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Card class: Hero • Category: Marketplace

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At a glance

The single most important number in the Amazon connector: your account standing as Amazon itself reports it, expressed as a status (Healthy, At Risk, or Unhealthy / At Risk of Deactivation) and underpinned by the Account Health Rating (AHR) score. If this gauge moves into the danger zone, every other metric is secondary, an unhealthy account can be suspended, freezing all sales and disbursements. This is the gauge a founder checks before anything else.
What it countsThe account-level health state Amazon surfaces in Seller Central, combining the Account Health Rating (a 0 to 1000-style score) with policy-compliance and customer-service performance signals into a single status band.
Status bandsHealthy (green), At Risk (amber), and Unhealthy / At Risk of Deactivation (red). The gauge renders the current band; the alert fires on At Risk or worse.
What drives itThree pillars: customer-service performance (chiefly Order Defect Rate), policy compliance (intellectual-property complaints, authenticity, listing-policy and restricted-product violations), and shipping / fulfilment performance (late shipment rate, pre-fulfilment cancel rate, valid tracking rate).
Fulfilment scopeAccount-wide. FBA and FBM both feed the underlying metrics, though FBA insulates you from many shipping-performance defects because Amazon controls fulfilment.
Why it mattersA sustained unhealthy state can lead to account deactivation. Deactivation halts sales across the account and can hold disbursements, the existential risk for an Amazon-dependent business.
RecoveryAccount Health Assurance and the appeal / Plan of Action process can stabilise an at-risk account. Recovery is driven by fixing the underlying metric breaches, not by the status itself.
Time windowRT (real time). Amazon recalculates the underlying metrics on a rolling basis; the status reflects the latest evaluation.
Alert triggerAtRisk or Suspended. Any move out of Healthy flips the gauge and notifies the owner and operations roles immediately.
Rolesowner, operations

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Amazon Seller Central data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A mid-size US seller running mostly FBM with a small FBA range on amazon.com. Snapshot taken 22 Mar 26.
PillarSignalReadingStatus contribution
Customer serviceOrder Defect Rate1.3% (target under 1%)Breached, pulling status down
Policy complianceIP / authenticity complaints0 activeHealthy
Shipping performanceLate Shipment Rate7% (target under 4%)Breached, pulling status down
Account Health Status (this card)At Risk (amber)Alert fired
Gauge band shown   =  At Risk (amber)
Alert state        =  fired (AtRisk threshold met)
Root drivers       =  ODR 1.3% and LSR 7%, both above Amazon's targets
Policy pillar      =  clean (no IP / authenticity issues)
Five things to notice:
  1. Two metric breaches were enough to flip the gauge. ODR and LSR both sit above Amazon’s targets. Neither alone may have moved the status, but together they pushed the account out of Healthy. The gauge is a composite, so it captures combined pressure that single-metric cards can miss.
  2. The policy pillar is clean, which is good news. Policy violations (IP complaints, authenticity, restricted products) are the hardest to recover from and the fastest route to suspension. This seller’s risk is operational, not policy-driven, which is more fixable.
  3. The two drivers are both FBM problems. ODR and LSR are shipping-and-service metrics the seller controls directly on FBM orders. Moving the worst SKUs to FBA, or tightening handling time, attacks both at once.
  4. This is a Hero card for a reason. When this gauge is amber or red, it outranks revenue. A seller chasing a sales dip while ignoring an At Risk status is optimising the wrong thing, the account itself is the asset at risk.
  5. The alert is the trigger for a same-day response. At Risk is the warning shot before deactivation. Best practice is to open a Plan of Action immediately: identify the breached metrics, fix the root cause, and document the corrective steps Amazon will want to see.
If the seller cuts LSR back under 4% and ODR under 1% over the following weeks, the status returns to Healthy. Left unaddressed, continued breaches risk escalation toward deactivation.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

The status gauge is the summary. These cards show the pillars that move it:
CardWhy pair it with Account Health Status
Order Defect RateThe single biggest driver of customer-service health. ODR over 1% is the most common reason a status drops to At Risk.
Late Shipment RateThe shipping-performance pillar. A climbing LSR is an early warning that the status is about to move.
Account Health CreepThe slow-drift alert. It catches gradual ODR / LSR rises before they flip this gauge amber.
A-to-z Guarantee Claims (open)Granted claims are ODR defects. A burst of claims is a fast route to an At Risk status.
Pre-Fulfilment Cancel RateAnother shipping-performance defect that feeds the status. Cancellations after payment are scored.
Negative Feedback (30d)A leading indicator of customer-service problems that often precede a health dip.

