In the last month, we noticed an exponential uptick in direct contacts from consumers to our brand's customer service email. After doing some digging, we discovered that the option to "Get Product Support" had been added to many of our listings.

I am not completely opposed to this idea--when our customers are dealing with genuine product defects and other issues that we would cover under warranty, it's great that they have the option to contact us directly. However, due to the average customer's lack of understanding that ordering from an Amazon FBA Seller ≠ ordering a product from the manufacturer, we are receiving a large volume of complaints that are out of our control (wrong item sent, wrong number of items sent, etc) that our customers are expecting us to address because they don't want to deal with the Amazon return process.

If we continue to replace orders that were botched by third-party sellers during the fulfillment process to keep our customers happy, those third-party sellers have no incentive to get it right the next time, and will continue shipping the wrong product or wrong number of items on future orders.

I appreciate the spirit of the program! Reducing return rates for faulty items or troubleshooting issues that could be solved by the manufacturer is fair. But many people who only use Amazon from the consumer side don't understand why some issues are out of a brand's control.

I'm not sure what I'm asking for...but I couldn't find a single official announcement or article from Amazon on this program, how our brand got enrolled, or if there's anything we can do about it. So I'm screaming into the void (read: posting in SellerForums).

Mods, you up?

@Danika_Amazon @Bryce_Amazon @Glenn_Amazon @Cooper_Amazon @Steve_Amazon @Danika_Amazon @CR_Amazon @Micah_Amazon @Tiff_Amazon