I recently signed up as an Amazon merchant to sell some of my old computer gear. Seems a smart alternative to the mess that is eBay. Been doing pretty well, but just had someone request a refund and I don’t know how to process a refund through Amazon Merchant Services. Hopefully you can help me out?
I’m with you that in the last few years, Amazon’s grown its private merchant area to the point where it’s a major competitor to eBay, particularly if you aren’t interested in auctions but are seeking instead “buy it now” prices or fixed price sellers. It’s a drag because I can remember when eBay first came on the scene and how it was such an amazing place for buyers and sellers to connect and exchange all sorts of collectibles and treasures. Now it seems to be all about Chinese and other foreign companies selling cheap knock-offs of legit products or offering $20 for $8 plus $35 shipping.
Meanwhile on Amazon, there’s a solid buyer guarantee and it just seems quite hassle-free. In fact, I’ve purchased dozens of used books, CDs, DVDs, etc through Amazon at this point and had almost no problems. The only times something’s been wrong, the sellers have helped come up with a prompt resolution without any hassle. Nice. Easy.
It’s no wonder so many people are moving onto Amazon as a way of selling their own new and used goods. Myself included!
Which turns out to be fortuitious because I had to issue a refund to a buyer a few days ago myself. Here’s how I did it…
The sequence started with me receiving an email indicating the buyer requested a refund:
Okay. Interestingly, the email doesn’t have any links (which is good since that can be spoofed by hackers) so you’re kind of on your own to find where to go. I just go to the “Sell on Amazon” link on the very bottom of the home page and log in to the merchant services area from there. Once you do, you’ll see a summary of your transactions and, on the left side:
You can see that I haven’t sold much in the last week or so, but there is a return request pending. To get to it, I can click on “View your Orders”, but a faster way to find it is to simply click on the number “1” instead. That produces:
As you can see, there are four choices: Authorize request, Close request, Issue refund or Contact buyer.
Since their explanation worked for me — sometimes you get the wrong thing, or get something local since you don’t want to wait — I clicked on “Issue refund” to proceed.
That gave me this rather huge page in the Amazon Merchant area:
Lots of fields to deal with, but fundamentally it’s just the amount of the transaction plus, if you’re so inclined, a few bucks for extra shipping charges or other concessions (not sure what they’d be but that’s going to be different depending on the product).
I definitely would encourage you to add a note to the buyer at this point to remind them of how cool you are as a seller (can’t hurt!).
Done? Click on “Submit Full Refund” and…
Congrats. You just issued a refund through Amazon Merchant Services. 🙂
It’s really nice. Thanks Dave for provide the details of refunding a transaction through Amazon Merchant Services!