Amazon US have announced a change to the A-to-z Guarentee claim policy requiring sellers to provide a response to a return request within 48 hours. This leads on from requiring a customer to submit a return request prior to being able to file an A-to-z claim. In other words, they can’t complain about a product without giving the merchant a chance to put things right or accept a return.
For merchants, this means an expected shift in metrics from A-to-z claims to return requests and should make protecting your account easier. In practical terms, many merchants will have returns auto approved by Amazon. For those returns which aren’t auto approved, it does mean that merchants will, as they already are with messages, have to be responsive over the weekend.
“In our continuous efforts to improve the customer experience, Amazon has updated the A-to-z Guarantee claim policy.
To help you avoid any potential or unnecessary A-to-z Guarantee claims, we ensure that customers first submit a return request in the Online Return Center and wait 48 hours for your response prior to being eligible to file a claim. We will now also require that you provide a response to this return request.
You can see your outstanding return requests on the Manage Returns page in Seller Central. In the event that a customer files a claim and you have not provided any response to the return request within 48 hours, we will grant the claim and debit your account for the claim amount. If you believe we took that action in error, please submit an appeal here.
Learn more about how you can prevent A-to-z Guarantee claims here.”
– Amazon.com
