Please help. Problems with issuing refunds to a buyer.

A buyer, on an FBM order, returned an item to us (order 114-7384639-9941058), and we promptly issued a full refund: We did so FOUR times. The first refund was issued 24 hours after the item was received.

However, each time Amazon did not complete the refund: The refund attempt was terminated and cancelled.

We promptly wrote to Seller Support (Case ID 15519483991) for help and we wrote to the buyer, too. Amazon escalated the case, and eventually told us that the refunds failed since the buyer used the AFFIRM payment method, and Amazon CANNOT refund to an AFFIRM payment.

18 days after we received the return, the buyer filed A-Z which was auto-granted. We got an auto-defect at the ODR. The stated reason for the DEFECT is that we did not refund the buyer within five days after receiving the return. In reality, three of our four ATTEMPTS were within this five day period.

We appealed the DEFECT, providing the above details. We also provided as evidence (in the buyer-seller messaging system) screenshots of the pending refunds. The system automatically (i.e., about five minutes after we submitted the appeal) denied our appeal, repeating the claim that we did not refund.

Note that we did not appeal the REFUND, we only appealed the DEFECT.

What would be your advice about the next step here?

We are also surprised that Amazon did not auto-refund the buyer. They used to refund buyers 7 days after the item was returned to us (in case we do not issue refund within this 7 day window), and stopped doing so around the beginning of 2024. Does anyone have an experience to share on this matter?

Please help. @Quincy_Amazon @Veronica_Amazon @Rose_Amazon @Glenn_Amazon @Tatiana_Amazon