Amazon is sending refunds for product returns dating as far back as 2018. The company says these relate to historical cases where it had been unable to verify receipt of faulty products sent back by customers …
If you receive a faulty product from Amazon, or even change your mind, you are entitled to send it back for a full refund. The ecommerce giant usually waits until it has received the return before issuing the refund.
When a return is not received, there should be a follow-up process to resolve matters. The company told Bloomberg that there are cases where it appears it didn’t contact customers in a sufficiently clear and timely matter. It is now issuing automatic refunds in these cases.
“Following a recent internal review, we identified a very small subset of returns that were unresolved because we could not verify that the correct item had been sent back to us,” Amazon said in emails to multiple customers, which were reviewed by Bloomberg. “We could have notified these customers more clearly (and earlier) to better understand the status and help us resolve the return. Given the time elapsed, we’ve decided to err on the side of customers and just complete refunds for these returns.”
The company hasn’t specified the scale of the problem, but has combined the cost of this with the completely separate cost of stockpiling goods to avoid tariff increases. The total set aside for both is $1.1B. I’m sure the combination of these two entirely unrelated spends is in no way intended to disguise the scale of the problem.
The company is currently facing a returns-related lawsuit, but declined to say whether the two issues are related.
Amazon faces a consumer lawsuit alleging it reversed refunds from customers who followed its returns policy by leaving merchandise at designated kiosks. The company gave customers immediate refunds when items were dropped off, but recharged them full price for the merchandise if it never made it back to an Amazon facility.
The policy was designed to fight fraud in which shoppers buy something and return an empty box or an imposter product seeking a refund — though there are other places in the supply chain where the inventory can go missing.
The company says there’s no need to take any action if you believe you’re owed a historical refund for a return, as it will be issued automatically.
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