Amanda Schmutzler
Express Counterfeit Removal
A guided, self-serve claim flow that lets Walmart Marketplace brand owners search the catalog and report counterfeit listings across multiple sellers in one pass, instead of filing separate claims one listing at a time.
- Problem: the existing claims form only handled one counterfeit listing at a time, too slow against catalogs with dozens of look-alikes.
- Users: brand owners filing claims against counterfeit listings, and Walmart's Trust & Safety reviewers evaluating each batch.
- Approach: a guided, six-step batch claim wizard, gated behind an access quiz for qualified high-stakes sellers.
- Process: sat with Trust & Safety and audited claims data first, then designed the wizard and the access gate together.
- Impact: median resolution time dropped from about 3 days to roughly 2 hours, cutting off counterfeit sales sooner, and support tickets fell 67%.
Introduction
Counterfeit listings were a persistent problem on Walmart Marketplace: sellers offering knockoff versions of a brand's product alongside the genuine item. Brand owners could already file a claim to have one removed through Brand Portal, but it moved one listing at a time and could take days to resolve. That was too slow against catalogs with dozens of look-alike listings at once.
Express Counterfeit Removal is a guided, batch-oriented claim wizard built directly into the catalog search experience, so a qualified brand owner can find, select, and report multiple suspected-counterfeit listings in a single pass.
Removal took 3 days, with claims filed one listing at a time.
Suspected counterfeits stayed live while claims waited in a queue.
Brand owners wanted speed. Trust & Safety wanted safeguards.
My Role
I owned this as principal designer for Trust & Safety: auditing claims data to find where the existing one-at-a-time process broke down, setting the direction for a guided batch wizard paired with an access-qualification gate, and aligning Trust & Safety and Brand Protection behind a single approach that balanced speed against risk. What shipped cut resolution time from a multi-day process to one guided flow for qualified sellers.
Research & discovery
Before any wireframe, the priority was understanding where the existing claims process actually broke down: not just that it was slow, but why, and for which sellers speed mattered most.
Watched the team resolve claims manually and saw where a one-listing-at-a-time form created pure rework — the same seller, the same brand, resubmitted again and again for near-identical listings.
Looked at claims data to find the pattern: a small group of high-stakes brand owners were filing the same claim type against the same repeat sellers, at a volume the single-listing form was never built to handle.
Heard directly from brand-protection teams tracking dozens of counterfeit listings at once — for them the bottleneck wasn't getting approved, it was how many separate forms they had to file.
Inside the six-step wizard
The wizard itself walks a qualified brand owner from catalog search to a submitted claim, built to keep each step focused and the batch of flagged items visible throughout.
Brand
Select the brand whose registered marks this claim covers.
Items
Search the Walmart catalog and select up to 10 suspected-counterfeit listings.
Sellers
Review the sellers behind the flagged listings before the claim moves forward.
Claim information
Supply the supporting details Trust & Safety needs to evaluate the claim.
Review
Confirm brand, items, and sellers together before submitting.
Claim submitted
Get a confirmation and start another claim.
Step one, Brand
The sidebar previews all the steps up front, so nothing feels like a surprise partway through.
Picking the brand first scopes everything downstream: which catalog items are eligible to flag, and which trademark details the claim will ask for later in the wizard.
Controlled access
Because Express Counterfeit Removal resolves so much faster than the standard claims process, it isn't switched on for every seller by default. It's reserved for high-stakes sellers whose volume and track record made them a good fit for the faster path.
A qualifying brand owner requests access from their Claims dashboard, then has to pass a short quiz demonstrating they understand the rules for how the tool should be used before it unlocks; access is revocable if those rules aren't followed.
Gated, quiz-verified access
Requesting access from the Claims dashboard.
A short quiz gates activation.
Passing unlocks the tool.
Because it resolves faster than a manually reviewed claim, the fast path is the most exposed to abuse, so it only unlocks for sellers whose volume and track record earned less oversight.
A checkbox only proves someone clicked it. The quiz is a light but real comprehension check: a seller has to show they understand the tool before the faster path opens up to them.
Qualifying isn't permanent. Access is tied to continuing to use the tool the way it was scoped for, and can be pulled if that changes. The gate isn't just a one-time hurdle to get through.
Missing even one question stops access cold: the tool stays locked until every answer is right. It takes 100% to pass.
Answer-by-answer results so a seller can see exactly what to review before retrying.
What the tool tells a seller up front
The instructions a brand owner has to read before using the tool spell out the guardrails in plain terms: removal happens within two hours of submission, the reported seller is notified and can submit a counter-claim, a removed item can be republished if that counter-claim holds up, and access is revoked if accuracy slips.
None of that is buried in a legal doc — it's the first thing a qualifying seller sees.
The problem, and the approach
What made the old one-listing-at-a-time process slow, and how the new flow fixed each part.
