Amazon has made FBA Returnless Resolutions available to sellers on Amazon.co.uk, letting customers keep some returned items and still get their money back.
The setting, announced to sellers on 27 October, is now live in Amazon’s UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish stores. It applies to products sold through Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), where Amazon stores, packs and ships the seller’s stock.
### How it works
Sellers choose to enrol. They can then:
– set a maximum item price for returnless refunds, anywhere from £1 to £75 on Amazon.co.uk (€1 to €75 in the EU stores)
– apply it to every product, with an optional list of exclusions uploaded as a CSV file, or only to products they pick.
Amazon assesses each return on its own. If a return meets its eligibility criteria, the customer is refunded automatically and keeps the item. Other reports of the launch say the checks take into account the item’s price and category, the customer’s return history and the seller’s account standing.
### The trade-offs
Amazon says the setting saves sellers the costs of processing, storing and removing returned stock. But:
– items kept by customers are not eligible for inventory reimbursement
– returnless refunds still count towards a seller’s return rate
– Amazon’s high return rate fee is not charged on returns settled this way.
Sellers track the outcome of each return on the FBA Returns page in Seller Central.
The scheme is already available to FBA sellers in the US, where the price limit is $75.
Returns are a significant cost for online sellers of low-priced goods, where the cost of collecting, checking and restocking an item can be more than the item is worth.
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