Pleasant surprise from Amazon's A-Z Claim Process

Selling on Amazon FBM
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Hopefully this is how they operate (but that would make sense, so unsure at best). Could have also been a one-time fluke. Either way, I wanted to share.

So I had an item ordered, and naturally Amazon greyed out EVERY reasonable shipping option because it “said” it would arrive too late. Regardless, I still shipped it out USPS Priority Flat Rate envelope because I was 98% sure it would arrive on time. Going from Georgia to Colorado. Ordered December 26, ship by December 27, deliver by January 3. I was confident with USPS priority.

Long story short, item arrived in 3 days, on December 30, well within the delivery time frame.

Fast forward to 2 days ago. Classic “It was marked delivered but I never received it” message from buyer. I noticed the order was marked “late delivery risk”…ineligble for claim protection. I always check this, and if it is a cheap item or possibly sounds legit, I will just refund the order after the message before an A-Z Claim is opened, only had to do that a few times, usually $20 and under items, no big deal.

This time, I decided to chance it. I responded with the standard “item shipped with Buy Shipping, if it hasn’t arrived…file an A-Z Claim and Amazon will assist you with a possible refund” message.

I figure maybe he doesn’t open a claim, but even it if he does, I’ll see if I can win it since I DID use Amazon shipping, I DID ship on time, and it DID arrive on time. If it had arrived “late”, I figure I would probably lose and would have handled it. But he was claiming complete “non-delivery” of item, so maybe he gets the refund anyways but I don’t get an ODR hit…or absolute worst case he gets refund and I get ODR hit. Regardless, I have plenty of “order buffer” on my account that an ODR ding wouldn’t hurt me.

So he did file a claim, although it didn’t “require my attention” I still responded with my standard INR coverage for Amazon Buy Shipping, and to my delight, Amazon covered it without issue and no ODR hit.

So maybe you can still use Amazon Shipping and get item not RECEIVED coverage if you meet all the criteria as standard Amazon Shipping, but you just lose the extra “delivered late” coverage you would get if you used Amazon Shipping with “claims protection” and the item was in fact delivered late.

Or maybe I got lucky…still nice to get a win every now and then.

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Please out that liar-buyer somewhere!

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Does using “late risk” shipping methods exclude an order from INR protections? I know the seller loses out on OTDR protections and the like, but this is the first I’ve heard that it might lose a seller AtoZ INR protections. The fact that @RandomSeller136 won the claim would seem to indicate that this is not the case?

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Just not here…!

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That was my big question too. If you carefully read the Amazon Buy Shipping page, it does clearly state that to receive A-Z and SAFE-T claims protections, ALL of the following have to be true, including bullet point #2:

The shipping label was purchased with Amazon Buy Shipping and was a “Claims Protected” shipping service. The “Claims Protected” badge will be displayed in the Amazon Buy Shipping user interface before purchase and in the order details page Shipping label purchase section after the label is purchased. (Note: “Late Delivery Risk” labels are ineligible for protections).

This seems to indicate that they are in fact INELIGIBLE. I was intentionally testing this and just reporting my experience. Like I said, maybe they still will, maybe it will be hit or miss, or maybe I got lucky one-time?

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We have seen Late Delivery Risk shown on labels to be bought on Amazon Buy Shipping in Bulk and then, when we jump over to Amazon Buy Shipping on the order page, there is no Late Delivery Risk.

There is a definite glitch in their system and might be the reason why Amazon isn’t hitting the seller right now.

The policy clearly states no INR coverage on labels purchased with the Late Delivery Risk warning.

January 19, 2025 will be the next price change with USPS. We would watch very closely Late Delivery Risk purchases after that date.

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The help pages do in fact state that “Late Risk” orders are not eligible for AtoZ claims (I have things to say about that) but I have not heard of this being enforced. My experience is also that this has not been enforced.

It’s still good to be aware of, since Amazon could begin enforcement at any time, even years from now.