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

Post by zapt02 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #21

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.

Post by jonplackett » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

Post by komali2 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

currymj wrote: post #26

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 qu…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:11 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?

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:12 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.