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Reconciling against Amazon Seller Central

Where to look in Seller Central:
Account Health (top navigation, or Performance → Account Health) The dashboard shows the overall status band, the Account Health Rating score, and the three pillars (Customer Service Performance, Policy Compliance, Shipping Performance) with each underlying metric.
The status band on that page is exactly what this gauge mirrors. The individual metric values behind it map to the dedicated sibling cards above. Timing and reporting-lag table:
TopicDetail
TimezoneThe Account Health page uses your marketplace’s local timezone for metric windows; Vortex IQ reads the status as Amazon reports it, so the band matches regardless of timezone.
Refresh cadenceAmazon recalculates the underlying metrics on a rolling basis. The status can change between checks; the card polls frequently so the gauge stays close to the live state.
Rolling windowsThe pillar metrics use their own evaluation windows (for example, ODR over a trailing window). A single bad day does not flip the status instantly; it influences the rolling rate.
Policy eventsPolicy violations (IP complaints, authenticity, restricted products) can move the status sharply and quickly, independent of the gradual customer-service and shipping rates.
Why our number may legitimately differ from Seller Central:
ReasonDirectionWhy
Refresh latencyOurs within minutesAmazon may update the status on its dashboard slightly before our next poll reflects it. The gap is short.
Band vs scoreSame band, different detailThis gauge shows the status band. If you are reading the precise AHR number on Amazon, expect the band to agree even when you are watching the score tick within a band.
Marketplace scopeEither directionAccount health is evaluated per marketplace region. A seller active in several regions should confirm which marketplace the connected account reflects.
Cross-connector reconciliation against other connectors the same seller may run:
CardExpected relationshipWhat causes legitimate divergence
ebay.ebay-health-scoreMarketplace peer. eBay’s seller standards and health score measure the same idea, operational standing, with a different methodology and cadence (eBay evaluates monthly; Amazon rolls continuously).Independent systems. A seller can be Healthy on Amazon and below-standard on eBay if the weaknesses are channel-specific.
shopify.total-revenueChannel context. No direct relationship, but when Amazon health drops, the risk of an account freeze makes own-site revenue resilience more important.Strategic context, not a reconciliation.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What does each status band mean? Healthy means you are meeting Amazon’s targets. At Risk means one or more metrics or policies have breached and your account could move toward deactivation if not fixed. Unhealthy / At Risk of Deactivation is the red zone, act immediately, as deactivation halts sales. What is the Account Health Rating (AHR)? It is Amazon’s points-based score (on a roughly 0 to 1000 scale) that summarises account standing. A higher score is healthier. The status band on this gauge tracks the same underlying health Amazon uses for AHR. Which single metric is most likely to flip me to At Risk? Order Defect Rate over 1% is the most common trigger. Late Shipment Rate and policy violations are the next most frequent. A burst of granted A-to-z claims can move ODR quickly. Can a policy violation suspend me even if my metrics are perfect? Yes. Intellectual-property complaints, authenticity issues, and restricted-product violations can move the status sharply regardless of how clean your customer-service and shipping metrics are. The policy pillar is independent. How do I recover an At Risk account? Fix the breached metric or resolve the policy issue, then, where required, submit a Plan of Action documenting the root cause and your corrective steps. Account Health Assurance can help keep the account from deactivating while you work through it. Does FBA protect my account health? Largely, on the shipping side. FBA puts Amazon in control of fulfilment, so late-shipment and many delivery-related defects do not land on you. It does not protect against policy violations or product-quality defects. Why is this a Hero card? Because it is the one number where a bad reading outranks everything else. Revenue, ads, and inventory all depend on the account staying active. When this gauge is amber or red, it is the first thing to fix. Is the status the same across all my marketplaces? Account health is evaluated per marketplace region. If you sell across regions, confirm which marketplace the connected account represents; the status reflects that account’s standing.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Account Health Status is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Amazon Seller Central and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.