Problems
- The existing claims form handled one listing at a time, which didn't scale against catalogs with many look-alike listings
- Brand owners had no way to search the live catalog and act on results in the same flow
- Sellers behind a flagged listing weren't surfaced until late in the process, making it hard to catch mistakes early
- There was no dedicated review step, so claims could be submitted before a brand owner double-checked what they'd selected
- Resolving a claim also relied on Walmart's own Trust & Safety team working each case manually with the seller, and counterfeit sellers kept making sales the whole time a claim was in that queue
Solutions
- Catalog search built into the flow: brand owners search Walmart's live catalog and select suspected listings without leaving the claim wizard.
- Batch selection, up to 10 items: one claim now covers a batch of related listings instead of one form per listing.
- Sellers surfaced early: a dedicated step shows which sellers are tied to the selected items before the claim moves further.
- A review step before submission: brand, items, and sellers are shown together for a final check before anything is filed.
- Less manual back-and-forth: a faster, guided path for qualified sellers means less manual handling on Walmart's side and less time counterfeit listings stay live making sales.
The Claims page, before and after
The page brand owners start from, before and after the redesign.
Before: the old Brand Portal
One claim at a time, with little to show where things stood.
After: the redesigned Claims page
Express removal, claim counts, and a status on every claim.
The flow, before and after
Laying the two paths side by side shows what actually changed: the standard claim stayed manual and slow end to end, while the new path swaps that for a qualification gate up front and a guided, automated flow behind it.
Searching the catalog
Step two of the wizard: a brand owner searches the Walmart catalog by keyword and selects up to 10 items to include in the claim, with item ID, price, and rating shown alongside each result to help confirm a match.
Every matching result stays visible and scrollable, with nothing pre-filtered out of view.
Picks are highlighted and counted live, with a one-click way to clear the batch and start over.
Results can be narrowed by average customer rating without leaving the search.
Trying to move on without a selection surfaces the same inline error pattern used across the wizard.
Step three — sellers, one item at a time
Every selected item routes through its own seller decision: remove the entire listing, or remove only the specific sellers behind the counterfeit stock. A running tray of everything added to the claim stays one click away throughout.
Item details and the sellers behind it sit side by side, so the choice is never made blind.
The full batch is always reachable from the "Added items" tray, with a quick way to remove any one of them.
Removing the whole listing at once.
Or targeting specific sellers instead.
A header checkbox selects every seller at once.
Neither option chosen yet —
the step won't advance until one is.
"Remove individual sellers" chosen, but no seller checked yet — same pattern, one level deeper.
Step four — claim information
Once every item's seller decision is made, the brand owner supplies the details Trust & Safety needs to evaluate the whole batch: trademark number, reason, optional order numbers per item, supporting proof, comments, three sign-off statements, and a typed digital signature.
Step five — review
Before anything submits, the brand owner sees the whole claim back in one place — brand, trademark number, reason, every item with its order numbers and sellers, documents, and comments — to check against a single Submit claim button.
Every selected item gets its own optional order-number field, without leaving the same screen.
A full validation pass, field by field — including the legal sign-off statements, which can't be skipped.
One last look at the whole batch before it's locked in — nothing submits without this screen.
Submitted, and tracked from the same dashboard
Once a claim clears review, it drops straight into the same Claims dashboard the brand owner started from, with status updates (accepted, in progress, rejected, info needed) right in the list.
Confirmation lands right where the claim will be tracked, not on a dead-end success page.
Confirmation email
The brand owner also gets an email with the claim ID and the reported URLs, so there's a record to refer back to without having to log back in to the tool to find it.
A few decisions worth explaining
None of these choices were arbitrary — each one came out of a specific tension between moving fast and keeping the process trustworthy.
Why cap it at 10 items
A higher cap would have made each claim faster to file, but harder for Trust & Safety to meaningfully review. Ten was set as the batch size that still let a reviewer actually look at what was being reported, not just rubber-stamp a wall of items.
Why sellers get their own step
Sellers could have simply been shown alongside each item. Giving them a dedicated step instead means a brand owner sees exactly who they're reporting before the claim moves forward — catching a mistaken match early instead of after submission.
Why review is separate from selection
Selecting items and reviewing the claim could have been the same screen. Splitting them out means there's one deliberate last look at brand, items, and sellers together — because a batch process makes batch mistakes possible, too.
Why a guided wizard, not a bulk-upload form
A faster route for trusted sellers could easily have meant a raw upload form. It's a guided wizard instead, so even a seller moving quickly is walked through the same steps every time — nothing skipped in the name of speed.
Validation that doesn't waste a trip
A generic "something went wrong" banner would have been faster to build, but it leaves a brand owner guessing. Required-field errors instead show up right where the problem is: brand name required, right under the brand field, the moment the form is submitted, not buried in a summary at the top.
