Amazon Seller Central Business Value
Amazon Seller Central FBA Reimbursements
Customer Order Returns Reimbursements
Cheat Sheet
How Amazon manages Customer Returns Reimbursements
• Normally, when a customer requests a refund for the return of an item that they have purchased from you through Amazon, Amazon will refund you the money once the product has been returned to the Amazon Fulfillment Center.
• This is essentially an automatic process that Amazon has setup.
• However, sometimes, the customer does not send the item back to the Amazon Fulfillment Center.
• In most cases, if an item does not arrive at a Fulfillment Center within 45 days of the return request, Amazon will charge the customer and refund you for the item.
• Only sometimes will this refund not happen.
• You would therefore have to check to make sure you have received the refund from Amazon.
• When this does not happen, you need to ask for a reimbursement from Amazon.
• If a customer does return your item to an Amazon fulfillment center within 45 days of the refund, Amazon will determine the condition of the returned item.
• If a returned item is in a sellable condition, Amazon will return the item to your inventory and not reimburse you.
• If a returned item is an unsellable condition, Amazon will determine who is responsible for the condition.
• When Amazon do accept responsibility for an unsellable return, they will reimburse you and will not add the item back to your inventory.
• Amazon does not accept responsibility nor reimburse for returned items that are damaged by a customer, subject to recall, are defective or in violation of Amazon policies, or other similar reasons.
• Amazon adds these items to your unfulfillable inventory when they are returned.
• To see which products you have received refunds for from Amazon, you would need to select “Payments” from the Drop Down Menu of the “Reports” tab on the top menu of Seller Central.
• Click on the “Transaction View” tab on the next page. From the Drop Down Menu provided alongside the action “Filter View By”, select “Refund”.
• Click on the “Custom Date Range” link to the right of the “Within” action and select the required “From” and “To” Dates.
• Remember that, as Amazon requires 45 days in which to execute a refund, you would need to include the 45 days buffer for the “To” Date.
• Click the yellow “Update” button beneath the filter option block and then click the “Download” button at the top of the table to download your report.
• Note that this report will be in .txt format but it is easier to view, sort and reconcile if you open it in excel.
• This downloaded report shows you all the orders for which you received a refund from Amazon.
• Now that we have this report, we still need to find out whether these refunded units were shipped back to Amazon or whether any items shipped back to Amazon were not refunded.
• In order to do this, we need to download another report showing us which units have been shipped back to the Amazon Fulfillment Centers as customer returns.
• Select “Fulfillment” from the Drop Down Menu of the “Reports” tab on the top menu of Seller Central.
• Under the “Customer Concessions” header on the left menu of the page, click on “FBA Customer Returns”.
• Click on the “Download” tab, select the same date range which was selected for the Refunds report and click the yellow “Request .csv Download” or grey “Request .txt Download” buttons to download the report.
• Remember that it is easier to do these reconciliations using excel-format files so we recommend you select the “Request .csv Download”.
• Once the “Report Status” says “Download” you can download and open this report. You would now need to compare the Order IDs in the Returns Report against the Order-IDs in the Refund Report and see how many of the refunded orders are missing in Returns Report.
• You can do this very quickly and easily using the vlookup function on excel.
• Anything then showing up on the Returns Report as “N/A” means it has not been refunded yet.
What to do if Amazon does not Refund Customer Returns
• Now that you have completed your reconciliation between what Amazon has refunded you for customer returns (the Refunds Report) and what Amazon has captured as a return (The Returns Report), you can now see which returns Amazon has not yet refunded you for.
• It is very important to remember the 45 days which Amazon has for the refund and to rather focus on any “N/A” indicated Order IDs more than 45 days ago.
• If Amazon has captured a return 50 days ago and you have not received a refund for it, you must open a case to request the refund or reimbursement for the return.
• You can proceed to split your Order IDs into batched of 10 to 15 only so that you can keep the batches small for each case, ensuring a fast turn-around time from Amazon.
• Remember, the fewer Order IDs they have to investigate in a single case, the faster they can investigate and attend to them.
Creating the Case for Customer Orders Returned but Not Refunded
• In order to create a case for refunds not received for Customer Orders Returned or not returned, you would need to go to the “Help” page by clicking on the “Help” link in the top right hand corner of your Seller Central Account.
• At the bottom of the “Help” page, click on the “Get Support” button.
• On the following page, select the relevant issue, which in this case would be “Selling on Amazon”.
• From the Drop Down Menu provided, select “Disbursements and Payments” from the “Your Account” heading.
• From the options provided, click the “When will I be paid for my Order?” link.
• On the next page, enter your Order ID in the available cell and click the yellow “Investigate Order” button.
• Click the yellow “View Payments Report” button and you will then be able to see what amount of refunds you are getting in total as well as when you can expect this customer return Order ID to be reimbursed to you and with which pending payment.
• If you do not have a pending payment report, you can search and open a case for this missing reimbursement in one of two ways, both of which involve returning to your Help” page, clicking on the “Get Support” button and, on the following page, selecting the relevant issue, which in this case would be “Selling on Amazon”.
• From the Drop Down Menu provided thereafter, select the “Orders” item from the “Fulfillment by Amazon” section.
• Select “Request Order Reimbursement” from this section by clicking the “Select Issue” button to the right of the issue.
• Enter your Order IDs one at a time to see whether they were indeed returned to an Amazon Fulfillment Center.
• As they appeared on your Returns Report, they will most definitely occur as received.
• Click the “No” button to show that this did not resolve your issue.
• In the box that opens below, select the “Other” issue and then complete your details.
• Once you are happy with everything you have filled in, select the yellow “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
• You can also select the “Investigate an Order” issue and complete all the details therein, including attaching your reconciliation report, to request the reimbursement or refund.
• Remember that if your returned item is in a sellable condition and Amazon has not paid you for it yet, they will not reimburse you as it simply goes back into your inventory.
• The customer will be refunded though.
• If the product is in an unsellable condition, Amazon will determine which disposition it ends up being and will reimburse you should the fault not have been yours but will not reimburse you if the customer damaged the product and made it unsellable.
• Once you are happy with all of the details you have provided, click the yellow “Send” button at the bottom of the page.