Question about Returnless Refund rules (and discretionary returns)
Hello,
We had a strange occurrence recently that we are trying to figure out how to prevent in future. The situation was resolved in our favor (we got a credit), but what happened was that we had a customer who somehow got a “returnless refund” for a discretionary return. The reason selected was “bought by mistake” and the customer got a full refund instantly. We only found out about it because the customer reached out to us.
We do NOT currently have a “returnless refund rule” set up for discretionary returns, just damaged ones below a certain dollar amount.
Amazon told us that this happened because we didn’t have a rule set up to deny returnless refunds for “Bought by mistake” returns, but we have no idea how to make that rule. We have already read how to create rules in the help files, but as far as we can tell, you can only create rules to ALLOW returnless refunds, not to “deny” them (making the customer return the item).
TLDR; If a customer is returning something because they “bought by mistake” then we do NOT want them to get a refund before the item is mailed back to us. How do we fix this in our returns settings so that we can prevent the above situation from happening again? I can’t find anything in the help files, and Amazon support was - well - not helpful.
Thanks!
Seller_qz1y4XweLE9SO
Point to Settings and then click Returns Settings.
On the Returns Settings page, click Returnless Refunds.
Click Add a New Rule, enter the price range, optionally select the product categories and reasons for return, and then click Save. The newly configured rule will apply to all orders from that time forward.
To edit an existing rule, click on the rule, choose Edit, modify the settings and click Save.
To delete a returnless refund rule, click on the rule, click Delete, and confirm you want the rule deleted.
Seller_Ym7xWdMSw1zax
Yes, that’s what the help files say. However, our problem is that when you go to actually make a rule, it only lets you ALLOW returnless refunds, not DENY them. And to clarify: When I say “denying” I mean that, we want to require the customer to return the item with the prepaid shipping label, not close out the return request.
Seller_Ym7xWdMSw1zax
No ideas from anyone else? I’ve been playing around with the return settings to try and figure this out, but I’m still stumped.
Seller_AN5jNJP2fLtXq
Well, now that I’ve had 22 days to think about this . . .
My guess is it’s a glitch. That you have a returnless refund rule set up at all probably opened the door to some Amazon error.
That, or your buyer’s item is less than the “certain dollar amount” and either he actually selected damaged but put “bought by mistake” as a comment or, as I say, Amazon just messed up.
If you’re not seeing this happening regularly I would put it down to a glitch, open a Safe-T claim requesting to be reimbursed based on the fact that you have no returnless refund set up for that instance, and move on.
Within the past few months we had Amazon charge a single shipping charge for 5 items, which is not how we do things. I’m not sure we ever got an answer on that; I think they just ended up kicking us back a little money.
bunga bunga!
