Tell HN: Amazon fraudulently canceling orders as returned items

[sigmaprimus]

Just wanted to let people know incase there are sellers that are having to pay return fees for items that Amazon has canceled due to the state of emergency and highway washouts in British Columbia.

I just got scolded by the rudest customer service rep I have ever dealt with. Apperantly I should "Know full well that BC had a weather event and that my items were damaged" which is another lie as I tracked them and they never left the Amazon processing center.

But anyways I assume what they are doing is clearing up space for new deliverable orders as the center is jammed full of packages that are for addresses cut off from the lower mainland. All new orders are being rerouted from the east rather than the south, but instead of reshipping the items at their southern warehouse, they just claimed they were all returns and placed the owness on the sellers for returned items.

I guess doing the right thing would have eaten into Amazons profit margins, and if those margins are not big enough...well I guess their billionaire owner wont be able to take another joy ride into space.

Dealing with Amazon customer support is felling more and more like dealing with an abusive partner.

[blago]

You know what Amazon did to me? They delisted my product claiming it was counterfeit. Then they started to directly promote and sell my own inventory.

I know it was mine because I contacted the brand to check if Amazon had bought from them. They hadn't. Also, I was the only one selling this item on Amazon so they couldn't have stolen from someone else. What's more, I was the only one importing it to the US. I know because I'm acquainted with the brand owners.

When I finally managed to get my stuff out of their warehouses, which took almost a year, they admitted that some of the inventory had been "lost" and compensated me pennies on the dollar.

It was a surreal, Kafkaesque, experience that still brings back painful memories. I avoid thinking about it but I hope that one day Amazon will crash, burn, and hopefully never recover.

[cmurf]

This is fraud. If it's trivially provable the product is not counterfeit, then what they did is criminal. Not civil.

If so, it should be documented. All the evidence with relevant vendor contact information, accounts, dates, events. Each state has their own consumer protection laws, so as this involves interstate commerce who to report it to will vary, but you can start by calling local police. They can tell you about jurisdiction, and escalate to stat consumer protection division. And states work together with the FTC on such cases as well.

[arenaninja]

A quick question. How do you find manufacturers for a particular brand? I want to dabble in becoming a supplier (not for Amazon nor US) but so far I can't figure out the suppliers for brands you would find at Walmart, etc.

[beervirus]

Why didn’t you sue?

[mabbo]

I can tell you a more likely story than "big conspiracy on Amazon's part".

Amazon has systems in place to say "We cannot ship from X to Y anymore", but they require manual intervention and maybe those tools don't get used very much. Until someone finds the right button and presses it, orders are dropping into the warehouse to be fulfilled. Ship this sprocket from Vancouver to Calgary since Calgary's site has none.

But the truck didn't show up, or maybe it did but now it's got nowhere to go.

Now the dock has one section slowly filling up with packages. It's been days. Dock doors are a limited resource, and here's a bunch of them with a mountain of packages blocking them. And the site leadership, well, they have metrics to hit. Just like every other cog in the machine, they will be fired if they don't make rate. What, you thought it was just the lowly associates who are running with dogs nipping at their heels?

What's a site leader to do? Well, there's a returns department right here. They've got tools that can handle the package being returned, allowing them to restock those items, refund the customers, clear the dock, and make everything go back to normal for the site.

Sounds like good 'Customer Obsession' to get those orders refunded as quickly as possible.

Sellers? Those aren't customers. Those metrics are not something the leadership needs to worry about, so they won't.

[goodluckchuck]

Sounds functionally equivalent.

[awestley]

This I 100% believe

[naikrovek]

"owness" => "onus"

I hate giving corrections, and this is a severe word misunderstanding, so I feel it's better to inform rather than leave it. I mean no disrespect by posting this, I intend only to inform and/or educate.

[hunter2_]

This is a most proper eggcorn [0] since OP's explanation is centered around "owe"...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

[wodenokoto]

Thanks, I couldn't guess the right word/spelling from context, and the dictionary didn't help me.

[sigmaprimus]

Much appreciated, I do disagree with it being severe in this particular case as the Seller now technically now owes Amazon for shipping but yes I stand corrected and intended the word "ONUS" or "BURDEN". Maybe my friends gift that was "RETURNED" by Amazon will get replaced with a Scrabble game from Walmart!! +1 for You

PS: I guess I should spend more time in the LiBerry and Axe more questions ;P

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Thank you. I didn't make that link and thought it was some rarely used English word that I hadn't heard before.

[senecaso]

Problems like this are why my business partner and I started building Vendazzo (https://vendazzo.com/). My partner had been looking for a way to run an independent shop, outside of Amazon, and realized there was no central way to funnel traffic to independent shops. Each shop is left to figure out how to get their name out there and get users onto their site, whereas if you sign up for Amazon, users are given a central search to search across all sellers and find the item(s) they are looking for.

