Considering that these are high volume products, “massive” refunds might be an overstatement.
If there’s around 3-5% returns that’s consistent with the category average, but if you sold 20000 units that’s 600-1000 refunds.
I don’t think there’s an outsized quantity of people returning $10 eclipse glasses.
Time will tell whether or not the volume of returns, for goods offered up for this latest Eclipse Event, exceeds the 2017 bloodbath which Amazon endured, to be sure - but given the prevailing trends which are all-too evident amongst Amazon’s Buyer Community since then (and long before), I myself would be rather trepid about hanging my hat on that particular peg without hedging my bet.
Amusing snippet from the trip, overheard from the hotel room on the way back. A woman was leaving, and the housekeeper was in the hall.
Woman leaving her room: “Have a nice day”
Housekeeper: “no inglis”
Woman: “HAVE”
“A”
“NICE”
“DAY”.
Because we all know that speaking louder and slower makes it understood in any language. 
Yes, Automatically making all Americans bilingual.
Called it! On April second.
Michelle at Amazon just let Carpopo know his listings for eclipse glasses have been approved, April 13th. I’ll bet he’s “over the moon with joy” about that!
To be fair, Michelle’s response doesn’t specify exactly when the approval was granted.
That being said, that’s the third seemingly-belated response on this topic (made by 3 separate members of the FMT-CMT & the AHT’s SMEs) which I’ve seen AFTER the Eclipse had come and gone.
Yet another reason why time-sensitive limited use items are not a good fit for Amazon…
At least with Xmas decorations, you can sell them next year, or to this year’s bargain hunter in January.
Agreed - especially since you’ve astutely sussed-out a confirming response (after multiple efforts to do so) over in the NSFE from the FMT-CMT, in regards to how the Low Inventory Level fee is designed to play out for Seasonal product Offer-Listings in the Amazon Global Catalog.
Handbaskets abound.
If you wait until after the eclipse to approve the listings, you get to be a nice guy without worrying about buyer eye damage.
Not to mention the little chortle that accompanies sticking it to the seller again.
Nor the big guffaw that accompanies Seattle’s TPTB wiping the sweat off their brow, at a minimal cost, and subsequently to find that 2024 had not made as big a dent, upon the bottom line, as did the 2017 outside dig into their gold mine.
Amazon may well be what so many of us in the Seller Community perceive it to be -
a Sociopathic GREED Machine - but it ain’t stupid.
Only the Amabots and their human prototypes in the lower echelons of the support infrastructure (and/or those in higher tiers who are corporately-constrained to be [or simply pledged to feign ignorance as p/o the job description, on any level of the bureaucracy]) actually are worthy of being being designated as stupid, IMHO, no matter how many of the readily-evident & multitudinous foibles that we all know have up to this time come down the pike we plow, from on high.
It remains to be seen whether or not the appearance of several cracks in that facade over the last several years will change my opinion.
But now the OP is grandfathered in for the next eclipse!
Way ahead of the game.
OP should be delighted that he can pass such a treasure onto his offspring’s offspring’s offspring’s offspring (or there about give or take a few). It must be awesome to know one has had such foresight.
Well, if he signs up for the .au marketplace, he need wait only a few years. And may even pick up a few sales for people traveling to Africa before that.
Of course, then he’ll have to deal with the international returns for “No longer needed”…
