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Amazon's New Refunds Policy Will 'Crush' Small Businesses, Outraged Sellers Say (cnbc.com)
Amazon sellers are up in arms over a new returns policy that will make it easier for consumers to send back items at the merchant's expense. From a report: Marketplace sellers who ship products from their home, garage or warehouse -- rather than using Amazon's facilities -- were told this week by email that starting Oct. 2, items they sell will be "automatically authorized" for return. That means a buyer will no longer need to contact the seller before sending an item back, and the merchant won't have the opportunity to communicate with the customer. If a consumer is returning an electronic device because it's difficult to use, for example, the seller won't be able to offer help before being forced to pay a refund. "Customers will be able to print a prepaid return shipping label via the Online Return Center instantly," the email said. Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
When it comes to computer equipment, I find it much easier to use Newegg to search. And also Newegg gets points from me for taking on patent trolls, while Amazon itself is a patent troll.
Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
becoming the global proxy for "Everything".
Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?
It is silly to label them a monopoly when they aren't even the market leader.
FFS, first or second place hardly matters when there are only two fucking players left. This isn't about "leaders". This is about destroying the market altogether. You can't point at the other monopoly to dismiss or justify the existence of the arrogant and soul-crushing behavior of market domination. It's become a pathetic joke to even have anti-monopoly laws on the books anymore. At this rate, the world will be reduced to a dozen mega-corps within the next decade or two, with Amazon being the "Everything Everything" proxy. The middle class will dissolve away just as the concept of competition will. In the end, there will only be the 0.0001%, and the rest of the enslaved planet.
There are many dangerous addictions, but Greed is the one that will ultimately lead to our demise.
"Standing behind your product" is not anything like "accepting all returns for no reason". There are a large percentage of people who will return something out of stupidity, ignorance, malevolence, spite, or even just for shits and giggles.
I don't respond to AC's.
Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?
Different market. I don't want to have to deal with getting a quote or contacting a vendor to tell him what I want, I want to click on the "buy" button and buy it. Amazon does the latter. Alibaba, from every experience I've had with them, is the former.
www.aliexpress.com
In fact, Amazon's new policy is a direct result of Alibaba. People buy a bunch of shit wholesale from Alibaba and relist it on Amazon with huge markups. They "seller" on Amazon often never sees the product. They drop ship it straight to the customer who buys it off of Amazon.
Amazon's new policy is a FUCK YOU to those "sellers". If Amazon doesn't touch the inventory then they assume it's drop shipped, and will let customers get instant refunds, no questions asked. This will quickly be abused.