Is anyone else sick and tired of customers buying items on Amazon, replacing the new product with a damaged one or even a completely different item and then returning it for a refund?
Amazon essentially enables this type of theft, and it’s not right; my bottom line is suffering because of it.
Unfortunately, every seller dealing with physical products feels this pain, because Amazon’s return system is built to maximize customer convenience, not seller protection, and it absolutely encourages swaps, bricking, part theft, and straight-up fraud. Most of us eventually land on a combination of defensive strategies rather than a single fix. The big ones are: tightening return settings where allowed (for example, requiring Amazon to dispose of certain low-value or easily swapped items so you don’t pay two-way shipping just to get back junk), adding unique internal identifiers on products or packaging (tiny serial stickers, UV marks, or batch numbers) so you can at least win SAFE-T claims when the item returned isn’t yours, and filing every possible reimbursement when Amazon processes a return incorrectly or the buyer sends back a different product. On higher-value items, many sellers shift to refurbished or “Returnless Refund” rules to cut losses from inbound fraud returns, because paying £5–£10 for a returnless refund is actually cheaper than getting a £50+ write-off of an unsellable item. Some also split listings between “new” and “renewed” to reduce customer expectations and fraud volume.
The truth is that Amazon won’t fix this anytime soon, so the best you can do is build fraud-loss assumptions into your pricing, use SAFE-T claims aggressively, tighten eligibility where possible, and adopt internal tracking so you can dispute fraudulent returns with evidence. It doesn’t eliminate the problem, but it keeps it from eating your margins unchecked.
Sadly, this type of fraud is a routine on Amazon and many buyers believe they are just outsmarting the company, causing losses to Jeff, therefore this being a victimless trick.
I am not even getting back damaged or different items. My own buyers usually send back an empty envelope for a full refund.