We’ve had about 20 of the item in the last month alone…Amazon reusing old return tracking numbers for orders that were never originally returned by the buyer…but then still debiting the old seller for the refund.
Insane this is still an issue 2 years later…
To be fair, this recycling issue has been going on even longer than that.
I recall some OSFE threads about it back in the 2012-2018 ‘Age Of Jive,’ & there were slew of them, during the wind-down form the COVID-19 Crisis scare-inspired “Goods Prioritization Initiative,” created in Q2 & Q3 of 2021; another wave came in Q3 of 2023, and as you’ve astutely noted, such reports continue down to this very day.
Given Amazon’s Customer-centric Corporate Philosophy, and its long-demonstrated devotion to the use of automated mechanisms that typically succumb more to Hanlon’s Razor than to Occam’s, I long considered one or another aspect of those two paradigms being the prime movers in play for explaining this phenomenon.
I’ve been constrained to reconsider that long-held supposition, and now look with less disfavor than I once did upon what certain seasoned & savvy forum veterans predicted would likely entail, back in the Seller Soapbox Days, because it seems fairly obvious that the most-likely explanation is Occam’s take on this matter:
Every single minute of every single day that another business entity’s rightful funds remain in any given Amazon-owned financial account DOES lend opportunity to earn interest, if Amazon wills it so.
“Always follow the money” became a hoary old adage afore yours truly was born, and from where I sit, it ain’t likely soon to pass into the fabled dustbin of history.
Of course they don’t want to refund the outbound shipping or return label fees on any of these in Safe T claims even though they are admitting they are guilty by approving the claims in the first place.
How much you want to bet they are double dipping and charging both sellers for the return labels, too…..both the seller of the old tracking number and the newly recycled one.
I’m not yet convinced that Amazon’s automated mechanisms aren’t not only doing that, but aren’t eventually (or automatically, on the first triggering event, be it faulty or not) awarding refunds to Buyer Accounts unrightfully.
I’ve seen too much chaos erupt from Amazon’s ever-convoluted processes & ever-siloed procedures to ever be surprised when the wheels fall off the tracks, dammit.
Yep just got hit with 2.
Amazon really needs to check their system better. Too much is done through automation. When a return is closed because it is beyond 50 days the refund should be 100% manual.
I do have an old contact at Amazon who worked on the Safe T claims process many years ago as an engineer.
I just reached out to him about this to see what the issue is and how this can be fixed. Ultimately, this costs Amazon money because they have to reimburse sellers for all of these packages.
I also noticed another return label from Amazon was marked as fraudulent by USPS on their website. Do you think this could be scammers somehow getting access to these tracking numbers from Amazon that haven’t been used? Or is this actually an Amazon issue?
I agree, I also think that if a RFS label hasn’t been used within a certain amount of time, it should go to manual. It would absolutely fix this issue.
It’s a USPS recycling the tracking numbers too fast issue, and that Amazon refuses to recognize it issue.
Amazon needs to make it a hard and fast 50 days after the return request the buyer is not eligible for a refund. It really should be 30 days or a total of 45 days from delivery date.
Now for the miracle I opened a safe-T-claim expecting it to be the usual rejected in less than 1 min and resubmit. Not only was it not rejected but it was granted in full including the reimbursement for the return label.
I think amazon losing 1 class action lawsuit has them rethinking the press associated with it.
Wait, do you mean Amazon’s own RMAs, or the USPS tracking? 
Just to update here…we have even started noticing this on orders this week that weren’t RFS because the 4 day refund auto enforcement is automatically refunding these 4 days after the delivery date.
In other words, I don’t think this is as easy as just turning off RFS after 30 days…because you are still going to get debited due to the auto refund enforcement once it’s scanned delivered in a completely different state.
I did some searching and have seen mods post about this over the last few weeks…saying they were aware of the issue and figuring out how to basically fix the charges. However, that implies this is a new issue and we all know it’s not…posts about this issue started in late 2024…so it’s been over 2 years. We’ve had this happen about 25 times here in the last month or so.