Two e-commerce giants support "refund only"? Sellers: Amazon has already done this!

It was observed that the topic "Taobao will support refunds only" became a hot search recently.

According to Jiemian News, domestic e-commerce giant Taobao recently issued a public notice on changes to the "Taobao Platform Dispute Handling Rules", which added a new provision of "supporting quick returns or refunds", which immediately attracted great attention from the outside world.

While many netizens interpreted this regulation as an adjustment made by Taobao to follow Pinduoduo's footsteps , many cross-border sellers also associated it with cross-border e-commerce platforms that also support the "refund only, no return" operation:

"The American version of Pinduoduo, TEMU, has taken advantage of this advantage to become so popular that even Amazon can't stand up to it, let alone Taobao. In an era of consumption downgrade, serving consumers well is the way to go!"

“In addition to Pinduoduo, which everyone thinks of, does anyone remember that Amazon also supports refund-only?”

As of now, not only the three major domestic e-commerce platforms, Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, have joined the "refund only" camp, but overseas e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Walmart have also been in the "refund only" mode as early as 2021.

From the platform's perspective, this model can indeed reduce internal friction in turnover to a certain extent, bring better buyer experience, and thus increase repurchase rate. However, for sellers, because the "refund only" model has certain "opportunities", the series of malicious return and exchange problems caused by it have also plagued sellers for a long time.

It is learned that recently, according to foreign media reports, Amazon sued an international thief gang called "REKK", accusing it of using a "refund only, no return" system to steal millions of dollars worth of goods from Amazon.

According to the lawsuit, in more than a dozen transactions between June 2022 and May 2023, most of the goods involved were high-value products such as game consoles, smartphones, and laptops.

The gang's main fraudulent methods are: finding Amazon employees through social platforms such as Reddit, LinkedIn and Telegram, then purchasing products on Amazon, bribing these Amazon employees to approve refunds by exploiting loopholes in Amazon's return policy, and realizing the freeloader behavior of "refund without return".

After verification, Amazon said that at least seven former employees accepted "bribes."

It is learned that this is not the first time that Amazon has suffered losses due to loopholes in its "return policy".

Many sellers said that Amazon's free, no-questions-asked return policy can easily lead to many opportunists taking advantage of loopholes and committing fraud.

Some sellers also revealed that their Amazon store had received a large number of orders for direct refunds without returns, accounting for 90% of the total orders. Regardless of the reason for the refund, the system would refund it, and it was suspected that speculators were taking advantage of the opportunity to make money.

In fact, Amazon has also planned to launch policies to restrict freeloading, such as "restricting buyer accounts with frequent returns" and "launching a one-time delivery code service", but from the current situation, it seems that the effects are not significant.

Recently, some buyers were dissatisfied with a provision in Amazon's return policy, which states that "Amazon can determine whether buyers have abused its return policy. Once marked as an abuser, they may be charged shipping fees for returns or may not be able to get a refund ." They complained on major social platforms and even said they would no longer shop on Amazon.

From this point of view, Amazon still has a long way to go if it wants to reduce the probability of malicious returns in its "refund only, no return" model.

Here, we would also like to remind all sellers that in the face of malicious returns that are difficult to guard against, they need to have a certain level of prevention awareness and be prepared to set product purchase limits, track order logistics information in real time, etc.

It is worth noting that, in addition to the issue of returns, reviews are also an old and eternal topic for Amazon sellers. Recently, Amazon seems to have made some adjustments in this regard.

As we all know, product reviews are crucial to improving sales conversion rates for cross-border sellers and e-commerce platforms. However, according to Amazon's official data, the average review rate on the Amazon platform is about 1% to 3% , which means that for every 100 items sold, only 1 to 3 buyers will take the initiative to leave a review.

Therefore, many Amazon sellers have been researching ways to get more product reviews.

It is learned that recently, when a seller was editing a communication email with a buyer in the background, he found an Amazon prompt on the top: According to Amazon's new review request policy, it is not allowed to request reviews via email, and buyers can only be contacted to complete orders or in response to buyers' inquiries.

▲ The picture comes from the seller communication group

As we all know, Amazon has always banned and cracked down on false reviews on the platform. If sellers want to get more product reviews, they must comply with the platform rules.

Therefore, after the news broke, some sellers were worried that Amazon might start to strictly check emails requesting reviews.

As of press time, Amazon has not yet issued a notice on the new policy for requesting reviews. However, judging from the recent frequent deletion of "suspicious reviews" by Amazon and the ban on requesting reviews via email, Amazon seems to be stepping up its review of reviews.

What do you think of this? Welcome to discuss in the comments section~