Our product is very much a WIP, and will likely fall over with even modest load, but feel free to kick the tires. We have a lot of work we need to do, but if anyone (buyer or seller) has feedback, we would love to hear it. We're currently only indexing ~140k shops, and ~90m items, mostly from shops in the US, Canada, and Europe, but its a start.

[wsostt]

Heads up on your landing page. I didn’t know what I was supposed to type into the search box. Category, item, zip code?

[albertopv]

I would start fixing about page https://vendazzo.com/about

[imroot]

Amazon has really turned a little more hostile to Third Party Merchants in the last few years.

In 2012/2013, I was doing FBA on damaged cargo/insurance buyouts (If a truck gets into a wreck, 99.9%, they can't use the goods on the truck, so, Insurance companies will sell them for pennies on the pound. Yes, pound) when I found a company that was selling a trailer full of LG 27" monitors for what would equate to about $18/each. I had some office and self-storage space and a SUV, and would literally take 10 them from my self storage unit every day, take them to my office space, test the monitor out, open the back to inspect for damage, and then repackage everything in the box and sell them as Used/Tested/Refurbished depending on what I needed to do to get them working again.

My biggest complaint was that when someone would return a monitor, it'd never make its way back to me -- as in, it always looked like someone would never return the monitor. I'd set calendar reminders to follow up with Amazon Seller Support, and I'd always get the money credited back to my account.

I've watched the fees go up and up (when I was doing FBA, my Amazon fees would cost me around $10, shipping included, per piece. Today, the same fees would run me around $30/unit per device: my item is considered 'oversized')

As someone on the Seller Forums mentions a few different times -- you aren't amazon's customer, the end-user is. Amazon is just a channel for selling your goods. Unfortunately, dealing with Amazon as a channel partner is just basically russian roulette -- no matter how well you can describe your problem, you're working with a team that just doesn't care.

I've had offers from the same trucking insurance company over the last few years -- even a truck load of PS5's this summer -- but, didn't really want the headache of dealing with Amazon, so, I've turned the offers down.

[mdrzn]

Buy these trucks full of goods for cheap, and resell somewhere else? Even eBay, instead of Amazon, would be great for flipping these items.

Or even better, there's a need for an aggregator where people can offer to buy "their share" of the full truck of damaged items, and once you have sold 100% of the truck you send the items and collect the payment.

[OJFord]

What actually happened? I'm having a hard time tying up the title with your description of it.

They cancelled an order on your behalf, then when you contacted to say you didn't cancel it, they claimed it was damaged in transit? And refused to honour the original price in sending a replacement?

[sigmaprimus]

They did not cancel the order, I ordered the items, they claimed I returned the items which did cancel the order in a round about way. This may make my issue more clear. Below is a copy of the email I sent a consumer protection advocate in my area explaining my personal issues with this situation. Beyond all that they are also taking advantage of sellers by processing items that Amazon had canceled as returns which has a punitive effect on sellers.

>>>>

Hello,

I recently made some purchases on Amazon.ca and because of the shipping routes being cut off due to the weather events my shipments are delayed. This is an understandable situation but what Amazon has decided to do is cancel my orders without any option of waiting or offering a rain cheque for the items at a later date. Instead they just send an email saying your money will be refunded in 2 to 4 days(Which 2 to 4 days is also seems unreasonable considering they initiated the cancelation)

I understand why they are doing this as their warehouse/shipping center is getting jammed up with items they can not deliver but with the current state of inflation and rising prices, I will be forced to pay more for the items which I already purchased due to their lack of capacity.

When I contacted Amazon I was connected with the rudest customer service rep I have ever had and was scolded because "I know full well that there is a state of emergency in BC and that my items were most likely damaged due to the flooding". Which if that was the case I still feel my order should be fulfilled by Amazon at a later date.

I am sure I am not the only one going through this in the North and I feel this matter should be investigated for the sake of others. I would expect that somewhere in the Amazon terms and conditions there is something that absolves them from making things right but just because something is legal to do, does not always mean it is fair.

Thank You

[FDSGSG]

I suppose most users here didn't actually bother to read your screed, because it really doesn't seem to describe any real issues.

What's supposed to be the problem here? Amazon just cancelled some orders that they couldn't deliver, you got a refund.

Calling this "fraudulent"? That just makes you sound like a crazy person.

[CodeWriter23]

You’ve obviously never read The Amazon Business Services Agreement. The nuance here is Amazon charges sellers for _Returns_. How is it a return when it never left the warehouse?

[op00to]

They’re complaining because pre-pandemic, when shit broke, bitching got you your way. Now, there are just some things that aren’t gonna happen. No amount of influence or wealth insulates you from supply chain impacts of COVID.

Pre-pandemic they never had to learn how to take the L and move on. Now that the Ls are piling up, privileged people are losing their collective shit.

[slownews45]

You are a customer. There was a big issue in BC, your package from amazon was delayed and they refunded your money in full.

You are complaining because

1) the refund took two days to process, which you claim is unreasonable.

2) You are also complaining based on your emails that they didn't offer you a "rain cheque", depsite the fact that amazon does not offer rain cheque's, and in fact changes prices of item you have put in your cart.

