Here’s the relevant bit:

Prior to an A-to-z Guarantee claim being filed

Customers must first contact you and give you an opportunity to resolve their issue. Customers are not eligible to raise an A-to-z Guarantee Claim (“Claim”) without contacting you first.

What’s the betting they contacted CS and they opened it on the customer’s behalf.
IMO this is SO wrong, and they (CS) should not be allowed to do it.

@Julia_Amazon @Winston_Amazon
Is this something that can be raised please as there have been so many instances of this being reported, where the seller has no idea about an A-Z having been raised until they see the claim has been has approved.
As the seller we should have the ability to try and resolve any issues with our customers.

I have 1 open a-z this exact reason.
In the reason for the return on the a-a is a copy of the chat from the buyer they wish to return.

No prior message.

I now have a new A-Z, for a so called damaged item that buyer has not posted back to us after opening a return request.

Hi @ barnabeesbooks1,

Thank you for reaching out!

I will check your case and come back with more details.

@ JillyB1, thank you for flagging this gap. Do you and other sellers have more examples of this scenario?

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Julia.

another associated issue is if there is a problem with address (or customer has ordered twice within 30 seconds which you just know is a duplicate) if you contact the buyer to get correct details or to check, this then appears to be classed as them contacting you and can go straight to a to z, even though that contact was a reply to a message sent before the item even marked as dispatched.

Not unreasonable to ask Amazon to amend the policy to read

Customers must first contact you “After the estimated delivery date (or if applicable the date tracking confirms delivered)” and give you an opportunity to resolve their issue. Customers are not eligible to raise an A-to-z Guarantee Claim (“Claim”) without contacting you first.

Sometimes you do not get contact direct from customer as many customers go straight to Amazon as they not realise they bought from a third party seller.

The customer goes to Amazon CS who then send out a message beginning with ‘Wheres my stuff?’

This is the start of the process. If you do not respond or resolve the issue within 48 hours from receipt of the Wheres My Stuff message, then the A to Z is automatically granted when there is no tracking information (and more often or not even when there is tracking which says it has been delivered).

And by resolve - I mean full refund, which seems to be the only way to stop the A to Z

I agree Amazon should make sure you get at least 48 hours (actually I think it should be longer in case dispute is raised on a friday and you not work over weekend) from customer contact to sort out potential disputes (as per Amazon policy).

However, if a INR message is received the only way to protect your account from the A-Z is to issue a refund yourself straight away anyway.
In the event of sending an item out untracked this is most definitely the ONLY option as the refund will be done immediately as soon as the A-Z is initiated anyway and you get the A-Z strike on your metrics with no option to appeal (proof of posting means nothing).
If sent tracked then Amazon will ask for more info or will say they are looking into it - but 95% of the time they will still issue refund even if tracking has confirmed delivery and you still get the A-Z strike on your metrics.
The only way to avoid having the A-Z strike is by using Amazon Buy Shipping. You will still have to refund but it wont count on your metrics.

The interesting thing for us for past 5 weeks we have been using Amazon shipping.

We have had a few A-Z claims of non delivery with proof of delivery from themselves. Guess what all of them found in customers favour and refunded.

However we put in a direct claim with amazon for non delivery. Guess what all APPROVED and we got a full order value refund.

So amazon are now out of pocket for the claims.

If sent with another courier nothing!

just as an update my appeal was rejected despite quoting verbatum their own policy to them (probably a bot). All they want to know about is tracking details. I have atleast brought the spotlight over Amazon non compliance with their own policy on A to Z ie that a customer is required to contact the seller 48 hours before launching A to Z and their refusal to enforce this.