Thank God they are making this change. I had so much bad experience with returning items to 3rd party sellers that I vowed to never buy anything that is not directly sold by Amazon.
Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
51–60 of 196 posts
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#52> 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?
Additional data points:
I've had this happen on a defective basketball backboard (and adjustable armature) that I purchased, and on a car battery that wasn't defective, but was no longer needed because the car it was intended to go into when I ordered it was destroyed in a fire before the battery arrived.
In the first case I expect it was the size/price to ship it back. In the second it may be because of postal regulations but I'm not positive (they shipped it to me without a problem, but perhaps they don't want to risk return shipment on an item that may or may not be defective so they have a blanket policy).
Both cases required me to contact Amazon directly because the items were not listed in the "return this" section of their respective orders.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#53> 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?
I think it's opt-in for the seller. Either they pay for return shipping, or let the customer keep it.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#54> 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?
I've sold a product on Amazon before and had it warehoused and fulfilled by Amazon. Part of the problem with accepting returns is that you can't personally vet it for quality and correctness and when Amazon ships back out a returned item that the first buyer messed with, it would then have a high probability of getting returned again and/or result in negative feedback or a profit-destroying consumption of time trying to make the second buyer happy. It was then cheaper and easier to just have Amazon destroy all returned items, which is what I did.
Part of me says that the person receiving a refund has no right to the item anymore and should return it on principle, but other side of me realizes it's just a waste of shipping and handling resources when I was having the item trashed anyways. As long as Amazon is actively trying to prevent fraud, I'm not really concerned about this policy.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#55Arrrgh. Auto-playing audio suddenly starts among a forest of tabs. WTF is with that site. :(
And yeah, obviously didn't get to read the article due to that idiocy. :(
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#56> 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.
On the other hand, recently I received a different color item than what I ordered. Since I didn't want to go through the hassle of returning, I asked them to refund the price difference. They refused to do that and asked me to return. The refund would have been cheaper than returning and shipping a new one.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#57> 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.
Can you give examples of what you mean by a defective product?
Do you mean the legal definition[1], more or less as in "unsafe"? Because if so, the reason they are likely telling you to discard defective product is so it can't be used as evidence in a liability case in the instance an unsafe product has caused any harm.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I had it happen for a MacBook charger I bought on Amazon which turned out to be an obvious counterfeit.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#59I 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.
>If you want to get to determine the rules of the game, you have to build your own playing field. Amazon is basically a monopoly, I'd like to know how you imagine a small business competing against them. And why should a small shoe/fidget-spinner/alibaba-reselling business need to build their own shopping website anyways? "Platforms" should be free.
How are they a monopoly exactly? I can google " for sale" easily enough.
Re: Amazon's new refunds policy will 'crush' small businesses, outraged sellers say
#60Anecdotal experience buying on Amazon recently:
Bought a new induction cooking pan. A nice one at $90. Didn't really pay much attention to who was selling it, just bought it like I do everything else from Amazon. It took about two weeks to arrive because it was from an independent seller, and was not 'Prime eligible'.
When it arrived, I took it out of the box and was immediately disappointed. It was really heavy, and the handle was shaped and angled in a way that made it hard to maneuver such a heavy pan. It'd be really difficult to do the usual flip and toss motions when cooking things.
I didn't want to spend $90 on a pan I would hate using, so I put it back in the box and requested a return.
That was when I found out exactly what the independent seller's return policy was. 1) I have to pay for return shipping (USPS best price was $38), 2) I have to pay them for the original 'free' shipping as well (no idea how much that was), and 3) I also have to pay a 25% restocking fee for an item in perfect resell-able condition. So in returning my $90 pan I figured I wouldn't get more than ~$30 back. I decided between being out $90 and having a pan or being out $60 and having nothing, I might as well keep it.
So I suppose that was a win for the seller - they successfully discouraged me from returning the item, which I'm sure would have cost them money. But it also discouraged me from buying anything on Amazon that isn't Prime, and it doesn't reflect well on Amazon that I had an experience completely contrary to their customer service values.