Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#21

Post by mattnewton » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

rfdub wrote: post #14

I am perennially amazed at the ire of sellers who build businesses on someone else's platform, and then complain when the purveyor of said platform changes the rules. If you want to get to determine the rules of the game, you have to build your own playing field.

I don't think that's a fair viewpoint, it's not realistic for most businesses to create international commerce powerhouses to sell their bespoke goods. Complaining is the only realistic leverage they have in this game.

When you get as big as Amazon it's reasonable to expect some concessions to the people who use your platform, just like if you get as big as GM your workers will want to unionize.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#22

Post by Negative1 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #18

fenwick67 wrote: post #6

> Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell. Wow, I can literally just say "I don't like it", and there's a chance they'll literally just give me my money back, but let me keep it?

How many times can you do that before someone flags your account up for review of some sort?

It's probably not a discrete number or even heuristic (like number of years you've been in good standing). Rather it's probably another part of their machine learning backend that tracks trends and user behavior as a whole.

But as a guess, if you're a new account, maybe 2 or 3 times. For every year you've been a member, probably 1.5 times that number per year up to some max (let's say, 7).

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#23

Post by jack12 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

fenwick67 wrote: post #6

> Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell. Wow, I can literally just say "I don't like it", and there's a chance they'll literally just give me my money back, but let me keep it?

Items shipped by sellers in China often have such asymmetric shipping costs that the cost of returning them to China might be more than the entire item is worth.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#24

Post by koolba » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #16

fenwick67 wrote: post #6

> Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell. Wow, I can literally just say "I don't like it", and there's a chance they'll literally just give me my money back, but let me keep it?

Amazon customer support has told me to discard items that've been defective, rather than ship them back, on multiple occasions. There's probably an internal policy about how many of these can be performed by a customer, but it's extremely convenient when they let you.

The cost of the item vs shipping cost matters too. I've had it done a bunch of times for less than $10 items.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#25

Post by heartbreak » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:03 PM UTC

spython wrote: post #11

fenwick67 wrote: post #6

> Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell. Wow, I can literally just say "I don't like it", and there's a chance they'll literally just give me my money back, but let me keep it?

Anecdotally, they do it for stuff like pillows already, especially cheap ones - it's hard to resell, so they'll eat the cost.

I’ve had it happen when I ordered a CAT6 cable I ended up not needing. I tried to return it and they never send a shipping label. I called support and they said to keep it. This was ~2 years ago and an easy item to resell.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#26

Post by currymj » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

tomduncalf wrote: post #2

From a consumer point of view, this is a good thing. It sucks to have a different experience depending on whether something ships from Amazon or a third party, especially as their easy return policy is one of the main reasons I continue to use Amazon and pay for Prime. I can understand sellers frustration, but to my mind that's the price of having your products featured on Amazon. I've never encountered a third party…

it's a good thing in the short term, but it also feels like an exercise of monopoly power by Amazon, which is going to be bad for consumers in the long run. can a business afford not to be listed on Amazon? in the long term, does Amazon have any interest in listing third parties?

at some point I think the answer to both of these questions will be no, and then I'd expect the good customer experience to erode pretty quickly as Amazon realizes they can squeeze as much profit as they want out of customers and retailers.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#27

Post by EliRivers » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #20

It is outrageous, but it's not new. About 2 years ago I sold an item through the marketplace, shipped through Amazon, and at +30 days the buyer requested to return (my return policy stated no returns after 30 days). I ignored him, and then he filed a "Did not receive item" complaint with Amazon. They refunded him $250 and billed me $250. I fought it, using email, multiple phone calls (a trial in and of itself), showi…

On the subject of amazon alternatives, when I'm buying new books I check bookdepository.com (free international shipping!), wordery.com (free international shipping!) and booksplea.se (free international shipping!) first.

They don't have the range of books that amazon does, but they beat amazon on price often enough to make them worth checking (and every so often, they really undercut amazon).

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#28

Post by qznc » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #18

fenwick67 wrote: post #6

> Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell. Wow, I can literally just say "I don't like it", and there's a chance they'll literally just give me my money back, but let me keep it?

How many times can you do that before someone flags your account up for review of some sort?

I returned three smartphones over the course of a few months, because each had some hardware failure. I kept the fourth one. Amazon sent an email asking for details. I guess that behavior flagged me somehow.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#29

Post by sharemywin » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #17

Yes, this is very consumer friendly on the surface. But remember that Amazon operates is retail arm with little or no profit margin, even with the benefits of scale keeping their costs low. Small businesses don't have the same benefits of scale, and will be forced to close down when their revenue drops below their costs as a result of too many returns. And that is ultimately bad for consumers.

Amazon doesn't need independent sellers anymore.

Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say

#30

Post by gryzzly » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

In Germany, there is a law that anything (I’m sure there are exceptions) sold online can be returned in the 30 days after delivery. So Amazon or not, companies must allow this anyway. Also some non-Amazon online stores offer "returnless refunds" for some items or just ship a new one to you in case of damaged item. Apart from forcing the vendors to pay for retouring the new policy is similar to German regulations and businesses seem to be OK here. Amazon could help (if it doesn’t already) vendors by providing some "rate" on a customer, if they buy a lot and return a little, then likely they are genuinely unhappy with product, and decide upon customer’s history if they are entitled to refund or if they are abusing the system.