Amazon

Amazon has an abusable system, and doesn't care when it is abused Internet

7th of Sep, 2011 by User287954

I sell stuff on Amazon. Nothing too serious, just a thing or two to get a bit of extra money, as cash is almost always tight for me. I've been doing this for a few years, and have never had and problems, until my last order that is. It all started when I sold an XM radio on the 31st of July. I went out and shipped it the next day, August 1st. Nothing was out of the ordinary yet, until less than two weeks later, I noticed I had an A-to-Z guarantee claim filed against me. This was the first complaint I've ever had in my years as a seller on Amazon, so I quickly looked in to the matter to see how I could resolve it. The claim was filed under "Item not as described", which would imply that the customer had gotten the item, and that it was either defective, or that the item was something different than what I said I was selling. However, for the information on this matter, the buyer stated "My problem is I never received and seller won't respond. Help!!!". So, apparently within the first week of this order, this customer had emailed me three times asking if I had shipped this radio yet. Well, I personally never check my email unless I'm expecting something, as I get large amounts of spam and hate sorting through all it daily, so if there's ever a problem with something on Amazon, I simply log into Amazon, which I do almost daily. Now, because i didn't respond to these emails, and because the item hadn't arrived yet, the buyer filed a claim. The thing is, this claim was filed less that two weeks after I had shipped this item. Now, from my experience using the postal service, I've seen a lot of weird things happen during the shipping process, from items taking almost a month to arrive, to items being delivered to me almost half a year later. Amazon even has special terms for just this sort of thing. They say you CANNOT file a claim for an item not arriving until either 30 days past the original order date (August 30th in this case), or 3 days past the maximum estimated delivery (August 25th). The claim made by this buyer was made on August 13th, long before you can file a claim for an item not arriving. When I discovered this claim was filed, I quickly contacted the buyer, apologizing for not contacting him earlier and assuring him the I had shipped the item. I informed him that shipping can have strange problems sometimes, and that the latest delivery date should be the 22nd. The buyer responded, and said he would be more than happy and still give me positive feedback if the item came before the 22nd. Two days after this exchange, the buyer left me positive feedback, indicating he had obviously received his package, and also marking YES in the fields provided indicating the item was shipped fast, the item was as described, and that i provided customer service for him. So now i figure "Problem solved". The customer was happy, and the claim no longer had any base to be granted. I represented my claim to amazon later that week and the next day, it was denied by Amazon. So in Amazons eyes, any exchange I had with this customer was meaningless, and the agreement we worked out didn't matter. They cited the following from their Participation agreement, which stated: "We reserve the right to seek reimbursement from Seller if we, in our sole discretion, decide to reimburse Buyer under the terms of the Amazon.com A-to-z Guarantee, provide a refund to Buyer if Seller cannot promptly deliver the goods, discover erroneous or duplicate transactions, or receive a chargeback from Buyer's credit card issuer for the amount of Buyer's purchase from Seller." So lets look at this in more detail for a bit. "We reserve the right to seek reimbursement from Seller if we, in our sole discretion..." So this means that even if the issue was worked out between buyer and seller, if for some reason Amazon's workers who just paste responses for a job doesn't like it, then you're out of luck. "...decide to reimburse Buyer under the terms of the Amazon.com A-to-z Guarantee..." Now lets break off from their participation agreement real quick and look at the conditions for an A-to-Z guarantee coming straight from Amazon.com... "You can file an Amazon.com A-to-z Guarantee claim if you purchased physical goods from a seller or merchant selling on the Amazon.com website (including the Amazon.com Marketplace), or used Amazon Payments to purchase physical goods from a third party website. See "Exclusions from coverage" below for a list of items that are not covered by the A-to-z Guarantee." OK. I have no problems with this. This requirement was met in this situation. But going on... "One of the three conditions below must also apply: You made payment to the seller through the Amazon.com website or a third party website using Amazon Payments, but the seller failed to deliver the item by 3 calendar days past the maximum estimated delivery date for an order or 30 days from the order date, whichever is sooner..." The buyer filed his claim less than two weeks after he ordered it. the earliest he would have been able to file a claim meeting this condition would be on the 25th of August. "...or You received the item, but the item was defective, damaged, or not the item depicted in the seller's description..." There was nothing wrong with the item at all, even though this is what the buyer originally claimed to submit his report. At the time of the filing of the claim, the buyer hadn't even received the item. This condition