Last week, a customer returned a product—a Garmin smartwatch—with the reason marked as “Not Easy to Use.” Inaccurate Website Description. We processed the return and issued a full refund for the product, excluding expedited shipping charges. To clarify, we offer free standard shipping, but the customer had opted to pay extra for expedited delivery. We checked the Website page, and everything is correct and accurate. Product ASIN B08VPRCRXX has 121 (4.4 Star reviews)
The customer filed an A-to-Z Guarantee claim against us, disputing the non-refundable expedited shipping cost they paid for. To our surprise, Amazon sided with the customer and held us responsible for the shipping charges, even though this wasn’t a Prime order.
We appealed the decision only for the ODR, asking for the Order Defect Rate (ODR) impact to be reconsidered, given the unique circumstances. Unfortunately, the appeal was denied, and now our account is flagged as being at risk of deactivation because our ODR exceeds 1%. (We only ship about 50 orders a month)
For small sellers like us, even one case can significantly impact account health. Buyers often select prepopulated return reasons to secure a prepaid label and a full refund, leaving us vulnerable to unfair outcomes.
Hopefully we can weather this storm.
Here is the case if any Mods want to look at. 17070059271
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