We often receive messages where Amazon Customer Service is relaying a question from a customer. We assume this happens when customers call in to Amazon instead of messaging. The messages often end with "Please research the issue and contact the customer." These are pretty normal, not unexpected, and we've been getting them for years (if not decades).

The problem is that 70% of the time the questions in these messages could have been easily answered by the CSR right then and there, since they often deal with basic Amazon policy questions. In some cases they aren't even in the scope of a seller's responsibility.

Here are some examples:

• Customer asking to return a product that is within the normal return window. Why doesn't the CSR tell the customer to go into their Orders and hit Return? Now we have to reply to the customer and tell them to do just that. But since Amazon buyer-seller messaging deliverability is abysmal, we know there's only a 50% chance they get it (even if we send them a return label directly).
• Customer asking for things on the payment side of Amazon, which sellers have no visibility over. We received a message from an Amazon CSR that literally said, and this is a direct quote: "Customer is asking if the refund can be transferred to another card." I'm at a loss for words.
• Customer asking when their refund will arrive, while their return is still in transit using the Amazon return label. The CSR can see that, and sellers have no control over when Amazon decides to not RFS, since Amazon sometimes doesn't do RFS based on their own internal customer metrics.

These are just the messages we get from CSRs on behalf of customers. When we reach out to Amazon Support on our end, the quality of responses are even worse.

Does Amazon train their CSRs at all? I can't believe Amazon wants sellers to use their "Customer Service by Amazon" program if this is what they've shown their quality of CSR is.