was not met. "...or You have returned the item to the seller per an agreement between the buyer and seller and the seller has not provided the agreed reimbursement to the buyer after receiving the item." No plan for return was even discussed between the buyer and I at any point. So far, this claim appears to be a completely invalid claim, and the fact that it was allowed to be filed, and that Amazon granted it, is pretty much going against their own terms. Now looking more into Amazons requirements for filing a claim, there are also requirements for filing a claim for a late item. "When do I use the "I did not receive my item or received them late" reason while filing an A-to-z Guarantee claim? If the estimated delivery date noted on your order detail page has passed and you have still not received the product(s) you ordered, you can file a claim citing the reason "I did not receive my item or received them late." Well, as stated earlier, the estimated delivery date hadn't passed yet. This Would have been the correct claim that would be used in a situation similar to this, but the requirements to do so had not been met yet. "You can also choose the desired resolution: Received item late and would like to return: The item arrived after the estimated delivery date, and you would like to return the item to the seller rather than keep it." As I told the seller, I would be more than happy to work out a refund/return if the item came after the estimated delivery date. "Did not receive full order or part of the order: Some or all items in the order have not been delivered to you yet." Again, not valid for this order, and the customer even noted so my marking the item is as described when leaving me feedback. "Received items late and would like to have shipping credit: The item arrived beyond the estimated delivery date, but you would keep it if the seller were to issue you a refund for your shipping costs." This I would also have had no problem doing, but it is still not valid due to the item coming on time. So now we see that the item did not meet the criteria to be filed under an A-to-Z claim. Lets continue looking where we left off at their Participation Agreement. "...provide a refund to Buyer if Seller cannot promptly deliver the goods..." I shipped the package out the day after the order was placed. Any problems with the delivery from this time on were not under my control, and would be problems due to the postal service. "...discover erroneous or duplicate transactions..." Not related to this situation... "...or receive a chargeback from Buyer's credit card issuer for the amount of Buyer's purchase from Seller." Again, this has nothing to do with this situation. So not only has this refund not met the criteria for an A-to-Z claim, but it also means that this refund being take from my account was not covered under their participation agreement. I appealed the decision made on Amazons part, and pointed out the agreement made with the buyer about him leaving feedback when the item arrived, and that he not only left me positive feedback indicating the item had arrived, but also indicated that it arrived on time, was as described, and that i provided customer service. I also pointed out that this claim should not have even been filed as none of the criteria had been met to justify an A-to-Z guarantee claim. I also emailed the buyer, asking him to email Amazon and confirm that the item had arrived and everything was as described. This was on the 21st of August. The buyer did eventually email Amazon on the 29th of August, although I have no idea what he might have said, and for all I know he could have told Amazon he never got the item and take advantage of Amazon's obviously flawed and abusable system. I'm just hoping this buyer is a good guy and did try to clear things up with Amazon with that email. However, on September 6th, I finally got a reply from Amazon, denying my appeal to this claim and closing the case, which no longer gave me a chance to appeal. They say my information doesn't prove a delivery (did they even read my exchanges with this customer?) , and said I should pay for signature delivery confirmation for every item I ship to avoid this, and again citing their participation agreement. They also go on to say they wont help me with this case anymore. They say my information doesn't prove a delivery. I read through their participation agreement, and did not see any terms that allowed Amazon to grant a refund in such a condition. So basically I think it comes down to this. These people that go over these claims probably just skim over all the information provided looking for a confirmation number they could plug into some website. If they don't see a number anywhere, then they can't help you. This pretty much means any person can go on to file a claim for any stupid reason if the seller didn't shell out the $5 for a signature confirmation (they wont even accept normal delivery confirmations), and get the item for free, even if they abuse Amazons own system to file a claim. Normally I would think to blame the buyer for abusing this system to file a claim earlier than possible, but i think it's more Amazon's fault that they do not control or moderate what kind of claims that are being filed, and allow them to go through even if they don't meet any criteria for an A-to-Z claim. I'd love to hear from people that have advice on what I can do at this point, or from people that have had similar problems and how they resolved them.

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