Returns - Will Amazon change its policies?
Hi all,
Story short, I have had more returns in 12 months on Amazon than in 14 years on eBay.
Some products returned with the most unbelievable reasons, some of which haven’t even been used. Now, why does amz issue a refund even before checking the items returned and why does it issue pre-paid labels at the seller expense?
Customers are aware that amazon is a marketplace that can be easily scammed.
This is not the the kind of business model a retailer wants and its really making me think that I have to move back to eBay or move to other platforms.
I really hope that Amazon looks into this as its not helping its “selling partners”.
72 replies
Seller_ftMMn0UeA4IQP
Amazon is customer centric, it’s designed and run to make the buyers lives as easy and stressfree as possible.
Helping ‘selling partners’ isnt part of the equation. Why do you think they refer to your ‘selling privileges’? They are doing us the favour by allowing us be on here in the first place
Seller_rGtEcZnu0JTRD
Unfortunately this is the way it works on Amazon now, as a buyer its great the free returns, but as a seller its a pain, however it remains an exceptionally powerfull platform, and of course we all have the choice to accept it and continue selling, or not to accept it, and remove our listings. From my perspective its just another item we have to make an allowance on within the costs of selling on here. Everyone else is in the same boat, so its still a level playing field.
Seller_OwG1S9JedjAdO
I had to pay for the return on a case that is curved as the customer thought the measurements should have included the space underneath the curve as it would not fit in his straight slot. Another ordered 10m of white and returned because they really wanted 2m of black. I could fill a book.
Seller_xUKHc5xSYJmI4
There is a positive and negative side to prepaid returns which we have discovered. We have found recently that selecting the wrong reason for return the return postage cannot be deducted from refund system default. Also also found few fo them have already abused this process selecting defective when there is nothing wrong with the order or arrived late when it arrived within the estimate delivery period.
Also using a tracked service for returns gives you better visibility however the process for claiming for a lost order remains to be a problem for many sellers. The claims process is not as straight forward as it should be and insurance for items worth more the £20.00.
I guess using the old process where the buyer returns the order there is no visibility on none tracked returns.
What we have also noticed 99% of all our returns are where the buyer wanted 14cm item and order 11cm despite the showing 4 images of the dimensions, bullet points showing dimension and product description. So Amazon is losing 10% on every return.
Seller_xUKHc5xSYJmI4
Based on the information provided it tells me that customers are not reading the information which is as clear as we can make it and just ordering a returning for the sake it.
Seller_gOlDFgS5Li5Jc
more shops are now charging for returns but highly unlikely amazon will follow suite they are just to
customer centric we also sell clothing through fba and yes we do get quite a few returns and yes it can be annoying when the customer gets an immediate refund but its part of selling on amazon and the potential for sales should outweigh returns or at least that is what we find
Seller_KZhPnqSRrvTv0
Welcome to Amazon!
You’ll be bullied, scammed, given endless hoops to jump through, always with the threat that Amazon will kick you off their platform if you don’t jump through them. Make sure you have other outlets for your goods, as selling just on Amazon is a recipe for disaster.
Seller_3TuKPsB3ieWKC
There is a reason that a lot of the large online stores are now charging for returns. It is a huge cost. Rightly or wrongly Amazon seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
As a clothing seller this policy change costs us around £4000 a year in Amazon labels.
- The knock on effect for us is that we have removed a lot of low value items from Amazon entirely and moved to other platforms. When you are making £1.50 profit on a line, it makes no sense now that Amazon charge for returns. If we have one return we effectively have to sell 4 of that line to make a profit.
Sale 1 (-£3.00 return) Total -£3.00
Sale 2 (£1.50 profit) Total -£1.50
Sale 3 (£1.50 profit) Total £0.00
Sale 4 (£1.50 profit) Total £1.50
So where we used to make a profit with one sale, we now have to make 4!
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We have removed items with a higher return rate and moved to other platforms. These lines make a very good profit and obviously generate a large amount in fees on the platform that they are sold through, so Amazon are now losing these.
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We have had to increase prices to cover the huge cost of Amazon return labels. Where previously only customers returning items paid return postage now effectively everyone does and the customers who do not return items subsidise those who do.
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We ship at least a few orders a week which (before they have even shipped) we know will be sold at a loss. This is where customers order 2, 3 or 4 of a line in different sizes. What Amazon charge us for the return of the items is higher than any profit we would make.
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Quite a few times we have had customers order 4, 5, 6 items, then return them, but not in one package with one return label, but each one individually, so Amazon have charged us £14-£20 in return labels for a single order. Insanity!
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For the first time in 15 years we are considering charging a fee for postage on Amazon to cover the return costs that Amazon charge.
I can only speak about our business and things may be different for others. Since the return label charge to sellers was introduced a year ago we have progressively moved more lines to other platforms (where we used to have everything available on Amazon). Our sales are roughly the same year on year, but on Amazon around 20% down and across other platforms around 20% up. Amazon are losing double what they are charging us in return label costs, in fees.
Seller_hf3WAIwfSX840
Hi,
There are many factors involved in the return buyt recently I have noticed that the actual addresses the customers are imputting is in no way good enough for the couriers to even find them (resulting in a return) and so customer just orders again and yes returned so we have now paid 2 delivery costs with 2 full refunds, we are now googling the addresses and adding a seperate label with full address details when needed. An example is that on many occasions the customer is changing the 1st line of the address with a PO Number, this needs to be looked into by Amazon. Amazon Business has a seperate section for adding a PO Number.
We are FBM and when printing the labels it is almost impossible to read, very small and in some weird font, good eyesight needed even though they have most info on their devices
Seller_xUKHc5xSYJmI4
There are some issues with Royal Mail at moment the message appears as Delay in delivery due to external factors