Amazon Tightens Up Some Policies to Be More Buyer Friendly

Amazon is tightening up some policies to be more buyer friendly. The following are some announcements the marketplace made this week.

Changes to Return and Refund Process for Seller Fulfilled Orders
Effective November 15, 2019, if you are fulfilling customer orders in the US from outside the US, you must provide Amazon a valid US return address for items under $10. Amazon will use this address to generate prepaid return labels for customers on eligible return requests. If a US return address is not provided, Amazon will issue the customer a refund for eligible returns without requiring the item to be returned. Learn more about prepaid returns for seller fulfilled orders or returnless refunds.

Note: If you do not have a local return address, an International Returns Provider on the Solution Provider Network may be able to help.

Link to Announcement

Seller’s Response to Return Requests Required within 48 Hours
In our continuous efforts to improve the customer experience, Amazon has updated the A-to-z Guarantee claim policy.

To help you avoid any potential or unnecessary A-to-z Guarantee claims, we ensure that customers first submit a return request in the Online Return Center and wait 48 hours for your response prior to being eligible to file a claim. We will now also require that you provide a response to this return request.

You can see your outstanding return requests on the Manage Returns page in Seller Central. In the event that a customer files a claim and you have not provided any response to the return request within 48 hours, we will grant the claim and debit your account for the claim amount. If you believe we took that action in error, please submit an appeal here.

Link to Announcement

Those two announcements sparked many questions from sellers about how the changes will impact them. Amazon also announced a new feature for brand sellers on Wednesday called “Manage Your Experiments.

Quickly Test New Marketing Strategies with “Manage Your Experiments”
You no longer have to spend months testing different product marketing strategies when creating A+ content on your brand’s listings. The Manage Your Experiments tool helps you test two versions of A+ content simultaneously, and shows you the results in an easy to understand dashboard. Through the use of A/B tests you can compare the two versions of content and see which version resonates with Amazon customers.”

Link to Announcement

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.