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

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

#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 who has refused a refund, so in reality I don't know if that much will change for them, unless there's a huge amount of abuse of the returnless refunds.

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

#3
I do understand where sellers are coming from, but as a buyer, this would be a better relationship between them and myself. As is, I typically always prefer/only buy things sold or fulfilled by Amazon, because of this reason. This move would give me more confidence to begin more often considering third party vendors.

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

#4
Timely Onion article:

"My Advice To Anyone Starting A Business Is To Remember That Someday I Will Crush You"

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/my-advice-anyone-starting-b...

But in all seriousness... as a consumer, I shop on Amazon to not think twice about having to deal much with returns, shipping, etc.

I understand that this is probably painful for a lot of people who built up businesses on the Amazon platform, but this is something that also seems pretty obvious.

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

#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?

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

#7

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…

I'm hoping this helps with console resellers. Hard to sell a console 100+ dollars over when someone can just return it when more become available.

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

#8
> But increasingly, those upgrades come at the expense of sellers, who often build their businesses on Amazon and have few other places to generate revenue.

That's a huge risk that's been known from the beginning, though. I feel for these sellers, but building a business that's 100% dependent on a 3rd party (especially one like Amazon that you're also in competition with to some extent) seems like a poor situation to place yourself in.

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

#9

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…

The impact varies greatly by item. Things that are big and expensive to ship. Items that require some skill or patience to use. Items that can't be sold once again once returned. Items that people might use once, so it becomes a free rental.

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

#10

> 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?

You can already do that on some things sold by amazon. Not that I've tried to but I've had more cases of amazon just telling me to keep things, especially if they took too long to deliver.
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