I am being told that INR has been replaced by the A to Z claim. Is this true? How would I tell the customer to now file an INR equivalent?
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From what I recall, the INR was always processed through A-Z.
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Our customers are saying that it is no longer an option on the buyer order side. Anyone know when that changed?
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I’ve seen some widely-scattered reports of such a phenomenon over in the NSFE in the last several months, but I’ve yet to pinpoint a reason for why such a change might be in play.
These are the options available (but this could just be for the “return” I have in my personal account:
- [No longer needed]
- [Missing or broken parts]
- [Received extra item I didn’t buy (no refund needed)
- [Didn’t approve purchase]
- [Bought by mistake]
- [Better price available]
- [Product and shipping box both damaged]
- [Product damaged, but shipping box OK]
- [Inaccurate website description]
- [Item defective or doesn’t work]
- [Wrong item was sent]
- [Item arrived too late]
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So, I do not see an INR option. Is this an older order outside of the 30 day returns?
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No, it’s something I bought a week ago. The INR option is now done by having the customer call and file an A-Z claim (hope you used buy shipping).
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It’s a long track to find … but as a customer, we would have to follow a series of pages to get an answer …
From the Account & List Menu, select the Customer Service link
Customer Service … scroll down and find this …
Click the More in Where’s My Stuff?
If you click Find a Missing Package That Shows as Delivered and scroll to the bottom, you will find Amazon giving these instructions …
If you click Late Deliveries and scroll to the bottom, you will find Amazon giving these instructions …
Note: In neither case did Amazon refer customer to A to Z claim. At best, Amazon tells customer to contact Customer Service.
With all this run around … if you search for Request an A to Z Guarantee Refund, you can find this as the instructions …
We do not have a 3rd Party order to attempt to follow the instructions above to give further insight. However … for our customers (if INR occurred), we would provide the instructions above and tell them to select Item Not Received from the list mentioned in Line 4 above. We would also tell them to put this in the comment box mentioned in Line 6 … “The item shows as delivered (or not delivered) and we have not received the item.”
We see this as Amazon fighting back on INR claims and, in addition, attempting to push the customer issue back onto the 3rd party seller for handling.
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Something has definitely changed. It is very rare that I report problems with orders, but last week I reported an item as not received (something ordered for myself from my personal account, not business account) – it was several weeks late and my Amazon Order page was showing “there appears to be a problem with your order” – tracking showed it disappeared into a black hole on the East coast weeks ago. So I clicked the Problem With Order button and indicated “package never arrived, please refund”. Normally, that would have triggered an INR and refund.
However, this time I got a message from Amazon saying that they “Cannot process an A-Z Claim as you have not first contacted the seller”. I contacted the seller and things worked out fine but this response from Amazon was new to me - it might not necessarily be brand new since I haven’t made this kind of request in a long time.
Could this be Amazon’s way of trying to cut down on fraudulent INRs? Any other thoughts as to why they might make this change?
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Amazon locks out a2z and other refund options now until after you contact the seller (like they should have been all along according to policy). This changed within the last year or so. Even cs seems to understand the policy now, shockingly.
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I thought I read somewhere, probably on NSFE, that the return request is considered contacting the seller. Yup-here it is:
Amazon considers the buyer opening a return request as contacting you, so that starts the clock for them to be able to open an A-Z claim after 48 hours. (Also, Amazon routinely ignores this policy if a buyer calls them and will open an A-Z Claim with no contact to the seller at all, even a return request.) You were supposed to have 48 hours to process the return, but the buyer jumped the gun and opened an A-Z Claim. If you had responded to the claim that the item has just been returned to you, and you need the claim to be closed so that you can issue the refund, they likely would have closed the claim and then you could have issued the refund with no hit to your metrics. Since you issued a refund while the A-Z Claim was open, to Amazon this is admitting fault and you automatically lose and get a hit to your ODR.
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Yep, you are right, a return request is nothing more then a message and starts the 24/48hr timer
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… as does a simple email asking “where’s my order?”
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