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A to Z Claim - Amazon's fault or my misunderstanding
 

A buyer recently purchased something from me and then asked me to cancel the purchase.

I said sure and asked them to cancel it by following the link in the footer of the email.

No response. I told them again to do it before 24 hours otherwise we would have to ship the item.

No response again. I sent them a final message explaining the situation and told them if they did not cancel I would have to ship the item to avoid a late shipment and that could return the item for a full refund if they liked.

Most of the emails I was getting were from Amazon saying "buyer wishes to cancel please resolve so and so.

They finally opened an AtoZ claim after I had shipped the items and then I sent them a message explaining my side and asking why they never responded to me.

I check the "sent messages" and I see all of the messages in red, saying failed to deliver, email address incorrect.

None of the messages I sent went through to them. Am I at fault for this claim? Should Amazon take responsibility?

How do I proceed? Do I call them? My account is clean by the way.

hmm
Sounds like the buyer might have been trying to stiff you all along.

There was no option for you to cancel the transaction?

oh jeez... If a buyer sends a message and even uses a word that rhymes with cancel, you don't ship the item. I cannot imagine why you would have gone ahead and ship the item just because the buyer didn't go through the proper cancellation protocol. At the end of the day, doing the cancel yourself will hurt your metrics, but just a little.. not nearly as much as an A-to-z claim. Amazon will not be responsible for this.

The very best thing you can do at this point is to try to contact the customer and say, "please refuse the package from us so that I can process your refund immediately." If you're lucky you'll get your item back. Normal would be losing the A-to-z, hurting your metrics, refund, and no item back. This could have all been avoided ^^

Well I dont believe the buyer was trying to scam. They purchased the same item twice, so they asked to cancel the second one.

Also why would Amazon decide in their favor and let them keep the item. I am more familiar with ebay cases, and they always make you return the item.

Why on earth would you ship the item? Im afraid this is entirely your fault, not amazons and not the customers.

If you cancel an order and you select buyer cancelled your metrics are not affected on any way. I dont know what it is that makes people think otherwise but it does not affect anything and that is what you should have done.

Buddy, you should just have cancelled order, with the reason buyer cancelled,pretty simple really. Yet you have made a soap opera out of it. Crazy

A to Z claim by customer allows him/her the option of NOT returning the item if he/she is deemed to be correct. Not really much you can do now except communicate with the buyer if you want to try to win.

Why would communication with the buyer work at this point?

Does the OP even know if the contact address is corrected?

:spy:

And that's why the OP has done all he/she can - pretty much done on this transaction

Its your job/duty to cancel a transaction if a buyer request it to be cancelled as long as you havent shipped it yet. Which it seems like u didnt. Unlike ebay buyers cannot cancel the order after it is placed on amazon.

Rephrase that, they can but only have 2-3 minutes to be able to cancel a transaction themselves then its up to you the seller to cancel it.

From what i can see here the buyer ask you nicely and you didnt comply so now youre out some more and have an a-z claim against the account

Ok it seems like on here everyone automatically only sees things one way. I am not just a small part time seller, I sell over 30k a month on Amazon. I am only saying that so you guys know I do have a bit of knowledge of the system.

I have contact Amazon before on this matter just to be clear about the process. Recently they have added a new feature that at the bottom of every message there is a link to cancel the transaction and the buyer can click that and proceed with it. Amazon has told me that this is the correct way to do it and if you do it any other way it will affect your metrics.

To the person that says it does not affect your metrics, you are wrong. When I first started selling on Amazon and wasn't too familiar with it, I cancelled two orders because I did not have the item and they automatically suspended my account. I had to call them to reinstate it.

So now from my perspective, after I went out of my way to contact and reason with the buyer, why would I just to just automatically lower my metrics?

Usually I am pretty good at explaining things to buyers and reasoning with them. In this case they never got any of my messages. Isn't this Amazon's fault?

If you don't have the item of course it will affect your metrics, this is your bad management. If you cancel an order cos the customer wants to cancel, this will not affect your metrics. If amazon did not want you cancel customer orders then there would be no option to do this on the site. Dude you have brought this a-z on yourself. To be honest, IF you are selling 30k a month, why worry, one a-z or negative feedback will make no difference to your account.

Im afraid you are completely wrong and a tiny bit of research would have told you this. As a new seller cancelling an order because of no inventory is an absolute no no, and is is the case here will get you banned.

However selecting to cancel the order because "buyer cancelled" will not harm your metrics in any way. Most amazon sellers know this and that is why they select that reason whether it is true or not. Recently amazon have introduced a link on emails but this has exactly the same impact as selecting buyer cancelled does, which is none.

from amazon themselves

"Some refunds represent a quickly processed return, or an order cancelled at the customer's request. These are excellent customer experiences and we do not intend to punish sellers for providing this basic level of service"

If you make a post asking for help its always a good idea to know what you are talking about before telling people they are wrong.

If you sell over 30k a month then why worry about 1 a-z claim that wont affect your account due to volume to begin with?

Cut your loses and move on.

I dont sell 30k items I sell about $30k. Thats only about 200 items a month.

If I get 1 more A to Z claim then I am right at the 1% rate that Amazon requires you to be below. If anything happens after that then that puts my account in jeopardy. You don't just think oh who cares, you have to think for the future.

Also everyone here is just saying you shouldnt have done this or done that. It happened, its done.

My question is how can I go forward from it. In my opinion its Amazon's fault that there was no communication with the buyer, I shouldnt be at fault from it

^^^ You're right, it happened, it's done. It doesn't matter who is at fault. You can try to appeal but it sounds like Amazon will side with the buyer on this and your metrics will be affected either way.

If you're doing 30k a month in sales and only selling 200 items, you should probably think about adding some fluff items. Cheap stuff that tends to get highly reviewed by customers and has no problems. If a customer complains about something cheap, it doesn't hurt to just give a full refund to avoid a-to-z. Your sales number to income ratio is just way too low and now you're seeing the issues it can cause.

While amazon may be at fault, you will most likely be penalized for it and take that risk of punishment.

Try emailing amazon and hope that it doesn't affect you.

Just move on, its your fault, you should just have refunded when the customer requested. To get to one percent you have either very little feedback or lots of claims, refunds, late shipping etc. If its only little feedback, send an e mail to each customer asking for feedback, the more feedback you get the better your metrics will be. Also if your items are high priced, look at FBA then you will have no problems, or just use FBA for a few months till your metrics improve. If all your sales are through FBA and legit, then amazon won't kick you.Also you can sell at higher prices with FBA.

On FBA are you not responsible for anything anymore? I have always been scared to use it because I feel like things would get way too complicated with it.

Yes, FBA gives you more leeway.

I strongly suggest you go read through sellercentral on amazon.

You need to know your selling platform thoroughly.

There are advantages to FBA.

:heh:

If you are selling legit product, you can maintain a margin as fees are higher FBA is easy. You are only responsible for sending the goods to amazon, then amazon do everything. Read seller central as Green Bean suggests.

Less complicated ONCE you learn your way

Put this behind you

Move onwards

:peace: