I was away from home recently and had no way of answering messages for a few days, so the 90 day free trial of Customer Service by Amazon for self fulfilled orders seemed like a good idea. "Seemed" being the operative word. I got several messages while on holiday, one of them quite insistent that they get an immediate answer; It did not seem to lessen the amount of messages I receive at all. It DOES, however, seem to have increased the number of unfair refunds and returns. As an example, in the past couple of days, a customer has been refunded for an item they claimed had not been delivered. Had they checked, they would have seen that it was delivered on time. On checking the GPS with Royal Mail, it turns out it was definitely delivered to the correct address. In the second case, from yesterday, Amazon contacted me to say "Please kindly assist the customer and send prepaid return label and the refund thankyou". This was for an expensive item (£345). So I immediately contacted the customer and asked him to start a return via the Amazon system. He replied that he had purchased the wrong model, so I said, that's fine, you can either return for a refund and purchase the correct one, or we will send you a label and send you the correct model. I did everything by the book and was polite and courteous. At no point did I try to deter him from returning it.

He didn't reply, but I assumed all was well. Later that evening, I saw that he had been refunded. He has not started a return, he has just been refunded.

In both of the above cases, I have started Safe-T claims, but that is not the point. The point is, since trialling "Customer Service by Amazon for self fulfilled orders" these sort of unfair refunds have increased.

So what exactly are the benefits of Customer Service by Amazon for self fulfilled orders supposed to be? I have been using the service for just over a month and have not seen any benefits whatsoever. In fact, as in the above examples, quite the reverse!