead, they showed up as a warning, a dip in one shipping metric or a sudden at-risk flag.

Late deliveries with a 0% late shipment rate

The gift brand that shipped 457 products received deactivation warnings for on-time delivery, even though they shipped everything on the same day and maintained a 0% late shipment rate.

When we pulled the late orders, we found the cause was not the warehouse but the promise. Their shipping template said 2 to 4 days in transit and USPS took 5 to 6 business days. Even if the carrier is slow, Amazon counts that gap against the seller.

We updated the transit time to 5 to 8 days on the 6 templates that cover most of its products. Customers can now see a later delivery date on the listing, so a few may choose a faster seller. This is still much better than having Amazon deactivate the listings because deliveries keep arriving late.

A dip caused by two settings

For a kitchen appliance brand, the on-time delivery dropped after a warehouse change, and there were two reasons for this. One is that Amazon was still computing transit time from the old warehouse and two, the orders were being confirmed shipped when the label was created and not when the box left.

The fixes for these issues are quite simple. You need to update the ship-from location, then send confirmations when the orders actually ship and change the handling time from the same day to 1 day as a buffer.

The account already had a previous shipping warning, so another slip could mean a request for a plan of action.

At risk with nothing wrong

In October 2026, two of our accounts were flagged as “At Risk” within days of each other. The cause for the issue in both of them was an identity verification request that only the account owner could complete.

In one of them, every other part of the dashboard was healthy, so the fix was to get the owner to submit the documents, which they did live while on a call with us.

If your account is currently “At Risk” but without any new violations, make sure to check for a verification request first.

How do you prevent future drops?

Before a warning email arrives, you need to run the following check every Monday.

• Log the score. A weekly log shows a 20-point slide before it becomes a band change.
• Clear the new policy violations within 7 days. First you need to sort them by severity, because any small notices that are left will become bigger problems.
• Review the last 30 days of shipping metrics. We always act early, as soon as LSR goes above 2%, VTR drops below 97% or OTDR drops below 95%, well before Amazon’s limits.
• Check for open documents or verification requests. They are really easy to miss but can put a healthy account at risk.
• Make sure you update your fix log. A complete log can make any future appeal faster.

In our Monday report, we cover account health for each client separately, next to their profit and margin. Our Amazon account management guide shows the full system built around this routine.

Be sure to aim above the Healthy line. The Ask Amazon recap says Account Health Assurance requires an AHR of 250 or higher for at least 6 months, not having any more than 10 days under 250, and working with Amazon within 72 hours of contact.

The staff guide says it gives you up to 13 days instead of 3 to sort out problems before suspension.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good account health rating on Amazon?

Any score that is in the range of 200 to 1,000 is a healthy score, but you should always aim for 250 or higher. This is the line for Account Health Assurance and it gives you a buffer so one minor violation does not drop you below 200.

How long does it take to recover account health?

Every account is different, and it truly depends on how much you sell and how long it takes for your old violations to fall off the 180-day window. Orders add 4 points for every 200 successful sales, so at 25 orders a day, it takes about 40 days to gain 20 points. Usually, fixing the open violations will get you there faster.

Can one violation get you suspended?

Yes, if it is critical, it can get you suspended. Amazon says that a critical violation drops the rating to zero and gives you 3 days to fix it before you get deactivated (up to 13 days with Account Health Assurance). Most of the other single violations on a healthy account will not push it below 100.

Do shipping metrics matter if my rating is healthy?

Yes, and especially for FBM. Since August 31, 2026, Amazon has deactivated individual FBM offers that miss the cancellation, late shipment, order defect or on-time delivery limits, whatever your AHR is, so you need to check each metric weekly.

How often should you check your account health dashboard?

You should always check your account at least once a week on the same day. If there is a violation open, or your score is under 200, you need to check it daily.

What to do this week if your account health dropped

There are a couple of steps you should follow in case your account health has dropped recently:

• Open the account health dashboard and make sure to sort the violations by severity, instead of by date.
• First, resolve the policy violations, as these are the ones that the rating counts.
• If you do ship your orders on your own, make sure to compare your promised transit times with how long the carrier actually takes.
• Check for open verification or document requests.
• Log every resolved issue, so you have a record in case Amazon asks for an appeal.
• Set a recurring weekly check, rather than waiting for a warning email.

Keeping account health in good shape takes weekly attention, and our Amazon account management service covers exactly that. If performance does not improve in 60 days, we refund our management fees. Get your free marketing plan from Olifant Digital to see where your account needs work now.