Amazon is putting the cosh onto sellers confronted with and A-to-z Guarantee claim. Ongoing you’ll have to deal with claims in 3 days rather than 7.
According to an email from an Amazon seller of our acquaintance, Amazon says: “Beginning November 14, the response time to an A-to-z Guarantee claim notification will decrease from 7 calendar days to 3 calendar days. This means that you will have 3 days to respond to Amazon via Seller Central to any claim filed against you by the buyer. Failure to respond to a claim in this timeframe will result in the claim being decided in favor of the buyer. Responding directly to the buyer or calling Seller Support does not qualify as an official response to the claim.”
How will this impact you?
9 Responses
Does anyone know if this is just for the US site or is it for all sites starting on the 14/11/2016
Amazon are renowned for being extremely customer-centric so I’m not surprised.
Does anyone happen to know which geographies this applies to, or is it a blanket change?
I think this is awful for the seller.
I understand 7 days is quite long as most decisions aren’t complicated, 3 days is really too short. It would be easy for a seller to miss during busy periods so I think 5 days would be reasonable.
Having said that I just had an A-Z claim decision made within 24 hours leaving me no chance to give any input.
At the end of the day the customer is fully protected so I don’t think its unreasonable to wait 7 days. Other retailers seem to be up to 14 days and there’s no guarantee.
It makes absolutely no difference to us really. At the end of the day Amazon almost always finds the case in the favour of the buyer, even if the seller has followed Amazon Policies to the word.
All cases related to non-delivery are found immediately in the favour of the buyer if tracking hasn’t been inputed, so no difference will be made there.
In some cases you do not get any opportunity to respond to A-Z claims for items not received. We have had cases of Amazon automatically instantly granting in the buyer’s favour at the sellers cost. This is for items sent tracked but the tracking details not uploaded at the time of dispatch, I contacted Amazon with the tracking but they would not look at the case saying tracking had to be uploaded at the time the order was confirmed as shipped.
We tend to work ours daily so it shouldn’t affect us but I think 5 days is a more realistic target for most businesses, with all the requirements from marketplaces the role of the customer service staff gets more challenging with every change 🙁
Hi Guys
I think in general this is a good thing, if Amazon keeps to their word of promoting initial contact away from A to Z’s and direct it to the seller, then there should be no reason that an A to Z response time should take more than 3 days.
I know we are coming up to a busy period (those words probably doesn’t do it justice) but with the right tools in place, such as Reply Manager, Xsellco and the many others – this can be feasible and will be better for ecommerce in general. 🙂
Wishing you luck this quarter! 🙂
Charlie McBroom