FBM: If a buyer-faulted return happens, one can do a restocking fee, and deduct shipping from the refund.
FBA: No matter what, a return loses the seller money, as he is charged fees for the sale, and additional fees for the “return processing”. If the goods arrive back damaged, Amazon seems to classify them as “defective”, even though customer damaged, or used up and an empty container returned.
What, if any recourse does an FBA seller have, given the habit Amazon customers have of returning things for no apparent reason?
This is true for FBA and FBM. Amazon keeps their fees.
Sorta, sometimes, maybe.
Yep, this is some FBA bunk right here. IMO, those Amazon referral fees that they get to keep should cover assessment and processing of the return.
FBA is the untrainable employee that your “partner” hired and you can’t fire.
This…I’m not sure. Because none of us (FBA, FBM, or hybrid) have much if any recourse for correcting any of Amazon’s incorrect assumptions about anything: VOC, defective, product reviews, ODRs, etc.
You really have no recourse. All you can do is look at your long term return rate and add it back into your pricing.
What do I do about it beyond that? I look at return reports to see if there is a pattern that I might be able to correct. Maybe there is an issue with my products that I don’t know about? I just found out one of my suppliers changed the packaging on a product without asking me. It looks very similar and we didn’t notice anything when they arrived at the warehouse. It wasn’t until we got a lot of returns stating the unit was opened upon arrival that we realized the poly bag was much, much thinner than we had specified.
We repackaged all the remaining stock in the warehouse with appropriate bags and the returns came back down to normal. It sucks to have to do that, but it’s cheaper than causing more problems with future defects.
I guess what I’m saying is control what you can control. Look at customer feedback and see if there is a pattern. There is always going to be returns for no reason, it’s part of selling. Spend your time looking for things that you can do to prevent returns.
I wish there WAS some! I have no idea why these people are returning, but I assume it is people who buy a technical product for a single purpose, hoping that they can use it in some ad-hoc, off-label manner, only to discover that no, they can’t.
If you’re FBM you can get an ODR out of the deal if the customer doesn’t like that you dinged em w/ a restocking fee or didn’t give a full refund. (Not to mention they can fight it and usually win). Also there’s the value of your or your employee’s time spent dealing with it.
If you’re FBA you get hit with all the various fees, but you generally can’t get an ODR from it and don’t have any overhead costs aside from the FBA return processing fees.
There are a few options based on this statement. If you receive an item that is an empty container or a different item, you can file a FBA Returns Reimbursement claim and get paid for the product not existing. Pictures of the LPN#, packing slip/shipping label and product from different angles are awesome.
We have received back different items, different models, and various different things. We got back a mangled turn signal assembly one time, it didn’t look like a turn signal any more, let alone one of ours, so we got reimbursed for it. Let your moral compass guide the way with your camera, as well as your report a violation filing.
Another thing is ensure your packaging is replaceable. A simple poly bag and bar code can make all your common returns re-sellable.
We have an ~%4 return rate, of those we have narrowed down our unsellable returns to about 5-10% of the total back-to-us returns, meaning we are sub 0.5% unsellable returns all thanks to boxes and poly bags. Make your product fit Amazon FBA is my strongest suggestion.
Where is the customer’s “return reason” hidden ? I demoed a tool this week that somehow found and listed the reason given by the customer for their return, and it was educational. (The tool was sellerboard, a somewhat “meh” tool in my view)
I have seen that too. The View Comment link can show a different reason also. They choose a pre populated drop down reason but manually enter something else as a comment.
