Amazon charged 12,000 yuan for return of one product! The seller exclaimed: It's outrageous

Returns are a problem that sellers on all platforms have to face in their operations, and return shipping is also an expense that sellers cannot avoid. Recently, a seller was worried about Amazon's "return shipping fees".

The seller posted on the Amazon forum that he was charged $1,800 (about RMB 12,800) for return shipping by Amazon, but this return shipping fee was only for one order, and most importantly, there was only one item in it. The shipping fee for their shipment was only $50 .

After this incident, the seller filed a complaint, but no matter how he appealed, he did not receive a substantive response: he sent an email to customer service, but all the replies were copy and paste; he called the customer service center, but did not receive any further response.

Most importantly, the customer returned the product in its original packaging. So the seller was helpless and confused, “ Why did Amazon charge us $1,800!!! ”

(Screenshot from Amazon forum)

The seller also mentioned that the dimensions given by Amazon were many times larger than their packages shown on the invoice . He said, " Common sense would not allow our boxes to be that large ," so he guessed that " the only reason is the labeling of another product, but it's still a matter of investigation . "

A seller offered another possibility. The seller said that once he received a scanned photo showing that his package was stacked on top of another package, which resulted in inaccurate measurements by the carrier. According to the seller, UPS takes photos of all adjusted items, but because the packages were placed too close or stacked together, the scanner may have measured the items next to or below when measuring the items.

It is worth mentioning that another seller in the reply also said that he encountered thousands of dollars in return shipping fees: he was charged $1,759.04 in return fees by Amazon for one order, but the FedEx shipping fee he charged to the customer was $16.52. The seller is currently seeking help from Amazon's customer service department.

In addition to the two sellers above, the editor found that there are other sellers who have also experienced return shipping costs being higher than the shipping costs.

A seller sent a mattress to a customer via USPS (label purchased through Seller Central). The dimensions (length x width x height) and weight given by USPS were: 19.0 x 11.0 x 9.0 inches and 14.0 pounds; the shipping cost was $14.74.

The customer used the UPS return label provided by Amazon when returning the package. After the return, UPS adjusted the package's dimensions and weight to 66.0 x 16.0 x 24.0 inches and 183 pounds, respectively. As a result, the seller's account was deducted $316.07 in fees.

The seller believes that "even if the customer may not have repackaged the item as carefully as originally intended to make it the same size as when it was shipped, that would not increase the weight of the shipment from 14 pounds to 183 pounds."

Other sellers responded that the 183 pounds is the volumetric weight , not the actual weight, and this would result if the actual size of the package they (the customer) returned was 66x16x24 inches.

Amazon confirmed this statement. Amazon staff said that UPS will choose the "larger" between "actual weight" and "volume weight" ; the reason for the adjustment in shipping costs seems to be that the customer returned the product in a larger package than the original one.

However, the seller disputed this because "in the five conversations with UPS, the issue of 'volumetric weight' was not mentioned once." Instead, every UPS staff member asked them to contact Amazon Seller Central because the labels were purchased by the seller through Amazon Seller Central, so only Amazon can dispute the fee.

Amazon staff are currently conducting further verification and investigation on the above two issues. However, the comments from sellers have given us some ideas and reminders. If you really encounter a situation where the return shipping fee is much higher than the shipping fee, you can confirm whether the carrier has accidentally counted other packages in the volume of its own package . In addition, when encountering customer returns, we should also remind customers to try to pack the goods before handing them over to the carrier to avoid being charged more for shipping due to the calculation based on "volume weight".

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