Cross-functional partners
How the wizard's design held up against what Trust & Safety, Brand Protection, and Engineering each needed to be true.
Working with Trust & Safety
The wizard's six steps were built around how Trust & Safety evaluated a claim, not around a new process they'd have to learn, so a faster path for brand owners didn't mean a lower bar for what got approved, just less manual back-and-forth to get a claim in front of a reviewer.
Working with Brand Protection & Engineering
Partnered with Brand Protection on what belonged in the usage-rules quiz and when access should be revocable, and with engineering on how qualifying sellers actually got surfaced from claims data in the first place, since the access gate only works if the data behind it is right.
Impact
Express Counterfeit Removal gives qualified brand owners a single guided path to search, batch-select, and report counterfeit listings — replacing a slower, one-listing-at-a-time claims process with the same review rigor Trust & Safety requires, at the pace a real catalog actually demands.
For the high-stakes sellers using it, median resolution time dropped from about 3 days to roughly 2 hours — cutting off sales of counterfeit product faster, from sellers a brand never authorized to carry it in the first place.
Support tickets also fell 67%, because brand owners can now report counterfeits on their own without contacting support.
Just as importantly, Trust & Safety picked up a qualification model — the access quiz and revocable-access pattern — that keeps a faster path from becoming a weaker one.
Faster resolution
~3 days → ~2 hrs
Qualified, controlled access
Quiz-gated and revocable
Tracked end to end
From submission to removal
Fewer support tickets
Brand owners report counterfeits on their own.
From submission to removal
Down from about 3 days of manual review.
Listings per claim
Up from one listing per form, all in one claim.
Guided steps
From picking the brand to claim submitted.
Team outcomes: design contributed alongside product and engineering.
What's next: exploring an agentic direction
Express Counterfeit Removal solves for a human brand owner working a form. But AI agents are starting to browse, compare, and act on people's behalf, and the same permission and trust systems built for humans will need to work for them too. This is an early, unshipped exploration of what that could look like here: instead of a static wizard, a Trust & Safety assistant that a brand owner (or eventually, an agent acting for one) works through conversationally, with the same guardrails carried forward.
Guided counterfeit reporting
Started as a conversation instead of a form.
Evidence review
Done with the brand owner, step by step.
Claim status and next steps
Tracked in the same conversation.
Report, add evidence, and check claim status without leaving the chat.
Brand, role, listings, and evidence carry from one step to the next.
The brand owner confirms every action and can reach a specialist.
Designing trust for agentic commerce
The interface changes, but what actually matters doesn't: who's allowed to act, and what happens when something goes wrong.
- Permissions for new requesters: as agents browse, compare, and buy, permission systems have to support them too, not just the humans behind them.
- Guardrails that carry forward: access gates, guided flows, and revocable permissions stay essential, whether the one asking is a person or an agent.
- Attention to edge cases: agents can hit edge cases faster and at greater scale than people do, which makes designing for them earlier, not later.
Requester
Agent
Same permission gates and revocable access, whether the requester is a person or an agent.
What I learned
I learned that a launch isn't finished until you can tell whether it worked. I never set up a way to measure whether the access quiz actually kept bad actors out. I could see that support tickets dropped and removals got faster, but not whether the quiz was a real gate or only a speed bump that honest sellers cleared and bad ones passed anyway.
I should have built measurement in from the start: quiz pass and fail rates, how many attempts it took, and, most importantly, what happened to people after they passed. Were their claims later reversed? Was their access revoked? Did the same accounts keep coming back? Without that, I could only say the quiz felt right, not prove it.
If I were still there, I would partner with Trust & Safety to track exactly that, look at where bad actors were getting through, and use the findings to see what else could be done, from sharper quiz questions to stronger checks on new accounts or on unusual claim patterns.
Why this kind of problem fits me
Permissions, access, and data-integrity problems keep showing up in my work, and I actively look for them.
I'm drawn to systems where the interface carries risk: who can see what, who can act on what, and what happens when access is wrong. It's where I do my best work.
A denied request, a stalled approval, an expired credential: I design those states with the same care as the happy path, because that's usually where trust is won or lost.
Data-model constraints, audit requirements, edge cases that don't fit cleanly into any role: I want to be in that conversation early, not just handing off a file.
Why bring me onto your team
If you're hiring for a system where access, permissions, or data integrity actually matter, this is the kind of problem I want to work on. I partner early with engineering, design for the failure states most teams handle last, and I'd bring that same approach to whatever complex system your team is untangling next.
“I could trust Amanda to flex her depth of contribution and manage the timelines/ speed needed to maintain the product roadmap for a new and fast moving team. She did a great job sharing UX design principles/perspectives while also being willing to work with product mgmt on combining perspectives. Amanda would make herself available when product would need it and be highly collaborative in these sessions.”
