A-Z claim against me, after I already offered to send refund or replacement
For the second time now, I have had an A-Z claim against me when I was in the process of communicating with the customer about what they would like me to do.
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The first time this happened, a few months ago, the customer contacted me to say an item hadn’t turned up so I offered a refund or replacement, I asked them to let me know and I will immediately action it for them. No reply, then suddenly they open an A-Z claim. I refunded them immediately, wanting to do the right thing, therefore receiving a defect against me.
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Now today I have had the same issue, The customer contacted me a few days ago to ask for a replacement as the previous one hadn’t arrived, so I sent a reply with their address in it, asking to confirm if it was ok to send to the same address. Again they have opened an A-Z claim , which Amazon immediately approved with no chance for me to respond.
Does Amazon just email the customer with a big button encouraging them to make a claim? It certainly feels this way to me!!
Can anyone advise if this is the normal way to deal with things or how else do people communicate with customers?
I get the impression I shouldn’t bother communicating with the customer at all and just send a refund regardless of what the problem is or who is at fault, because I’m terrified of this ‘Defect Rate’ which blackens my account, when all I am doing is trying to do a good job and look after my customers by communicating with them.
5 replies
Seller_EJIX7rqDNQJi2
I am sorry to hear that you are having a difficulty handling A-Z claims properly.
First of all, there is no guarantee your buyers read or received any messages which you sent them.
Also, I would advise you not to ever refund A-Z claims once they are open.
This is not eBay. Here, doing this will always give you a non-removable defect. You need to represent your case and fight to have them closed in your favor.
Next time, you should ask for help on the forum before handling any A-Z claims.
Also, I would advise you to check out my thread with detailed instructions how to handle different types of A-Z claims:
Everything is a consequence of the new A-Z claim policy which is now in many cases automatically granting buyers full refunds with no input from the seller.
The policy help page was also edited to exclude the wording about a seller having 3 days to represent their case and replaced it with:
”If we determine that additional information is required during a claim investigation, we will contact you via email, and you must respond within three calendar days.”
You can appeal any incorrectly closed claims through the A-Z claim interface using the “Appeal” button, by opening a case with the Seller Support or if nothing works, by e-mailing jeff@amazon.com or managingdirector@amazon.co.uk.
But you will need to provide Amazon some acceptable proof of delivery in a form of tracking and a signature confirmation.
