Amazon directly refunds but does not accept returns? It also faces bomb threats!

In the past two days, foreign media broke a big news that Amazon is notifying some customers who request returns that they can get a refund without returning the goods ! This includes both self-operated and third-party FBA products!

Amazon said it is using artificial intelligence to screen customer return requests and infer the current cost of returns. If AI believes that the logistics cost of this return is too high, it will automatically recommend the customer to keep the product and get a refund directly.

This algorithm of direct refund without return generally tends to favor two situations. One is the return of products with extremely high logistics costs , such as furniture and other oversized items; the other is cheap products with low value , such as batteries, small jewelry, etc.

And from the examples collected by foreign media, Amazon is not only implementing this change in its own products, but also some FBA third-party products that Amazon is responsible for distribution and after-sales. Consumers who bought products from third-party retailers that meet the above conditions can also get a direct refund without returning the products.

It is not clear how Amazon will calculate the value of the goods caused by this operation, and the official has not disclosed any information related to this operation and sellers. The value of the goods for direct refunds is still quite sensitive, and if the sellers have to bear it, it may cause a large-scale boycott among the seller community.

However, many sellers of small and low-value items in our seller circle have not encountered such a situation. I guess this policy must be piloted on a small scale first, or the sellers participating in the plan have been notified in advance, or a group of sellers who want to use this function have been recruited.

In short, such a policy is unlikely to be implemented on a large scale without notice , and sellers of low-priced products can breathe a sigh of relief. At the same time, I would like to remind everyone that Amazon's peak season orders from October last year can be returned until the end of this month, especially in the second half of this month when the return period is approaching , there may be a concentrated return peak (sellers who need return customer complaint response skills, add me zyqmda to receive it), so sellers still need to be prepared in advance.

In addition to the peak of returns at the end of the month, the recent unrest in the United States may also have a serious impact on our cross-border business. Amazon has even received a bomb threat recently!

Yesterday, we received a message in our chat group that Amazon had terminated its service support for the social platform Parler, causing Parler to be completely offline today. Because this social platform has a loose review of political content, a large number of Trump fans and conservative politicians gather here. Even the storming of the Capitol on the 6th was partly planned on Parler.

So Amazon used this as an excuse to remove its cloud service support for Parler, leaving tens of millions of Trump supporters without a platform to communicate after Facebook and Twitter. Supporters used words like "totalitarianism" and "tech tyrant" to describe Amazon's move, and some fanatical fans even threatened to "blow up Amazon's server center."

Amazon also responded. In an internal letter, AWS's vice president of infrastructure asked server center staff to "remain highly vigilant" and report any unusual activities around the data center to the company in a timely manner.

Moreover, Amazon has not only begun to prevent unexpected situations in terms of physics, but has also taken action in terms of the network. Since banning Parler last weekend, Amazon's AWS business has set Mondays and Tuesdays as "ban days" in some regions. Without the approval of the company's top leaders , employees are strictly prohibited from making any major updates and changes to the equipment and software in the data center during the ban days.

AWS cloud service is the foundation of all Amazon's network business. The mall and logistics are all highly dependent on AWS. The last time AWS service crashed, the Amazon mall was offline for several hours, and sellers and buyers were unable to access the normal Amazon website.

Therefore, the stability of AWS is also crucial to Amazon sellers. The situation in the United States has been very unstable in the past two days, and various unexpected situations may occur at that time. I would like to give you a vaccination here so that you can be mentally prepared. When an accident occurs, don’t panic, just contact the relevant customer service team in time to handle it.