Amazon upgrades its “refund only” policy, and sellers are furious!

As one of the giants in the global e-commerce market, Amazon's every move affects the nerves of the majority of sellers.

A few days ago, Amazon announced the launch of a major project, "Low Price Mall", which triggered heated discussions among numerous sellers. Some said that Chinese e-commerce has gained a new channel to go overseas; others said that the cost of entering Amazon has been reduced, and they have been asking about the conditions for entering.

However, it must be noted that everyone’s focus is basically on low prices, full trusteeship, and pricing power, but the issue of “refund only” has been ignored. Some careful sellers have found that this return policy is not so friendly to them.

Amazon has clearly stated in the new project that it supports returns and refunds within 15 days, and products worth less than US$3 cannot be returned.

Simply put, for products that meet the conditions, you can choose to just refund them, which means "giving them away for free."

At first glance, this policy does save sellers a lot of return shipping and processing costs. But from a practical point of view, the profit margin of low-price stores is already very low. If subsequent buyers frequently refund, sellers will have even less profit.

One seller said that the return rate of goods under $3 in his store is as high as 55%, and now he has to be prepared for a refund for every item he sells. Moreover, the profit of such goods is less than $1, and after the refund, a handling fee is charged, which is about 5-20% of the commission of the goods. Basically, every step is a cost.

In addition, some industry insiders bluntly stated that Amazon’s move is likely to attract “freeloaders” to take advantage of loopholes, not to mention increasing the operating risks and management difficulty of the platform, and ultimately the sellers will be the ones who suffer the most.

The reason for saying this is that we have learned from past experience.

As early as 2017, Amazon launched the "refund without return" service. At that time, products below 20 pounds/25 euros (200 yuan) could be refunded without return, and only refunds could be made after both the customer and the seller agreed.

But as time went on, some Amazon customer service staff even took the initiative to act without notifying the sellers, causing many freeloaders to find "opportunities" and causing huge losses to the sellers.

One seller pointed out that the reason why the customer applied for a refund was that he ordered the wrong product. Considering that it was the buyer's fault, he only wanted to refund half of the money, but he didn't expect Amazon to automatically refund the money. Another seller complained on the social platform that a customer bought a mouse that did not meet his expectations, so he contacted him through a "free tutorial" and eventually had to refund the full amount.

There are countless cases of this kind.

Based on this, all cross-border sellers need to be careful and fight back against freeloaders. You can open a case to list all orders from malicious users and orders that are only refunded, and write down the complaint in detail for the official to handle; or set up a return merchandise authorization (RMA). If you are deliberately refunded without returning the goods again, you can directly apply for compensation from the platform.