Rant begin:

We have had a customer dispute delivery with us (shock) which we assumed we could easily defend as we had the Proof of delivery signature and print name from UPS at time of delivery which usually is enough to put the customer off pursuing any false claims anymore, and in Buyer - Seller messaging the customer admitted to having the item, 2 weeks later they opened an A-Z claim stating they only had 1 box of 2 delivered, which the tracking and UPS confirmed show both delivered at the same time and eventually settled in an Amazon funded claim. Which I guess is ok because at the end of the day, customer has the item, and we have the funds, but the real annoyance is the principle, customer has exploited the Amazon A-Z policy and got the item for free, I even sent UPS to collect the '1 box' which would render the item useless, and they refused to hand over the packages. Is there any way forward from here or do we just cut ties and move on? Seems futile to me as should the appliance need any sort of warranty or service repair in the future they have just shot themselves in the foot as rightfully they're not our customer anymore so their purchase is null.

What are other peoples experiences like on Amazon with A-Z fraud? Oddly enough, every other platform we sell on this never happens..

Rant over.

We had a customer request a return and a refund, we sent a UPS prepaid collection to the house which they were aware of (tracking details supplied etc) and the customer missed the collection.

Customer opened an A-Z claim and then withdrew the claim after agreeing to drop off the packages with the new prepaid labels detailed below

We then said we can send pre paid postage labels so they could drop off the items, they requested post office labels due to the drop off point being closest so we supplied another 2x labels to return the packages to us, again free of charge.

The packages arrived today 04/09/2024 (9:35am to be precise) and we issued a full refund today at 11:59am 04/09/2024.

Customer replied to us stating we had only refunded 291.64 of the 349.97 order stating they would like the 58.37 missing to be reimbursed, I kindly stated to them to wait for the confirmation email from Amazon to state the final confirmed refund balance and that the order status would update once the final balance had been settled, the difference in what you are is seeing and the total refund is the VAT amount and that this would be reimbursed in full once the refund had settled. I detailed all of this to the customer, even with the math to work out 291.64 * 1.2 (20% VAT) makes up the total 349.97 rounded to the nearest pence.

Despite this, it looks like the customer has opened an A-Z claim to recover their 'missing' VAT balance, but due to us refunding the order we have now had an email stating We have closed an A-to-z Guarantee claim of £349.97 on order 'X' because you issued a refund to the customer. No further action is required from you at this time but we have counted the claim against your Order Defect Rate.

Anyone had experience with this refund pattern in the past and any luck on getting the ODR reversed? In my past history I've known despite the information you throw at the A-Z team once the claim is in it's not getting overturned.

I will keep it brief,

MFN (non prime) order sent via Amazon Shipping.

Package reaches the local delivery hub to the customer and then no more scans/updates

EDD+7 (last estimated delivery date + 7 days) for this order is 28th November. Which is the this date Amazon Shipping then consider the package lost and will allow a claim for a lost package.

Meanwhile A/Z Claim opened on 24th November and found in favour of customer.

Customer wants the item - and was frustrated at the lack of information available from Amazon Customer services.

We do not think the customer opened the claim or asked for the claim to be opened.

But this a/z has left us a defect (even though sent by Amazon Shipping) and liablity for the refund (£74.00)

we appealed the a/z and received a patronising reply saying we had to despatch orders within 2 days . . . . and the defect stood.

One of the comments on the opening of the a/z claim from amazon customer support was that the order had invalid tracking which is why the claim was being opened - "as all orders had to have valid tracking."

the tracking on the order is correct and shows multiple scans within Amazon Shipping.