Your letter of authorization goes stale. Here's what that breaks

When a distributor or agency sells your brand on Amazon, sooner or later Amazon asks for proof that they are allowed to. Most brand owners sign a letter of authorization once, file it and forget it. Then a request lands, the old letter is rejected within minutes, and a shipment or a payout waits while everyone hunts for someone who can sign.

Where authorization shows up on Amazon

A letter of authorization (LOA) is a signed letter from the brand owner confirming that a named company may sell its products. On Amazon it sits next to two other mechanisms, and each does a different job:

• Brand and category approvals. Some brands and categories are restricted: a seller must apply before listing. Amazon's approval help page, the same on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, lists what to prepare: purchase invoices dated within 180 days, product photos, brand authorization letters where applicable, and safety certifications. Review takes 2 to 7 business days.
• Brand Registry selling roles. If your brand is enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, Amazon's free program for brands with a pending or registered trademark, your brand administrator can connect a selling account and give it a role. Amazon describes Brand Representative as the role for the brand's own sellers and Reseller as the role for outside sellers the brand authorizes. The seller accepts an invitation and the role goes live. Details are on Amazon's Brand Registry roles page.
• Account verification. Amazon periodically re-verifies the business behind a selling account. In our experience, when the people running an account are not the owners of the business, Amazon can ask for a signed letter on its own template.

The 180-day trap

Amazon's published rule is that invoices for approvals must be dated within the last 180 days. In our experience, letters run on the same clock. We have watched a letter that Amazon accepted the year before get rejected the moment it was uploaded again, with a one-line request for a new document. What counted was the gap between the date on the letter and the day it was uploaded.

Two other things caught us out:

• The template changes. When Amazon supplies the wording, it can change between requests. A newer verification template added a clause letting the account approve new users and give them access to listings, buyer messages and refunds. A letter copied from the previous year's request didn't have it.
• Names must match exactly. The legal business name has to match the account record character for character, accents included. We pull it from the account record, never from memory.

These requests carry a deadline. The notice we handled warned that listings and payouts would be deactivated if it ran out. Every rejected upload burns part of that window.

What a missing role breaks

On March 31, 2026, Amazon ended commingling, the practice of shipping a customer any seller's identical unit from the nearest warehouse. Its barcode FAQ, which reads the same on Amazon.ca, now draws a hard line. Only sellers with the Brand Representative role can send products to FBA on the manufacturer barcode, the UPC already printed on your pack. Every other seller, including authorized resellers, must put an Amazon barcode label (an FNSKU, starting with X) on each unit. Reseller units that arrive without one are treated as defective, and unlabelled units lose eligibility for reimbursement.

We met a version of this before the deadline. An inbound shipment plan dropped one product because our account wasn't the brand representative and that listing was set to the manufacturer barcode. The fix was a new SKU on the same ASIN, which Amazon gave its own FNSKU, shipped separately with Amazon labels. Amazon confirms that a new SKU doesn't reset ratings and reviews, because those belong to the ASIN.

The practical point for you: decide which role your Amazon partner should hold, and assign it in Brand Registry. The role decides whether they label every unit, and what data they see. Amazon notes the Reseller role doesn't include Brand Analytics.

An authorization is a working document. Amazon reads the date, the wording and the names each time it asks, and the role you assign decides how your partner ships. Review it on a schedule, before Amazon asks.