Try as I might, I am unable to locate, in the seller help pages, Amazon’s policy on RFS for items over $100. I’m trying to determine if items of $100 or more or items over $100 are exempt from RFS.
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I remember reading something about this in the past too
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A Google search pulls up this …
Amazon’s “Refund at First Scan” policy does not have a specific price limit for items eligible for automatic refunds upon the first scan of a returned package. While it’s more commonly associated with lower-priced items (around $100 or less), the policy applies to both Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and seller-fulfilled orders, and there’s no explicit price ceiling. However, items with a higher risk of customer abuse, such as high-value items, may be excluded from this policy,
We tried searching the help pages but the only thing we could find said this …
How is the refund amount calculated?
Our Amazon return and refund policies will apply while calculating the refund amount for Refund at First Scan-eligible orders. For seller-faulted defective or damaged return reasons, customers are issued a full refund.
The reference was on this seller help page.
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Maybe it was when it was first rolled out???
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The only reference I could find was this, under “Prepaid returns for seller-fulfilled orders”:
You can request exemptions from prepaid return labels only for SKUs in the following categories:
High price items: High-value items (price exceeding $100) that need special shipping (for example, items that require special shipping insurance)
I tried Googling this and all I came up with were discussions on the NSFE, of which I am not a part. I’m positive that when RFS was first implemented, items of $100 or more (or maybe more than $100, I’m not sure) were automatically exempted. And we had a few books that were more than $100 returned and RFS did not kick in.
The reason this is pertinent, at least for me, is that I want to be able to charge a restocking fee for buyer-faulted returns.
Amazing how Amazon seems to make never-announced policy changes just by changing the wording in the help pages.
Just when I think I can’t get more frustrated with Amazon, something happens that makes me want to tear my hair out. I also cannot find what my average response time is to buyer messages. That used to be posted somewhere in seller metrics, but I can’t see it anywhere.
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The way I’ve always understood it is that for a buyer faulted return within policy and with no damage or missing parts, you cannot charge a restock fee.
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You can withhold shipping outbound (what ever was charged, $0 of free ship) and return shipping cost (if prepaid) I believe
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Over the years since the 050421 launch of the ever-execrable Refund at First Scam Refund at First Scan Program, most all mentions of the $100 RFS threshold of which I’m aware have been scrubbed from the SHC (“Seller Help content”) pages - save one.
The lone holdout that I know of is the “Prepaid returns for seller fulfilled orders” (link) page, which includes this:
Many of the aforesaid previous mentions were removed by the Editorial Team in the subsequent tweakings of RFS policy, perhaps most notably in the two initiatives that together resulted in the deprecation of all but the current four of the previously available selections for RAO (‘Amazonese’ for “Return Attribute Overrides”) templates (link, Manage Return Templates Dashboard).
If there’s another remaining mention of the threshold, I haven’t found it yet - and I’ve been looking, because I’ve noticed an uptick in mentions of goods priced lower NOT receiving RFS handling this year, in the NSFE & in related discussion venues, & I’d like to see if I can figure out a logical explanation for that reported trend.
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That’s indeed the way it is supposed to work, as is evidenced by the applicable provisions regarding both OSC (“Outbound Shipping Cost”) & RSC (“Return Shipping cost”), found in the 2nd ¶'s 3rd bullet point in the ‘Issue restocking fees’ section of the SHC’s Issue a Partial Refund (link):
In the immediate aftermath of the 050421 launch of the Refund at First Scam Refund at First Scan Program, a hue and cry quickly arose in the OSFE over multiple reports of Amazon refusing to refund OSC; several of the seasoned & savvy forum vets took up the crusade, & the long-lost @Roxy’s famous 060521 “OPTIONAL” post (link, NSFE URL) in an 060421 OSFE thread (link) on the subject became one of the most-linked replies of its time.
To be fair, there’s a good deal of evidence to suggest that much of the earliest wave of complaints about Amazon not following published policy simply resulted from its typically-faltering rollout of a new process, as was seen in updates that sufferers subsequently posted in many threads, such as the later replies to this 051221 OSFE thread:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/e5449b46d9e33ee473d9b7ffc31e09a0
Nevertheless, by 080221 Amazon had added, w/o notice, this text to the ‘SKU exemptions’ section of the SHC’s “Refund at First Scan for seller-fulfilled returns” (link):
That text remains in place down to this very day.
Over the last four years, there have been periodic spates where multiple complaints of Amazon yet again balking over OSC flood the NSFE (& elsewhere); these incidents are frequently, but not exclusively, associated with concurrent changes - to the PRLP (‘Amazonese’ for “Prepaid Return Label Program”) process itself, and/or to one or another of the related sub-processes, to the reporting functionalities which underpin them, or even simply to one or another of the related Seller Central GUIs.
That being said, there’s also a good deal of evidence to suggest that the most-common reason for such denials - there can be months and even multiple biz quarters between occurrences of the afore-mentioned upticks, but rarely a month goes by without @ least a few reports of Amazon’s lower echelons of support simply attempting to hang their hat on the peg of the second-mentioned policy - aka the infamous “…irrespective of fault…” provision - and try to call it a day.
There’s some wiggle room with that scenario, however; faced with it, we reply, both linking and quoting the ‘Optional’ policy in the first ¶ above, and pointing out that the second policy was simply introduced in order to consolidate all PRLP refund handling into the revamped Dashboard functionality implemented by the 2021 launch of the RFS Program - NOT to abrogate the optionality of a 3P Seller’s capabilities; it sometimes takes a request for escalation, or more than one reply, before Amazon yields - but in my experience it nearly-invariably eventually does.
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