I only get an email from amazon that customer’s refunded and amazon deduct money from payments. I consider returns as a loss in numbers but what is actually happening with the returned items itself? Amazon through them straight into the bin or sell themselves at a cheaper price ?
Sometimes it takes 50 sales to get $100 profit but then 2-3 customer returns for any reason eat all the profit.
Amazon will check the condition of the item and either put it into active Sellable inventory or Unsellable inventory where you can choose to remove / dispose of it.
You can see on Amazon report what goes back to inventory or get reimbursed to you, but I noticed that missing units do not get record on the file, I’m thinking that probably because custom decide to keep it, but not sure why Amazon don’t record missing item when customers asked for refund?
The returns belong to you. You can resell them in most cases.
If an item is in new condition it just gets added back to your inventory.
Of course sometimes the returns are damaged by the customer and have to be binned. But this is all part of the game which is why it’s not best to sell very expensive products on Amazon.