Amazon changes refund terms on lost and damaged products

Inventory management and refund requests can be very costly activities for Amazon sellers. To help simplify these operations, Amazon has intervened multiple times to modify its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) policies, allowing sellers to minimize the hassle of handling manual refund requests, reduce their losses, and focus on growing their business.

Well, in this context, Amazon has decided to take a further significant step to simplify the refund process for products managed with the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) system and lost in its fulfillment centers. With this innovation, the marketplace will proactively issue refunds through the report viewable on Seller Central as soon as an item is reported as lost. This eliminates the need for manual searches and explicit refund requests by the seller.

Clearly, this new system will save sellers time and money. However, it will be necessary to understand more clearly what the actual functionality and reliability of the new system will be. Not surprisingly, in its announcement, Amazon reminds sellers that they may still be required to submit manual claims if they do not receive automatic refunds.

How Refund Timelines Are Changing

In line with the above, starting from October 23, 2024, Amazon will introduce a new eligibility window policy for manual claims. The redesign of the terms should streamline the process and ensure timely resolutions.

Let’s summarize the main guidelines in this regard:

• Items lost or damaged in fulfillment centers: Sellers have 60 days to file manual claims from the date the item was lost or damaged.
• FBA customer returns: Sellers can file claims between 60 and 120 days after the refund date. The time frame for resolving the issue becomes wider. The compensation request should not be submitted before 60 days, ensuring that the customer has time to return the item for processing.
• Claims for items lost during transportation: A 15-day grace period is provided for delivery of the shipment. Sellers can submit compensation requests between 15 and 75 days from the shipment date.
• Other removal requests: For all other cases, sellers have 60 days from the return to file their claims.

What Sellers Need to Do

To ensure smooth operations, it’s crucial to review current processes and align them with Amazon’s new eligibility windows for manual refund requests. With the new rules, it will be even more important to ensure timely submission of requests within the new deadlines.

Finally, we take this opportunity to remind all our clients that, in light of these changes, it’s even more important to maintain careful management of refunds. In this regard, the ZonWizard service suite offers all our clients advanced features that will allow you to recover the full value of your lost or damaged FBA inventory. Thanks to our pre-filled templates, you will be able to:

• Keep track of issues with your merchandise.
• Quickly open manual refund requests.
• Attach the supporting documentation we provide.

You can click here for more information and discover the benefits we have reserved for you!