You have now contacted a consumer protection advocate with this claim of fraud.

Good luck! This is the MOST ridiculous consumer complaint I have seen.

Are sellers treated like crap? For sure, that is a given. Sellers are not amazon's customers, there is no seller obsession, their is a customer obsession, and for the metrics amazon is watching what they did here probably makes sense, they can restock and reship these items to places they can deliver to.

[grodriguez100]

The first time I read this I thought you were a seller (due to your references to hypothetical return fees to be paid by sellers). After reading through the comments it seems that this is not the case —- you are a regular customer, you purchased some items, then the order was cancelled. Is that correct?

If so, is that really such a big deal? Aren’t you making a mountain out of a molehill?

[achenatx]

I posted a review that their amazon basics batteries leaked within a year just sitting on a shelf. They flagged my review as not meeting community standards and didnt post it.

[ddtaylor]

Almost everyone selling on Amazon knows that they have almost no recourse.

[jcrawfordor]

This seems like pretty normal behavior actually... they attempted to deliver the order, there was a failure to deliver, and so they are refunding it. I think it comes off weird just because of Amazon's kind of lazy implementation.

I've had a nearly identical experience and I believe the reason is some shortcuts in Amazon's integration with UPS. In my case, I ordered a fairly expensive item from Amazon, it was late on delivery, and then I saw (via MyChoice) that the UPS tracking had been updated with a note along the lines of "merchandise missing, returning carton to shipper." It seemed like either someone had stolen it in shipping or something had happened that broke the box open. In any case, this decision by UPS to "return to sender" seems to have automatically triggered return processing on Amazon's side, as I got a "We couldn't deliver your item" email from Amazon followed a couple of days later by a slightly incongruous email telling me that my return had been received and a refund issued.

They did not hold back any return fee, I got the full amount back. Overall I have no complaints about their handling, other than that the item was sold out so I'm now waiting on a restock which is slightly annoying... but that's the chip shortage for you.

As for what the seller faced, it's sort of hard to know... while not the friendliest in the world I can imagine Amazon holding back some funds from the seller in this case because the risk of things being lost in transit (or stolen after delivery) is well-known to online sellers and something they presumably price in.

On the other hand, around a year ago I had a series of Amazon orders all get stuck in the tracking and ultimately cancelled... at the same Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Southern California. They must have been having some kind of serious problem there, but it was annoying that they just kept trying to fulfill my orders out of the same place.

[floatingatoll]

I’m sorry that you had to be personally impacted to realize that Amazon is willing to screw you over rather than improve their processes.

I wish that more people realized that Amazon’s retail operation is a flea market before they suffered. I hope that your story inspires more people to realize they’re vulnerable, re-evaluate the risks of using Amazon, and cancel Amazon Prime.

[ajross]

This isn't fraud. Or if it is fraud it's not fraud against you and you don't have the information to see if it is or not.

They can't get you your item because of the weather. Whether or not you personally feel that they should have worked harder or not isn't really the issue; that's not your call to make. They tried, they decided they couldn't do it[1] so they cancelled your order and refunded your purchase price. That's good customer service, not bad.

[1] One likely reason is that they probably don't have the local warehousing space to store everyone's in-transit items; it needs to go back to a main shipping center anyway. And if they do, they should ship it to a customer they can reach from there promptly instead (which again is good customer service on the whole: ship as much stuff as you can as fast as you can).

[y-c-o-m-b]

Many things they do now days is fraudulent. 90% of my orders over $100 are open-box or straight up used items, but they still charge full price on these items. If you're even more unlucky, you might get counterfeit products too despite ordering from the genuine manufacturer on Amazon's page.

[marban]

Another anecdote from someone with ~20k orders: I bought two pairs of Airpods Max, returned one of them but mixed up the boxes with the two serials. Amazon disposed[!] the brand-new returned model and still charged me for both.

[dylan604]

I mean, you messed up in a way that appears to Amazon like you tried to get one over on them. Mistakes happen, but the customer rarely wants to admit when they were the ones to make the mistake.

This is a common scam in retail. Buy something, keep the something, fill the box with something else, return the item under extremely lenient return policies, get something for free. Next buyer shockingly gets box of rocks.

[genericacct]

I also had an amazon seller not shipping anything and then claiming the item was returned last week (in Europe) fwiw.

I am guessing they're trying to game some metric so they don't get in trouble with amazon itself.

[selimthegrim]

Did they do this with Ida too? I ordered a book that got stuck in Dallas and never showed up and I'm still not sure about the refund...

[vmception]

Although Bezos is a shareholder he is off of the project. There is a different CEO.

[thrwawy3E11A]

OpticsPlanet has similarly slimy practices, some worse. The FTC should be involved by now. Don't hesitate to make a report ~ it takes a lot to budge them, but the more the merrier

[FDSGSG]

What's the slimy practice? Amazon refunded orders that they weren't able to deliver. OP is upset because there's a display bug involving the cancellation reason.