Customer requesting £10 shipping refund for 80g item

#1

SO like everyone else at the moment, I’m having to refund customer orders due the RM strikes. But I’ve had a request from a customer asking for a £10 shipping refund for a large letter weighing 80g. it’s been 9 days since they sent it and A. I haven’t even received it and B) it shouldn’t have cost more than £2.85. They’ve not sent me any proof of postage or tracking number. I’ve opened a caselog to see what amazon say. DO I have to refund this??

This is probably the last nail in the coffin for me. As if the strikes are damaging my business enough, the customers are now trying to profit from us for shipping?? I’ll stick to Etsy next year, I’ve deactivated my amazon listings now.

#2

Did amazon not provided a prepaid returns label ?

#3

No it was an unpaid shipping label. Amazon just sent a reply stating this…

  • If you can confirm that the order is not returned as per the return tracking provided by buyer, you can decline the refund and clearly communicate the reason with the buyer through Buyer-Seller Messaging.
#4

As its not come back and the buyer has not sent and tracking or proof of postage, do not refund the order

#5

Really, you wouldn’t refund at all? Are you handmade too? Honestly I’m bracing myself for more complaints and bad feedback.

#6

Why would you refund - the order hasn’t been returned and there is no evidence that the buyer has even posted it back

#7

I was also under the impression that a ‘personalised or bespoke’ product is exempt from change of mind (not that Amazon follows the law of course’

#8

I think that might be for personalised items but this was a silk scarf. I’m happy to refund on receipt of the item, I just don’t know where the £10 shipping cost came from. The customer just sent me the tracking number which was a tracked 48 service, and didn’t even want to shipping refunded. So it’s amazon that have added it. Weird

#9

In that case you refund the cost of tracked 48 as that’s what amazon would offer
The price is no more than £3.35
But if its a change of mind, you don’t need to refund any return shipping

#10

It was a late item (RM strikes) but i didn’t know about the change of mind thing.

#11

Somewhere in amazons’ policies it says that you don’t have to refund the full amount of shipping if the customer has used a more expensive method than would normally be acceptable.

#12

Ah thank you, that was what I was trying to find out.

#13

Did the customer ask for £10, or did it show it when you went to refund the item ? We had a couple a few months back where it showed £10 when you went to refund it via the returns panel, but didn’t show it when you went to the order from the orders page and then went to refund. Obviously we refunded via the latter method.

#14

I agree with the not refunding until you get the item back. But i as a business would then also ask the buyer for the shipping receipt as this can go through your business accounts as a cost. This would also show you exactly how much they paid for shipping, if they did indeed buy shipping.

#15

All returns should go through the prepaid returns process. The buyer knows all they need to do select return from the order history.

#16

I’ve had this recently. Amazon policy on this states “Sellers are only required to refund standard postage charges corresponding to the least expensive type of delivery offered by them”. So if your shipping costs are normally £3 then you should only be refunding £3.

#17

I agree it should, but not always. I recently opened a forum thread that discussed that this does not always happen. As both a buyer and a seller I have recently had instances where an Unpaid return label was provided, no idea why.

Refunds - Prepaid or Not?

#18

I had the case about a month ago - a customer returning a product with £26 shipping fees. I then realised then were based abroad (France) and so were paying the shipping fee France to UK.

Maybe your customer is based abroad?

#19

Handmade stuff (I wish they would stop playing around with things), went from the usual “Returnable by xxx” to “This item is not returnable unless defective or damaged” to “For Xmas, until 31 Jan 2023 you can return this item”.

As for change of mind… Definitely exempt. But then it’s ‘clothing’, but in Handmade. So who knows! lol

#20

I had a claim for £26 shipping fees last month, the customer was very much in the UK and the item was less than 400 grams, it was a hot water bottle. Empty obviously. There was also nothing wrong with the item, the customer no longer wanted it.