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It is learned that since the end of March this year, Amazon has begun to try to display the Frequently Returned Items (high return rate) label on the detail pages of some products. The news sparked heated discussions in the cross-border industry. Industry insiders analyzed that for Amazon, the labeling policy may effectively reduce the platform's return costs, but for some sellers, there is a risk of a decline in product conversion rate and sales. To date, this label has not been implemented in all categories on Amazon, and its impact on most sellers is still unknown. When it comes to returns, the most common complaint among Amazon sellers is a series of malicious returns and exchanges caused by loopholes in the free no-questions-asked return policy. Amazon logistics worker arrested for returns fraud
It is learned that recently, according to foreign media reports, the Chattanooga police in Tennessee, USA, arrested an Amazon logistics employee who stole more than 60,000 US dollars (about 421,600 RMB) . It is reported that the employee, named Noah Page, took advantage of his position to not only earn commissions from free buyers who "refund but do not return the goods", but also came up with the idea of stealing Amazon products and put it into practice. ▲ The picture comes from foreign media reports The police found that most of the returned goods were high-value products such as notepads, iPhones and computers. As of the time of his arrest on May 4, the employee had been charged with conspiracy and theft of more than $60,000 (about RMB 421,600). The cause of the return fraud case came from a buyer named "Ralph". The buyer contacted an Amazon logistics employee through text messages and gave him a commission of up to $3,000, asking the employee to help him exploit loopholes in Amazon's return policy to achieve the freeloading behavior of "refund without return" . It is understood that there are quite a few sellers who suffered losses due to this incident. Therefore, once the incident was exposed, it caused heated discussions on overseas social platforms, and many sellers accused Amazon of having an unreasonable return policy. Many sellers said that Amazon’s current free no-questions-asked return policy is too biased towards buyers, causing many opportunists to exploit policy loopholes to commit fraud, and both FBA sellers and self-shipping sellers have suffered greatly. Sellers have previously revealed that Amazon had a large number of orders that were directly refunded without return , accounting for 90% of the total orders. Regardless of the reason for the refund, the system will refund it. It is suspected that speculators are taking advantage of the opportunity to make money. Recently, it has been observed that many cross-border sellers in China have also been troubled by a new type of freeloading behavior that exploits this policy loophole.Sellers complain about malicious returns and exchanges in various ways It is learned that recently, a seller on the forum revealed that the products he sold on Amazon were repeatedly purchased and returned by the same buyer , causing the seller's link return rate to soar and affecting sales . ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan The seller said that the buyer purchased the seller's products four times in January, early April (twice), and late April this year. The buyer applied for a refund within a few days after the last three purchases. ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan Based on this, the seller analyzed that the buyer was taking advantage of a loophole in Amazon's return and exchange policy and returning old products (or defective products) that had been used for more than 30 days in order to get new products for free. It is learned that Amazon's current return policy is relatively relaxed, supporting users to return new and unused items within 30 days of purchase . Users can even choose to return items to Amazon's Whole Foods Market outlets in the United States. Therefore, once the post was published, it received responses from many sellers who were also troubled by it: "I have also encountered similar customers, but with different accounts. They placed orders at intervals, and then contacted me to say that the product had caused him harm and he wanted to sue me. The letters they sent were exactly the same." "I remember that Shopee seems to have a buyer credit reminder. When will Amazon come up with one? Buyers with high return rates should be permanently banned!" "It can't be eliminated. This is a platform bug." Prior to this, Amazon had actually planned to launch policies such as "restricting buyer accounts that frequently return products" and "launching a one-time delivery code service" to restrict buyers from taking advantage of the product for free, but judging from the current situation, the results do not seem to be very effective. Here, we would like to remind all sellers that they need to have a certain degree of prevention awareness in the face of malicious returns that are hard to guard against. The following measures are provided for your reference: 1. Set a purchase limit for products to avoid a large number of malicious returns; 2. Self-delivery sellers can take photos and weigh the goods before delivery to track order logistics information in real time; 3. When a malicious return or exchange occurs, the seller can submit relevant evidence to report it in the Amazon backend, or write an email to complain. For example, if the product mentioned above has been used for a long time but still requires a refund without reason, the seller can prepare screenshots of the package receipt and return request date for A to Z. We also hope that more policies will be introduced in the future to prevent this kind of malicious return and exchange behavior. I wonder if you have encountered similar freeloading behaviors recently? Are there any relevant solutions? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to share~
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