Walmart Marketplace Seller Code of Conduct: What's Prohibited

What the code of conduct actually covers

Where policies like order defect rate or on-time shipping rate measure operational performance, the code of conduct is about seller behavior and honesty — how you treat customers, how you compete with other sellers, and how truthfully you represent your business and your items.

It sits underneath most other Marketplace policies as a baseline: even a seller with clean account health metrics can be suspended for a code of conduct violation, because the two are evaluated separately.

The specific prohibited behaviors

Review and rating manipulation: attempting to influence or inflate your own reviews and ratings, or attempting to influence or damage another seller's reviews, ratings, or listings, are both explicitly prohibited.

Competitively sensitive information: sellers can't enter agreements that restrict competition, or share or exchange pricing, promotion, or inventory-plan information with other sellers — this is treated as a serious violation, not a minor infraction.

Customer-facing dishonesty: providing misleading item information, raising the price after an order is already placed, charging unfairly high shipping costs relative to the item, or shipping a different item than what was ordered are all prohibited.

Customer diversion: directing customers off Walmart to an external website via ads, hyperlinks, or social media links embedded in listings, packaging, or communications is not allowed.

Unsolicited communication: contacting customers beyond what's needed to complete and service an order — for example marketing messages or review requests sent through side channels — is prohibited, as is misusing customer data for purposes outside the order itself.

Account and identity manipulation: account switching, account brokering, or any activity that transfers or sells access to a seller account to get around Walmart's policies is explicitly called out as a violation.

How enforcement works

Walmart's stated enforcement range spans listing removal, account suspension, and account termination, and the severity generally scales with how serious and how repeated the violation is.

Walmart also reserves the right to suspend an account while it investigates a suspected violation, rather than waiting for a full review to conclude first. That means a suspension notice referencing the code of conduct doesn't necessarily mean the case against you is already fully decided — but it does mean you should stop the behavior being flagged immediately and gather documentation while you appeal.

Common gray areas sellers misjudge

Asking happy customers to leave a review is common practice on other marketplaces, but doing it through outreach that isn't part of normal order servicing can cross into both the unsolicited-communication and review-manipulation prohibitions at once — the safer version is a neutral, order-related touchpoint, not a review-specific ask.

Including a business card, insert, or packaging sticker that points customers to a personal website or social media account is customer diversion, even if the intent is just brand-building rather than bypassing Walmart's fees.

Talking pricing or promotion strategy with another seller in the same niche — even informally, even outside any official channel — falls under the competitively-sensitive-information prohibition regardless of whether either party benefits from it.