Why doesn’t Amazon care when customers return a completely different product?
I’m in a very competitive market. Our product is a few dollars more expensive than competitors (mostly from Chinese sellers) because we offer better quality, which is reflected in our customer reviews. However, we’ve noticed that customers sometimes return products that are NOT ours but rather cheaply made alternatives.
When we used to receive return removals from Amazon, it was easy to spot these incorrect returns. But now, due to rising costs, we no longer operate our own warehouse or request removal orders, so we have no way of knowing whether customers are returning the correct products or not.
Over the past few years, our sales have declined due to copycat products from Chinese sellers—poorly made but offering the same functionality. Despite this, I was still proud to provide customers with a high-quality product. However, as other sellers have mentioned in a different thread, Amazon doesn’t seem to care whether a product has a higher review rating or better customer satisfaction. Their algorithm simply promotes whatever sells on the search page.
What’s even more frustrating is knowing that customers are likely still returning those cheaply made products as if they were ours—forcing us to absorb the fees and suffer the negative profit. With Amazon failing to check return accuracy, it feels incredibly discouraging to continue working hard to provide quality products.
Why doesn’t Amazon care when customers return a completely different product?
I’m in a very competitive market. Our product is a few dollars more expensive than competitors (mostly from Chinese sellers) because we offer better quality, which is reflected in our customer reviews. However, we’ve noticed that customers sometimes return products that are NOT ours but rather cheaply made alternatives.
When we used to receive return removals from Amazon, it was easy to spot these incorrect returns. But now, due to rising costs, we no longer operate our own warehouse or request removal orders, so we have no way of knowing whether customers are returning the correct products or not.
Over the past few years, our sales have declined due to copycat products from Chinese sellers—poorly made but offering the same functionality. Despite this, I was still proud to provide customers with a high-quality product. However, as other sellers have mentioned in a different thread, Amazon doesn’t seem to care whether a product has a higher review rating or better customer satisfaction. Their algorithm simply promotes whatever sells on the search page.
What’s even more frustrating is knowing that customers are likely still returning those cheaply made products as if they were ours—forcing us to absorb the fees and suffer the negative profit. With Amazon failing to check return accuracy, it feels incredibly discouraging to continue working hard to provide quality products.
1 reply
Danny_Amazon
Hello @Seller_AmX2yHbmR2ovt- thanks for looking to the seller forums for some discussion on both competitors and materially different returns from customers.
We appreciate this feedback and I'll be sure it is captured internally. I am also hoping I have some resources here that may be useful to you. If you have registered your brand with Amazon, I'd encourage you to report any unauthorized listings of your items through this Brand Registry pathway for reporting violations.
It also sounds like you might benefit from reviewing the guidelines for applying restocking fees for items returned to sellers, since there are process steps listed there for applying up to a 100% restocking fee in situations where the customer returns an incorrect item, as well as the FBA inventory reimbursement policy for applicable scenarios.
