New refund policy, sent to sellers this week, applies the same rules to merchants who ship products themselves as it does to Amazon delivery. What exactly seems to be the problem here? Customers can now ship back products they don’t like at the seller’s expense, without even notifying them beforehand. “Customers will be able to print a prepaid return shipping label via the Online Return Center instantly,” it was stated in the email.
On the other hand, Amazon is introducing “return-less refunds,” a feature that was long awaited by the sellers. It will let the sellers offer a refund instead of shipping back a product that is expensive to move and hard to resell, which some may find painfully similar to free product giveaways. Third-party resellers believe new policies “will totally crush small businesses that fulfill their own orders.”
Customers are the foundation of the Amazon’s recent success. Yet it is unclear how to balance the interest of the growing small business community living off Amazon and the clientele, which is not always honest and sincere about returns and quality of the products received. Amazon demonstrated outstanding results year-to-date, even making its founder Jeff Bezos the richest person on the planet for a brief period of time.
