Persisting MAP Violations: The Reasons Behind Them

Repeated MAP violations need an investigation. Compare price feeds, file versions, seller records and previous replies. The four situations below suggest what to check. They do not establish the cause or the seller’s intent from a listing alone.

The pricing plumbing broke

A dealer takes feeds from several distributors and from you, in different formats, and pushes the result to a website and three marketplaces. Every one of those steps can produce a price nobody intended.

The classic version. A blanket instruction to list everything at a ten percent discount comes back as everything listed at ten percent of cost. The discount was applied to the wrong column. The dealer is losing money on every sale and does not know yet. A violation notice that arrives the same morning is worth more to them than it is to you.

This group is the reason a first notice should be an email. It should carry the listing, the capture and the correct MAP figure, and nothing threatening. Threat text spent on a broken feed buys you an argument with someone who would have fixed it in ten minutes.

The price file is wrong before it reaches them

Distributors circulate their own copies of your price file, and the copies disagree. Two wholesalers can be shipping the same part with different MAP figures attached, through a stale export or through an edit somebody made deliberately.

If the dealer points to its supplier’s file, compare the versions and effective dates. Correct a confirmed mismatch at its source, then check the downstream listings. One file change does not prove that every affected offer has updated.

Sellers who have never seen the policy

For a newly found storefront, check who supplied it and whether it received the policy. A missing record is a reason to investigate, not proof that the seller has no obligation.

So a weekly list of sellers appearing for the first time is worth more than another sweep of the ones you know. New sellers get the policy and a plain explanation of what the advertised price covers. The ones who then keep discounting have moved into a different category, and you have the record showing when they were told.

Sellers checking whether you stopped

A seller may knowingly advertise below policy. Keep repeated captures and delivery records, then read any explanation against that evidence. Do not infer intent from the price alone.

Keep a documented monitoring and follow-up schedule. If the seller reports a system error, check the affected file and the later listing. Have the approved decision-maker review any proposed supply restriction.

What that adds up to

Correct files, early notices and seller identification give you evidence for the next step. Verify the result after each change. If the listing stays below policy, investigate further before attributing the cause.

That is why monitoring is continuous. Violations do not get solved once. How we run it.

Correction, 23 September 2026: the earlier version asserted recurrence timing and seller intent without evidence. The checklist now separates possible causes from observed facts.