Returned items, refunded


All FBA orders are annoyingly refunded from your account as per Amazon’s FBA customer returns policy which we all signed up to as sellers. There’s nothing you can do about it unless the product was damaged by Amazon.


Does make you wander why we do this? It seems to be happening more and more


I feel your pain. We still sell CD’s on Amazon and the number we get back is infuriating. The cellophane wrap is usually torn and the “When opened no returns” label is removed. It is always obvious that the CD has been copied, yet Amazon accept them back with no questions asked. We can’t re sell them as new because there are always marks on the surface.


I request reimbursement from Amazon then keep blaming them until they roll over and reimburse.

e.g. “Packaging is missing, which may have been removed by Amazon when receiving the return. The product is now damaged due to the lack of appropriate packaging and is unsellable. Please research and reimburse.”


That’s interesting. So, I assume that you request that the unsaleable items are returned to you and then you complain that they are damaged when you get them back. If this happens regularly, do they not notice the pattern?

In our case, they are unsalable because even if the CD is not damaged, Amazon stick a label to the plastic case which can’t be removed without scratching and then the case has to be replaced at our expense.


Yep, I request all unsellable items back, except ones listed as “warehouse damaged”. The reimbursement requests cover a range of products, so there’s not usually a particular one with a high damage/reimbursement rate.

Isn’t opened digital media excluded from refunds anyway? So the refund should be denied straight away?


Opened CD’s etc are excluded from refunds on every other platform except Amazon unless faulty. If the customer complains for instance that the CD doesn’t play or the sound is distorted and then sends it back to Amazon for a refund, there is no way that anyone is going to play the CD to see if the claim is genuine so they just automatically get refunded even before the item reaches the depot.


Question, how do you know about the damage or whether they have been opened ? Do you have returns shipped to your own address instead of amazon ?


They are returned to Amazon and then we request that they are returned to us from our unsalable inventory. Amazon don’t touch returns other than to put a label on them then send them on to the seller. If Amazon are told that an item is faulty, they will take the customers word for it. No one is going to inspect returned merchandise.


Just one of the many, many reasons to avoid FBA at all costs! Just Amazon taking more control and more money from your business.


We sell a remote control that Amazon also sell, however ours is in a box theres is in a plastic blister pack, the amount of returns we get here that are clearly their inventory and not ours is amazing ! The product is very simple and its 99% always user error that causes it to be returned as ‘faulty’ we cant do anything with the Amazon blister packed stuff but ours we can sell as refurb even though its new.God knows where we stand on that!


I’m sure you have very sound reasons for using FBA, but would it be impractical for you to consider changing to seller fulfilment? You would of course have the hassle of fulfilling orders yourself but you would be so much more in control of things like returns and refunds. Would it be possible to be FBM for some of the items that give you most trouble or is it all or nothing?


Crazy that they are still doing this. Much easier way to pirate media these days than ordering and copying originals!


A month or so ago I sold a solid state hard disk drive for like £30. Two weeks after sale I got notification that the drive was being returned, and later that it was being returned as defective. Amazon said it was not in condition to sell. I had them return it to me and, low and behold, it is fully functional. I have been using it in one of my PCs for a few weeks now without a problem…and what’s more…when I connected it to the system not only did I find that it worked, but they guy who bought it had actually installed windows 10 on it. So, long story short, I got screwed out of FBA and shipping fees because this person lied about it being dysfunctional.

I do not know what items you are selling, OP, but have you considered having them returned to you then selling them on some other platform?


That’s the problem for us because we produce our own self-help recordings which aren’t available anywhere else.


So it will be hard to put a value on it…

That is something you will have to work out with seller support, if it comes down to that. Have you sold any of these or is it a brand new first time product? If you have sold some they will at least have a history to go on.


We went FBA because we are getting on in years and wanted to do less work and for that reason it works for us. These return issues that we are discussing here are more annoying than costing us money because we have low manufacturing costs as we do everything ourselves and the item value is fairly low.

I feel so sorry for those sellers with more expensive items when margins are tight to start with and then they have these issues to contend with.


I feel the pain of all of the above.

FBA a few years back was an absolutely outstanding reliable and trusted service. Recently it’s been an absolute joke, customers use and return brand new & factory sealed software with evidence of product keys registered. High value retail electronic products are returned many months after the purchase and amazon refund at will with no evidence presented by buyers (well against Consumer Rights Act 2015) and for sellers to bear the cost.

This year we have had 100% of returns either lost, damaged, or used and unselllable it its original condition. We have smart watches being retruned 5-6 months after purchase, with heavy use, chocolate bits on the back apparently as “faulty”, iPad keyboards returned with strawberry jam all over them, and simply products that have been heavily used because customer did not like the item.

That would be allright if we were selling low cost usb cables, and phone covers, but it’s extremely costly to 3rd party sellers when high value £200+ products are returned in such state. Appealing such cases - it’s extremely stressful, time consuming and most of the time absolutely fruitless.

We have now stopped using FBA and switched to SFP, FBM. It’s no longer worth the risk.


thats why ive given up on FBA, i was actually losing money in most of my stock there. :frowning:


Same problem here using FBA. Amazon constantly refunding customers. We’re starting to fade out selling FBA. Loosing too much with Amazon refunding customers - also over the last few weeks we’ve noticed Merchant sellers have the buy box over our FBA products. Doesn’t make sense for us anymore as we pay high FBA fees per product.