Let Us Take Returns and Exchanges off Your Hands
Customers that need a return or an exchange through Amazon FBA for a product they purchased, will have the return or exchange processed through Amazon’s return and exchange facilitation, but that will leave its mark on your next disbursement. The funds for a refund, in particular, are taken directly from your next disbursement, and the customer is issued a prepaid shipping label to use anywhere convenient to get their merchandise back to the correct location. What is not widely known, however, is that in many cases the customer is simply on the “honor system” to return the product within the return window.
This may not seem like the optimal solution for many sellers, but that’s how it’s done when you have return facilitation by Amazon, and the exchange facilitation works pretty much the same way. We’re going to take a closer look at the return and exchange facilitation services that Amazon offers, and whether they’re a good fit for your business or not. In some cases, you may find that handling your own returns is more productive to your business model, but that may mean you can’t benefit from the Amazon FBA model. Let’s take a closer look.
Well, since the customers are frequently on the honor system for returns, we’ll assume that the day they were issued the return label, they slapped it on the package and dropped it off at the nearest UPS Store for shipping. Once the package is received by Amazon, the package is opened and examined by an Amazon worker that compares the return reason to the item itself. That worker then makes a decision about whether or not the item is still in a sellable condition.
When customers send back items that are subsequently deemed unsellable by Amazon, most sellers have the option to simply have Amazon dispose of the item automatically, since they’re assuming it holds no resale value. In many situations this can be a huge mistake because there are many cases where the item is still perfectly sellable, it just needs to be examined closer. Oftentimes when taking a few extra moments and steps to verify if the item is sellable or not, will result in an item that can quite easily be resold. This can help reduce waste and loss.
While Amazon undoubtedly has many different variations of these, the main dispositions for receiving customer returns are generally sellable, damaged, damaged by the customer, damaged by the carrier, and defective. These each have a different effect on the overall returns, exchange, or refund process. Let’s look at what each one means, and what it can mean for your bottom line.
Items that are returned as sellable returns are automatically returned to your currently active inventory. There may be situations where you’re worried about the item actually being in sellable condition, but there is nothing else that you will need to do from here, Amazon will take care of the rest. If you are truly concerned that the item may not be completely sellable, in which case you can open up what’s known as a removal order, so that the item can be pulled and you can inspect the item yourself.
There are countless reasons that an item might be returned to a warehouse as damaged. It might be that the item was damaged while in storage at an FBA warehouse, prior to the item ever being shipped out. There are situations where the item may be damaged in transit to the customer, which would indicate a fault on the part of Amazon for neglecting to pack the items properly during processing.
Sometimes, Amazon will make a determination that the item was damaged in transit to them because they claim you didn’t pack or pad the items well enough. It could also be determined to be your fault if a damaged item was sent to Amazon by you by mistake. If Amazon reaches a decision that says it was your fault that the item was damaged, then you will not be reimbursed for the item. If the damage was Amazon’s fault, however, you can expect to be reimbursed for the product.
When an item is given a disposition of “damaged by customer”, it will not be returned to your inventory. Customer damage doesn’t mean that the customer broke the item purposely and is trying to return it, it means that the item was opened and damaged, meaning it’s no longer in a “new” condition.
Even if the customer says they never opened the item, it may be obvious that it was opened, even though the item may still be completely unused. The best way to handle these types of items is to open a removal order and get them sent back to you so you can personally inspect them. Sometimes you just need to personally examine the item to determine that it actually can be resold, either as new, like new, or in very good condition.
There are times when an item isn’t needed or is otherwise set up for a return in sellable condition, but the item becomes damaged in transit. Sometimes this happens because the agent at the shipping location doesn’t pack the item well enough. Other times it can happen during shipping if things get a little bumpy along the way. In situations like these, the items are given a disposition of “carrier damaged”, and you should end up being reimbursed for these returns since it was not your fault that they were damaged. Make sure you don’t open up any removal orders for these, or Amazon will not reimburse you.
Items returned as “defective” are either damaged or otherwise defective in such a way that makes them unusable by the customer’s admission. When this happens, if the item was bought via FBA, the customer is refunded once the return is on its way back, and when it gets back it is put into your inventory as unsellable. This is another situation where you should open a removal order so that Amazon can send it back to you.
There is a significant portion of the time where a customer says that the item is defective, even though it may not be, in order to get Amazon to pay for the return shipping. Once Amazon fills your removal order, you can inspect the items yourself to determine if they are actually defective or not. If the item is obviously not defective, or even unopened, ship it back to FBA and get it back into your active inventory.
An important note is that if you receive a “defective” item that isn’t actually defective, it is up to you to file the appropriate review request to help protect your seller account and buyer metrics. Too many defective products can put your account in danger.
We buy millions of dollars of high quality big-brand name merchandise directly from manufactures and big box retailers. We pass on an amazing (wholesale price) to you. We own our warehouse and fulfill your manifest in blazing speed. We carry many big brand names that the vast majority of sellers struggle to acquire.
We Move Fast! As your order is being fulfilled at the warehouse, the upload team is optimizing your listings simultaneously.
1) We inspect, pack, prep, polybag, fold and ship to Amazon.
2) We upload each individual item.
3) We optimize each listing.
We Do the Heavy Lifting!
When a customer makes an order on Amazon from your store via Amazon FBA, the item is delivered to the customer. Amazon professional sellers generally get paid by Amazon every two weeks. Each payment includes 14 days of orders that were successfully delivered seven days ago.
If managing the returns process for Amazon FBA sounds like more hassle than you want to deal with, hiring The Amazon Junkies to manage your Amazon FBA store lets the experts handle it, while you focus on bigger things.