Q&A: Amazon refunded my customer, who claimed she never ordered the book!
QUESTION: I'm pretty angry. Six months after shipping an order, Amazon refunded my buyer, who claimed she didn't place the order. She never contacted me or returned the book, and Amazon took my money! No A-to-Z Guarantee claim was filed, and nobody asked for my side of the story. What can I do?
ANSWER: You should do what I've done in similar cases: become a very squeaky wheel. If you squeak loudly and long enough, Amazon may provide the grease.
I've sold to about 110,000 buyers on Amazon and 18 of those orders have resulted in A-to-Z claims. In every case, Amazon denied the claim after I provided the delivery confirmation number.
But recently, like you, I noticed a suspicious refund made outside the A-to-Z Guarantee. The buyer e-mailed me several days after the order, asking that it be cancelled. Since the book was already in the mail, I asked her to refuse delivery, and I'd refund when it was returned. I never heard from her again, and the $9 book was never returned. But nine months later, in October 2005, Amazon deducted the money from my account with no explanation.
To add insult to injury, when I e-mailed Amazon demanding an explanation, they replied (incorrectly) that I'd failed to reply to their chargeback inquiry. Evidently the customer had gotten a refund from her credit-card company, claiming the transaction was "unauthorized."
After asking (in three e-mails) for an explanation from an Amazon supervisor, I finally received an anonymous e-mail from their billing department, apologizing for their error, and my funds were restored. I was irritated -- to put it mildly -- at how much time this $9 dispute consumed. But I didn't want a precedent established where Amazon would be refunding willy-nilly on orders I'd fulfilled.
This is a vivid illustration of why Amazon should assign account representatives to Pro-Merchant sellers, something I've recommended since 2001. Disputes like this can't be resolved using canned e-mail responses -- sometimes human intervention is required. I'm sure Amazon believes they're saving a bit on support costs, but this type of shoddy business practice generates ill will among Amazon's best customers: its Pro-Merchant sellers.
So if I were you, I'd send Amazon a friendly e-mail by clicking on the yellow button on the right, asking that the funds be restored to your account. If that fails, I'd phone Amazon's seller-support folks at 877-251-0696. I can't promise you'll have a satisfactory outcome, but I'd encourage you to protest vigorously anytime you think you've received unfair treatment. Good luck!
I'm interested in hearing from other sellers on this. Have you been able to resolve disputes with customers and Amazon's billing department?"
ANSWER: You should do what I've done in similar cases: become a very squeaky wheel. If you squeak loudly and long enough, Amazon may provide the grease.
I've sold to about 110,000 buyers on Amazon and 18 of those orders have resulted in A-to-Z claims. In every case, Amazon denied the claim after I provided the delivery confirmation number.
But recently, like you, I noticed a suspicious refund made outside the A-to-Z Guarantee. The buyer e-mailed me several days after the order, asking that it be cancelled. Since the book was already in the mail, I asked her to refuse delivery, and I'd refund when it was returned. I never heard from her again, and the $9 book was never returned. But nine months later, in October 2005, Amazon deducted the money from my account with no explanation.
To add insult to injury, when I e-mailed Amazon demanding an explanation, they replied (incorrectly) that I'd failed to reply to their chargeback inquiry. Evidently the customer had gotten a refund from her credit-card company, claiming the transaction was "unauthorized."
After asking (in three e-mails) for an explanation from an Amazon supervisor, I finally received an anonymous e-mail from their billing department, apologizing for their error, and my funds were restored. I was irritated -- to put it mildly -- at how much time this $9 dispute consumed. But I didn't want a precedent established where Amazon would be refunding willy-nilly on orders I'd fulfilled.
This is a vivid illustration of why Amazon should assign account representatives to Pro-Merchant sellers, something I've recommended since 2001. Disputes like this can't be resolved using canned e-mail responses -- sometimes human intervention is required. I'm sure Amazon believes they're saving a bit on support costs, but this type of shoddy business practice generates ill will among Amazon's best customers: its Pro-Merchant sellers.
So if I were you, I'd send Amazon a friendly e-mail by clicking on the yellow button on the right, asking that the funds be restored to your account. If that fails, I'd phone Amazon's seller-support folks at 877-251-0696. I can't promise you'll have a satisfactory outcome, but I'd encourage you to protest vigorously anytime you think you've received unfair treatment. Good luck!
I'm interested in hearing from other sellers on this. Have you been able to resolve disputes with customers and Amazon's billing department?"
posted by Steve Weber at 3/06/2006
2 Comments:
I had a similar experience when a customer filed a to z. Amazon granted the claim and took my money because there was no tracking info -- probably because the mailman didn't scan the delivery confirm. barcode. I sent two e-mails about this and eventually my money was returned.
The squeaky wheel approach is the only way to go. From my own 5 year experience I have to say that Amazon never gives a satisfactory response the first time you asked them a question. Their infuriating automated, "nonresponse" makes you want to scream: "Just answer my question, will you please!!!!". If it is really worth it to you, you have to write again, bear a similar irrevlevant reply or two and write again, and again and again. Eventually, you will get a somewhat satisfactory response. The whole affair will probably still leave a bitter taste in your mouth and/or will not be quite what you expected (should expect as their client, if they did their job correctly). However, at least you feel that you've finally gotten through to them.
Bottom line. I try to avoid any contact with Amazon's "helpful" customer service as much as I possibly can. It is invariably always a source of great frustration and a deep sinkhole of my time.
However, I recently did go through the motions, regarding an A-Z claim. Amazon claimed that I did not reply to their email and was at fault. I replied that of course, I did. I attached a copy of my A-Z claim reply, clearly stating that I had mailed out the book. I received no reply. I emailed them again. No reply. And again. No reply. Fourth time lucky: Two months later, they apologized that my emails had somehow been "disregarded". They said that the claim was closed anyway and that it was too late now. Now I got really, really mad and told them that if their chaotic organization had just misplaced/disregarded every single one of my four previous emails on this subject, that this was a clear proof that my A-Z claim reply went the same way. I told them that if they looked harder, they would surely find that one too. I told them that it was cristal clear that they were at fault here, and how dare they maintain instead that I was at fault under these circumstances. I insisted on receiving my money back and having my record cleared. You guessed it - nothing happened. So I send that last email out one more time. I never received a reply, or an apology or anything, but I did notice a credit to my account about a month later. More important - my A-Z record was cleared, which was the whole purpose of this exercise. If somebody told you this story about your future employer's behavior before you went for a job interview, would you go work for them? For Amazon, it's routine, at least that's my experience.
So this is the kind of "big sink hole of time" I mentioned above. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. In this case however, I simply could not let them get away with slamming me with an at-fault A-Z claim, it was a matter of my own business integrity.
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