Okay, I KNOW that Amazon has supposedly always had a policy of charging for some returns, but I am telling you-- I’ve been a Prime customer for a very long time, almost from the very start, and it has never ever ever happened to me before the last two times. In over a decade, there has literally never been a case where I was charged for a return before(whether shipped from a third party vendor or not) and it has suddenly happened twice in a row. I do not return things often at all, and I don’t know when the last return was-- more than six months ago for sure, and let’s just say that I’ve made Amazon a lot of money over time.
Searching for opinions on this, a lot of people seem to be saying that they’re suddenly noticing more of it too in just the last several months. So what do YOU all think? Is this a policy that has changed recently to make it much more likely that a customer will be charged for a return? Is this increase something that’s happening on the down low, and they’re getting away with it because there’s “always” been a policy that charging for returns is something that is possible? Is this change because customers now have the option of going to a (super inconvenient and no parking) location where Amazon items can be returned without a charge?
I haven’t noticed that, but what I have noticed is that each item has a “return window” (a deadline after which returns are not allowed) and sometimes that window is quite short.
Perhaps Amazon, along with its selling partners, have simply gotten fed up with customers treating the return policy as a free product rental. Given that they lose money in the short term with Prime (and the long term is undetermined) I suspect you are going to see a lot more of this in the future sooner or later.
I’ve always been charged for returns at Amazon, except on clothes and shoes which was an exciting new policy when they started pushing their clothes and shoe departments. I’ve always been a Prime member, too.
I’ve had some items that didn’t come, or I got the wrong item or a broken item, in which case they had me keep the wrong/broken thing and sent me a new one post-haste.
Amazon have always been consistent with me. If I state that my reason for the return is that the product is defective, or not as advertised, they do not charge me shipping. If it’s one of the other reasons on the list (i.e. I just changed my mind) then they charge me shipping. It has always seemed very fair to me.
They surely have analytics that track customer behavior. The only unknown is how they use these data at present, i.e. at what threshold (if at all) they start to treat badly behaved customers differently. But I have little doubt that when you call the help desk, some kind of info pops up on the reps screen about what kind of customer they are dealing with.
Also, vaguely related. I ordered something last week with free returns, and today I see that the price is now $10 cheaper. I requested a refund of the difference. The customer service guy said, no, he can’t do that, but he actually suggested that I buy the new one and return the old one. Seems like a pretty dumb process, but ok.
I can see why this policy makes sense. Prices fluctuate a lot, and if they just allowed a refund of the difference from nothing but a phone call, they would be inundated with these claims. This way, they are giving you a method to get back the money if it’s enough money that it really matters to you, but just putting a bit of a hurdle in the way.
I don’t know. I have RARELY returned things, and I have spent a LOT of money on Amazon. But because I’ve ordered so many things over the past decade, there have been enough returns to compare 2006 vs. all the years in between vs the past couple of months. Never have they ever, not once in eleven years, charged me for a return before. I do think that the policy is quietly changing behind the scenes with nothing being revealed or explained to customers. But maybe this will turn out to be a good thing… if I know that there’s a much better chance than in the past that there will be a charge for returns, my spending on Amazon will go way down, which needed to happen.
When you request a return, Amazon asks why you are returning it. If you choose “No longer needed,” they will charge return shipping. They always have.
If you are returning the item because it’s defective, or damaged in shipping, or description is incorrect, the return shipment is free. Of course, they will get suspicious if you return an unusually large number of items as defective or damaged.
I’m not sure about other options like “bought by mistake.”
Amazon used to have a price protection policy, where they would refund the difference if the price drops within 30 days of purchase if the buyer requests it. That ended last year.
Not only regular price changes but there were services which would track this for you and put in a auto request on your behalf, and took a cut. Price matching is for customer satisfaction, when the customer saw it for less it would lead to a sour feeling if not corrected and would be basically little cost to the company, these services took it out of that realm as this didn’t involve customers actually seeing the same product for less, so there was no benefit to customer satisfaction as to there was no souring of satisfaction, and just served to cost the company much more then before for not much improvement in customer satisfaction.
I believe bought by mistake is no charge, however I rarely got charged by Amazon for returns - perhaps never for Amazon stuff, but yes for 3rd party stuff though Amazon. Bough by mistake could easily mean a defect on their ordering system.
I saw the lower price because I’m using such a service (to track prices, not to automate a request). I had been tracking it for a while, then the price dropped, and I ordered it, then the price dropped even more, and my auto-notification thing was still set up.
I agree that such services make price matching more expensive for Amazon, but I’m not sure I buy the issue about customer satisfaction. Now that I know I “overpaid” for my product, aren’t I just as dissatisfied as someone who found out by manually checking the page?
I’ve never used that one, so I don’t know, but there’s no reason that Amazon would have to treat all customers the same. Someone who routinely tried to return things as “bought by mistake” might well find that Amazon started charging them to return. I’m sure there’s an algorithm watching that and punishing the outliers who are trying to make returns for free.
Some of you may know why but -------- I know Amazon is changing how it handles/processes the shipping part of returns doing it mostly through their own sortation centers. Most of this started a couple months back but even more things are coming online before Peak. Having more control over the process made them more willing to actually charge a fee the customer was always liable for in theory. It was partly explained to us and the explanation did little more than give me a headache. Along with this is a new process/program to catch cancelled orders before the customer gets them.
Look at your label – my bet is you have a black bar with white writing reading something like AVP6 or EWR4 on the left hand side and a letter and some numbers on the right. Either that or you are on an AMZL route. In which case you have my deepest sympathy until the day they approve my transfer.
That’s something that I’ve noticed, you have to pay attention to the reason why you’re sending it back, it’s not like a survey you’re taking because they just feel like getting some free information.
Whenever I buy clothes that I don’t know for sure will fit, I’ll always try to make sure I find things that state “Free Returns”, then you know you’re safe to send them back.
With everything else you have to be careful when buying or eat the charge if you don’t have a legit reason for sending it back. I got lucky a few days ago. I bought two (identical) items, about $350 total. Got them and could tell right away they just weren’t going to work and I’d need to send them back. The lucky part was that the description on the page was wrong, like way wrong. It was a bit disingenuous of me since I didn’t notice that when I ordered it, but oddly, that part of the description (the size of the item) was my problem. I hit the button for ‘incorrect description’, wrote in the dimensions that they listed vs the real ones and they picked them up for free.
Also, a few weeks ago, I got a shirt, didn’t like it (free returns), told them I wanted to return it and their automated system refunded me and told me to keep it.
TL;DR: Protip, when you return something, before you make it all the way through it’ll tell you if they’re going to charge you, if they are, maybe one of the other options will suit you better.
