I have been looking for a related topic but I haven’t found any.
We are experiencing issues with FBA and returns. We know the “Amazon game” and how customers take profit of it, it’s not fair since they can return items for no reason and get a refund. OK, we get it, we have been selling in Amazon for many years.
Now, without prior notice, we are receiving the returns in our warehouse. We didn’t make any change in our seller configuration to allow this (we have the dispose option activated, is cheaper for us to dispose the item). Nevertheless, since we are receiving them, we are checking the status of this returns.
What we have found is that many people return the item completely broken. We are talking about sunglasses, I can understand that shippings may cause some damage in certain amount of sunglasses, but not enough to be broken in 2 or 3 pieces, very dirty (that means that it has been outside of the packaging, someone opened it)…
I don’t think that we have to pay for those returns. It makes no sense. This item was broken by the customers and they decided to return it as a defective product. Our metrics are affected and the customer gets the refund for no reason.
As FBA sellers, is there any way to claim for that kind of returns? Should we spend time on this or just think about our next holidays and forget it?
Unfortunately, customer damaged (which is what you are describing) is not covered with FBA. The customer can return an item that they destroyed for a full refund and you eat the cost.
One exception of this is if the item is missing parts or pieces. It sounds like you are selling sunglasses. If you shipped the glasses with a case, cleaning cloth or other accessories and the case/cloth/ect is not included in the return, you can ask for reimbursement because you didn’t receive the entire product back. In this instance, Amazon will either eat the cost or perhaps charge the customer back.
Of course you are going to need to get your returns shipped back to you from FBA, take pictures of the shipping label, contents of box, packing list in box and the LPN label on the product itself then open a case with seller support.
I haven’t had a claim denied by doing this but again, this is ONLY if there are parts or pieces missing.
This is very helpful, thank you so much for your feedback. For sure there will be missing pieces: re-usable packaging and pouch are usually missing in those returns.
I hope that you have a great day! Will try to do it like you said.
You are welcome. I’m not sure they will reimburse you for the packaging (I’ve never tried) but for sure they should reimburse you for missing pieces, pouch, ect.
Just make sure you take good pictures and attach them to your seller support case. I always take pictures of-
The shipping label on the box (open box from the bottom so the label is intact)
The packing list (roughly 3x4 inch paper inside the box) and the LPN label on the product itself. I put the packing list right next to the LPN label and take one picture of both.
3… The complete contents of the box after taking everything out of the packing to show exactly what you received. You can take a picture of the contents as packed but they are going to ask you to take it out of packing anyway, might as well just skip that step and take a picture that clearly shows exactly what you received. I make sure the packing materials are in the photo too so they don’t think I’m just taking pictures of a random return.
I would suggest doing all the pictures at the same time in sequence so that seller support can see you just received the box, opened it and took pictures as you inspected the return. If you are doing it at a desk, table make sure all the pics are from that same desk, table, etc. I’m not sure if seller support would actually look at that but why give them a reason to deny your claim?
Good info. I’ve used this successfully several times where I get returned some junk jewelry I don’t even make. Mostly, buyers confused what they got where sending a trashed tangled necklace when the order was for earrings.
This was many years ago, but I had an FBA return for a hair dryer and all I got back was just the tip. No box, or anything, literally just the tip in a plastic bag with an LPN sticker on it. Sent in pictures and they did reimburse us for it
Something like this was all that was in the bag/box.
For missing items we get reimbursed but we use an outlined peg board kind of system showing what was received versus what was was in the packaging. We have a few items that come apart into about 5 pieces. Showing Amazon what is missing at a special needs employee level is critical, because… well… you know… Seller Support.
