Will you be fined if you don’t reply within 48 hours? Amazon changes its claim mechanism

If we Amazon sellers want to know what customers do most, leaving a one-star review is definitely one of them. Not only will a bad review be displayed in product details and affect conversions, it will also lower the average star rating and cause poor product traffic. However, compared to bad reviews, sellers don’t want customers to file AZ complaints even more.

A-to-Z claims are claims filed by customers against Amazon when they are dissatisfied with a product or delivery service, etc. Because AZ claims are directly linked to store performance and may even lead to a store being suspended from selling in serious cases, Amazon sellers also consider AZ claims as complaints against themselves.

Amazon recently announced that it has made some changes to the time limit for AZ complaints. Because AZ claims involve store safety issues, this update has made many sellers feel threatened.

Changes to this AZ claim

Before this change, if a buyer initiated a return request, the seller would have a relatively long time to review and approve the request. Usually, we would use this time to communicate with the customer and solve the customer's problem so that the customer could cancel the return. We would only agree to the customer's return request if the problem could not be solved.

The content of this update is aimed at this communication time: if a customer initiates a return application, the seller must respond to the buyer's application within 48 hours. Otherwise, if the customer initiates an AZ complaint, the seller will be directly judged as the loser and the refund will be made to the customer.

Originally, in the AZ complaint, the buyer and seller would provide evidence and state their opinions to each other, and Amazon would decide which party won the case. However, in the above case, there is no seller's statement. After the buyer initiates the claim, Amazon will directly make the decision.

That is to say, as long as the customer initiates a return application, the seller must respond within 48 hours. Otherwise, the consequences of AZ losing the case are not only a direct refund, but more seriously, a loss of performance points. If the ODR is not good on a regular basis, the seller may be removed from the sales rights the next day.

This is different from the normal return process. If the seller agrees to the return application, the buyer must send the goods and the seller will confirm receipt before the refund. If the return application is made more than 48 hours later and the customer files an AZ complaint, Amazon will directly refund the customer without tracking whether the buyer actually sends the returned goods afterwards.

Many sellers may be like me. When I saw this announcement, I immediately thought of the word "reply". The official said that they would reply to the return application within 48 hours, but it does not necessarily mean that you have to agree to it. If I reject the return application, it is also a "reply".

Although refusing can avoid a direct refund, experienced sellers know that unless there is solid evidence of winning, never easily reject a return application.

Because if the seller refuses to accept the return, more than 80% of buyers will directly file an AZ complaint. If you do not have enough evidence and lose the case, you will lose both the wife and the army.

This change has actually been implemented for some time, but Amazon announced it earlier this month along with the return policy change mentioned in the previous article (click here to view). Both of these major changes are aimed at returns, so what is Amazon planning to do next?

Amazon’s Return Policy Trends

First, if there is no return address for products under $10, the money will be refunded directly; then, if the return application is filed more than 48 hours later, the complaint will be lost. Amazon issued two changes to returns in November, and neither of them is very favorable to sellers.

Although both changes involve direct refunds, there are prerequisites. One is that the seller does not have a return address, and the other is that the seller does not respond to the return application in a timely manner. It seems that these two conditions themselves are actually not in compliance with Amazon platform rules.

Amazon has always required sellers to provide a U.S. return address to facilitate buyers' shopping and return experience, and also has time limits for responding to requests. However, even if the above two rules are violated, there is no particularly severe penalty. As shown at the beginning of the article, sellers and buyers can negotiate returns for a long time.

The two changes at the beginning of this month indicate that Amazon has begun to regulate those rules that were not punished severely enough before. This year and even next year, the entire Amazon platform will be further tightened, and the intensity of the crackdown on operations that violate the rules will become more and more severe and more widespread.

Because it is directly related to store performance, everyone will handle AZ complaints very carefully. However, due to experience issues, various inconveniences may still occur. Teacher Alice also answered various questions about AZ complaints in the planet.

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