Amazon have dishonestly moved the goalposts yet again!
So a while back my account was suspended because a few INR led to A to Z claims and therefore a higher order defect rate resulting in suspension.
I learnt that using ‘buy amazon shipping services’ meant INR claims would not count as an order defect, all stated in amazon’s policy at that time.
The following types of claims do not impact your ODR:
-Claims with the reason “Item not received” on orders that you shipped with Amazon Buy Shipping Services
So my account was reinstated back then after submitting the POA.
However, I received more INR claims (this is not a common occurence but sometimes it can just happen, it’s random afterall and i can’t control that side when shipping by Royal mail standard post). they still counted on my ODR despite buying shipping labels through amazon. The account went into ‘at risk’ and when I contacted amazon to enquirer about this, they suspended me instead of actually answering me why their system is clearly not accurate.
The indian customer service team at the time were living in cloud cuckoo land once again and not intellectually capable of understanding the issue at hand. the account was reinstated after numerous emails to the seller-performance team, phone calls etc and submitting POAs which often led to totally off topic contradictory bot responses.
Anyway i just received another A to Z claim which it says will count as a defect. Again i thought 'but it was sent using ‘buy amazon shipping services’ and dreaded going through the hassle of trying to argue with amazon’s seller help people over it.
Then checked the ODR page and Amazon have removed the original statement from it
The following types of claims do not impact your ODR:
-Claims with the reason “Item not received” on orders that you shipped with Amazon Buy Shipping Services
it now just reads
The following types of claims do not impact your ODR:
- Claims that are granted and paid for by Amazon
- Claims that were denied to the customer
- Claims that were withdrawn by the customer
Note: If you win an appeal on a claim decision, the claim will be removed from your ODR.
not only that but ive looked at the A to Z guarantee process…
the customer in this case had no intent to negatively impact my account. She just told me she didnt receive it and asked what i could do. My response "sorry to hear that, it was only sent a week ago, if it’s not with you by the end of this week (only another 2 days in this case) then please let me know and ill refund you.
In the A to Z claim, the customer wrote 'Hello, you said you would refund me if i didnt receive it, ive not received it so please refund me, thanks"
that’s not someone intending to open a actual claim as a last resort. amazon’s system is designed to automatically open a claim in this situation.
it is literally pushing the customer towards negatively impacting us even when they are most likely understanding.
Now we know why, amazon is trying to push us all to ditch royal mail and go with FBA. BUT why would any seller trust amazon when they pull dodgy crap like this?
0 replies
Seller_EJIX7rqDNQJi2
I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with your customers reporting non-receipt, however I can assure you that the Amazon’s “Buy Shipping Services” policy never covered A-Z claims on the European marketplace.
It only ever promised to protect sellers in case they received a negative feedback solely related to delayed or undelivered parcels:
In addition, on the Amazon USA marketplace, sellers are also protected against any INR A-Z claims, which are then automatically funded by Amazon with no metrics damage.
I can imagine that you will occasionally manage to have the defects removed even on the UK site when dealing with a less experienced Amazon representative, however this shouldn’t be the case.
E-mailing the Seller Performance while your Seller Account is in a poor standing and at a risk of deactivation is a very bad idea, as it will only give you unwanted attention from the department which handles suspensions.
If you are regularly getting complaints about non-receipt and having your account suspended, I would advise you to review your business practices, which may also include changing your carrier or increasing the Handling Time.
Seller_zBcK3LwCAtBeW
Hello Kika, I literally posted a segment from the ODR info that was applicable to UK sellers, This used to be included.
The following types of claims do not impact your ODR:
-Claims with the reason “Item not received” on orders that you shipped with Amazon Buy Shipping Services
You can cross reference the above through google if you’re unsure of it, but it was certainly a well acknowledged rule that sellers continued to have problems with. eg
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/item-not-received-claims-when-using-amazon-buy-shipping-services/290094/3
As for INR claims, it is not like this is a common occurrence. These are things that might happen once or twice a year.
However standard packages can get lost in transit, or a customer may just lie to get a refund. In eithercase ,I have no issue refunding a customer if i’m told about it and enough time has passed to reasonably assume it is ‘lost in transit’ since we use Standard shipping.
The problem is amazon customers cannot even inform a seller now without amazon leading the customer to open an A to Z claim automatically.
in my current case, the customer has politely informed me in one email and I asked her to wait till the end of the week (which was only 2 days away) why? because it had only been a few days since it was sent. I then got an A to Z claim that was also granted instantly, which contained this message ‘Hello, you said you would refund me if i didnt receive it, ive not received it so please refund me, thanks’.
don’t you think if i had read this message instead of receiving an A to Z claim that was granted, I would have refunded the customer for a less than £3 item?
E-mailing the Seller Performance while your Seller Account is in a poor standing and at a risk of deactivation is a very bad idea, as it will only give you unwanted attention from the department which handles suspensions.
i’ve been an amazon seller for over 10 years, when customer service was handled in the UK/Ireland, I went through all types of different scenarios, Seller performance were real people who would acknowledge and respond to a message. In this situation I had a defect based on INR (im a low volume seller btw) despite buying the label from amazon ie amazon were contradicting their own terms, the defect should not have stood. I emailed them to tell them that and it got suspended. On further emails the messages I received were contradictory and even offtopic until it was reinstated randomly.
Seller_ga9j2Ur5v40yB
Why are you using “Amazon Buy Shipping” you should be using click and drop royal mail business account, your paying alot more on postage than you need too. Business mail performs slightly better than regular mail?
Seller_xUKHc5xSYJmI4
Good Morning Kika
In the USA, all INR claims where shipping was purchased from Amazon are automatically funded by them and the seller doesn’t even receive a notification about it. But in the UK, this was never the case.
Just wondered why Amazon do not apply the above to the UK platform? I heard somewhere three INR s the customer will be blocked?
We all know if you get too many INR then you maybe subject to a campaign.
