A Tamebay reader who sells on Amazon has an unusual problem with some stock that has gone astray. It appears the stock went down the Amazon disposal route instead of being returned to the merchant. We wanted to ask if anyone has had a similar issue and if so what steps you took to come to a resolution as Amazon aren’t playing ball.
Put simply, there was a quantity of stock in Amazon FBA which potentially had an minor issue. Rather than risk continuing to sell the stock, the merchant put in a removal request and sat back to await their stock ready to inspect it.
This is where the problem started – Amazon sent a tracking number but the stock never turned up. After a bit of investigation and eventually the stock was found being sold online quite innocently by a ‘disposal company’. It appears that instead of returning the stock to the merchant it went down the Amazon disposal route.
The merchant managed to recover a proportion of their stock, but they are still a five figure sum out of pocket for stock which was unrecoverable.
It’s worth noting that not only did Amazon provide a proof of delivery but with the third party’s details on. Amazon did of course also charge their standard removal fees for supposedly sending the stock back to the merchant.
So the issue is that the merchant paid for the return of their items, never received them and managed to recover a proportion of them from the third party. The third party did nothing wrong but got the stock as an Amazon disposal. Amazon have supplied a proof of delivery so haven’t been responsive even through the proof of delivery has the third party companies details on it.
Has anyone out there had a similar issue and if so how did you resolve it? Did you manage to successfully appeal to Amazon and if so which department or route did you go down or did you take the legal route? This is definitely an unusual issue so we and our reader would definitely appreciate some guidance.
3 Responses
They are either very high value items or they withdrew a large quantity of them for it to be a five figure loss? Was it one box or multiple boxes that went missing? Assuming these are really high value items the merchant should have an additional insurance policy in place.
I would suggest that they take legal action through the courts.
First you need to send them a letter with a demand for compensation, laying out the reasons and evidence, giving them 14 days to respond or you will take court action.
If they fail to respond then you need to take court action. If they should respond with some waffle or delaying tactic court action should still proceed. Once they have received court papers, they may try and delay the court proceedings. You can write to the court and suspend the action but if no payment is received by an agreed date then court action should be resumed and not cancelled unless full payment is made.
I don’t see they have a case to defend as long as you have all your paperwork / evidence in order.