Amazon needs to loosen the rules on buyer communications
A book that I had shipped to a customer via USPS media mail over a month ago was unexpectedly returned to me. Amazingly, the buyer had never contacted me despite how late the order was. I immediately initiated a full refund to the buyer, but was unable to send a message to them explaining what had happened because all of the options for sending were grayed out. The one available reason was for courtesy refunds but can't be edited. That's just ridiculous. I have no idea why Amazon tightened the rules on communications, and I know that happened a while ago, but there really needs to be a way to get legitimate messages to customers. I have the person's address. What am I supposed to do? Write them a letter? Google their phone number? [sigh]
7 replies
Seller_QLZr8uEgTaJjO
You have to message them before you do the refund. Otherwise you are stuck. On the bright side most customers ignore messages from Amazon. They are flooded with communication. Similar to how Alexa works. ask it the weather and it gives you 3 pieces of information you didn't ask for and offers to sell you an umbrella. SMH.
Seller_aV9yoRo24MdxL
The communication is restricted because of all the scammers on Amazon. It causes us to provide vastly inferior support compared to what we used to be able to provide customers when Amazon suppled the customers email address.
How about Amazon better vet its sellers, instead of punishing all of its customers with poor customer support? I mean if a seller can't be trusted to contact a customer according to your guidelines and only for providing legitimate support.... should you really be allowing them to sell products on your platform at all??
Seller_4HsL3GZbyDLea
Always an issue. In a certain sense, with this policy Amazon is winding the customer up to be angry and disappointed. Amazon is making for a worse customer experience by blocking us.
Seller_BNblqLSsFJV4E
Not a book seller but constantly frustrated by limited seller communication as well. It seems like a fairer system would be for Amazon to open up communications for sellers with a track record , 1 year or more on the platform and over 100 orders/month as an example.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Yep, I agree 100%.
Our customers rarely contact us and we don't need to message them much either. However, when such situations arise, it's a major pain because of the messaging system's restrictions. Same goes for the phone number too, by the way. Here are the issues we have experienced:
1. Sometimes we see a return initiated and customer writes comments, explaining the technical issue. We realize that that's not an issue at all (a feature that can be disabled, or customer misunderstood the use). That's something that can be taken care of in seconds by the customer (and it's usually described in the manuals, but who reads the manuals these days, right?). We send a message only to receive an automated reply saying that the buyer has opted-out from receiving the messages. Dead end and a return that could have been easily avoided.
2. We see an issue at the delivery (wrong apartment number, attempted delivery, etc.) We send a message, asking to contact Amazon CS to ratify the issue (we don't want to be responsible, let Amazon deal with this, in case if there is an issue later on). Same thing: opted-out from receiving message. Dead end, package returned, customer is upset.
3. Phone number (that goes through Amazon's phone system with a long extension number) is absolutely useless. Sellers can't use it for any reason, it just states that. UPS/FedEx/USPS are not going to bother calling that number. In fact, as far as I know, that phone number is not even entered into UPS's system. We use Buy Shipping and the phone is never on the labels. We had a couple of situations when the UPS contacted us and wanted us to provide them with a phone number so they could reach out to the customer due to the delivery issue. By that time the phone number was, usually, already removed from the order page. And when I tried once giving it to the UPS they immediately stopped me with a comment: "Oh, that's that weird Amazon extension thing... No, don't bother, we are not going to call on that number, it's too much trouble and we can't even use such long extensions in our system." What gives?
