Have you dealt with this type of situation being a brand registered FBA seller?
My message to seller support:
I am writing to make a formal complaint against Amazon Buyer, JaneDoe. We have been monitoring suspicious patterns, verifying customer purchases/returns on Amazon, and analyzing historical data to recognize red flags. We have determined that this buyer is engaging in intentional and malicious refund fraud, aiming to deceive both Amazon FBA and our brand into issuing a refund or reimbursement for several products.
Returns are a reality of business we accept, but being held liable for individuals aiming to deceive is an unfair business practice. As a small business this is greatly financially damaging to our business. We ask that you conduct a thorough investigation with the information we provide as evidence of refund fraud and prevent this buyer from purchasing our products and/or issue a warning to her that her account will be suspended/deactivated.
We see a bad pattern forming--repeated refund submissions and repeatedly lying about return reasons. Here's what we've documented:
1. There is a pattern of returns in a short amount of time immediately after purchase
2. Exploitation of lenient refund policies for personal gain
3. Engaging in payment fraud where false claims are made about an item to receive a refund without returning the item in question because it is an FBA non-returnable item
4. Submitting fraudulent claims for reimbursement, often through deceptive means such as claiming a product was "not received" or was “not as described”
This customer has returned 4 out of 5 consecutive orders, and despite being a non-returnable product, FBA STILL REFUNDS THEIR MONEY which comes out of our seller account. This buyer has been taking advantage of the FBA refund policy and never sends the item back because it is considered “non returnable item,” so essentially she is getting free products. For refund reasons, she has marked “item never arrived,” “damaged during transit,” “product not as described,” to circumvent the return and creates another fraudulent refund, BUT SHE KEEPS BUYING which is highly suspicious. Furthermore, she has contacted us on social media messaging asking about various uses for the products which shows that she is actively using the products and seems satisfied with them which contradict the refund reasons.
Additionally, one of the reasons she stated on a refund submission was “item never arrived,” but doesn’t amazon have proof of the delivery? As an amazon buyer, whenever I’ve purchased, they always send a tracking email when the order is shipped and a picture in an email saying your “package has been delivered.” There should be evidence of this in your backend.
I was told that Amazon strictly does not tolerate return fraud. That they have invested heavily in detection and prevention methods, including dedicated teams to provide sellers with tools to report misconduct and obtain reimbursements. We’ve already submitted abuse reports, but what else will be done? We believe this is not the only company this buyer is submitting fraudulent refunds for.
Sadly, we’ve been brand registered sellers on Amazon since 2017 and our experience is being ruined because of a single buyer who is defrauding the system to get free products. You can see on our performance history and customer return data that we hardly get returns, but this person has the majority of all of our returns for this calendar year. Again, suspicious!
*We attached screenshots of her refund/return history, the excel sheet from the return downloads on our seller dashboard, and the conversations with her through social media DM. We've refrained from contacting her on the buyer-seller since Amazon is weird about certain communication with buyers and we don't want our account deactivated.
If you have any other advice - please let me know!
