Closing Returns for Invalid Reason

Selling on Amazon Returns and Claims
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I just wanted to get the veteran’s opinion on this. We sell Taylor Swift’s Red Album. It’s meant to be played at 45 RPM but the default setting on a record player is 33 1/3 RPM. We’re getting returns from customers saying in sounds like a man is singing and the music is slowed down. Seems quite obvious to most that the speed is on the wrong setting but people are trying to claim the album is defective.

Does anyone see an issue if we immediately close the return request? We would email the customer first and explain the album needs to be played on 45 RPM. We would also communicate to them, if it’s still defective after changing the speed to 45 RPM, they are more than welcome to reopen the return.

We’re a professional seller so we can’t manually approve return requests, unfortunately. I’m concerned about getting massive return requests tomorrow because people don’t know how to use their record player.

We preemptively included brief instructions in the shipping box about playing the album (without any web address and our contact info, of course) but we’re still getting emails about this item being defective, which it is not.

I look forward to everyone’s input. Thanks.

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Unfortunately, if the defective part is the buyer’s brain, Amazon still considers that seller faulted.

Communicate and if they still want to return it let them return it, otherwise let the return requests close themselves if they don’t actually return it

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We had an item like this, would always email the customer after the return request was auto accepted, and 90% of the time the customer would respond, “Yep that was it, thanks!”

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There is nothing wrong with messaging the buyers to let them know they need to change the player setting. I would caution against closing the returns.

Amazon’s position is that buyers can return for any reason, including stupid ones. If you close the return request and the buyer opens an AtoZ claim Amazon will decide against you, regardless of what the return reason was for or what the claim was for. I don’t sell media and every industry is different, but from my point of view it’s just not worth it to avoid a handful of returns.

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