Difference between order cancellations & refunds

If you find that you are unable to fulfill the order or any portion of the order after it has been confirmed, it will be necessary to issue a refund.

Please note that this article applies to orders managed through your seller account in the orders section, when viewing a specific order. Orders managed via data feeds have additional functionality.

What is the difference between canceling an order and refunding an order?

In the simplest terms, an order cancellation is a pre-fulfillment task, and a refund is a post-fulfillment task. An order can only be canceled if it has not yet been confirmed. Once an order has been confirmed, if you are unable to fulfill the order or can only partially fulfill the order, it will be necessary to issue a refund.

This is primarily due to how Amazon systems process buyer payments for seller-fulfilled orders. When a buyer places a seller-fulfilled order, an authorization for the entire order amount is placed on the buyer’s credit card. This essentially places a hold on the funds, but does not actually debit the buyer's credit card.

Canceling an order will release the “hold” and because the buyer’s credit card was never actually charged, a refund is not necessary.

Once an order has been confirmed, the buyer’s credit card is debited for the entire order amount. This is true even if only a single item in a multi-item order has been confirmed.

- Ralph

What is acceptable feedback?

We understand feedback is an important cornerstone for you and it directly reflects the service you provide for any order you fulfill. Most of the time, buyers review the previous feedback received by sellers before they complete their orders. Hence, it is essential for you to maintain a clean feedback rating.

Occasionally, buyers leave feedback that may not reflect the quality of service they received on a particular transaction. However, most of the time, feedback has an effect on a sellers’ reputation. It is because we want you to be very successful that Amazon will remove feedback that meets certain criteria. Amazon will remove feedback only when:

• The feedback includes obscene language.
• The feedback includes personally identifiable information.
• The entire feedback comment is a product review.
• The entire feedback comment is regarding fulfillment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon. (Feedback which qualifies for removal under this rule will not be removed, but a line will appear through the rating and the statement, "This item was fulfilled by Amazon, and we take responsibility for this fulfillment experience" will be added.)

Apart from the above mentioned criteria, any other feedback will not qualify to be removed from your selling account. Regardless, we at Seller Support (Technical Account Management) are often contacted by sellers requesting removal of feedback which contains comments such as “Okay,” “Received the item” or “Satisfactory” to name a few. However, since these ratings do not meet any of the removal criteria, we will not be permitted to remove them.

You may still have this kind of feedback removed from your selling account if the buyer chooses to remove it. We encourage you to contact the buyer to request they review feedback that you believe was left in error. Some buyers may not know how to remove their feedback, in which case you can direct them to the Help page at the URL below:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=537774#remove

If the buyer does not remove their feedback, you may want to post a response with your own account of the transaction in your feedback profile. To post a response, log in to your seller account, and under Reports; click "Manage your Ratings and Feedback." This will display the most recent page of feedback ratings. Find the feedback in question and click the button to respond. We wish all our sellers on Amazon success in procuring good feedback ratings for all orders they fulfill.

Happy Selling!

- Yuvraj P

Best Practices When Contacting Seller Support

We’ve put together some “best practices” for you to follow when you contact Seller Support to help ensure the quality and speed of our response. 

When creating a new case in your Case Log, include as much information about your question as you can, including:

• If your question is about inventory: Provide the SKU or ASIN numbers
• If your question is about a specific order: Provide the complete order number(s)
• If your question is about a file upload: Provide the Reference ID or Batch ID and the exact Error Message Received
• If your question is about a Settlement Report: Provide the date of the settlement report
• If your question is about an error or incorrect image on a product detail page: Provide a link to the page

Providing complete information when you contact Support helps us give you the assistance you need!

- Petar Z.

View Webinar on Amazon Product Ads

Interested in a new way to drive customers to your website?  Last week the Amazon Product Ads team hosted an introduction to Amazon's CPC advertising program.  We will show you how Product Ads works, where your products will be advertised and how to get started.  This is a must watch for any advertiser!

After watching the webinar, be sure to check our webinar schedule to find about future webinars.

Happy viewing,

Michelle S.

Best Practices for Submitting Item Feeds

If you use feeds to update your product listings, there are a number of things you can do to decrease their processing time.

After the initial upload, you do not need to provide all product information in your feed, unless you are updating all aspects of your existing listing. If you intend to update only your prices and quantities, your feed will process more quickly if it doesn’t include any listing data you don’t wish to modify.

Feed data can be broken into four parts:

1. Price
2. Inventory and lead time to ship
3. Images
4. Product Data and Relationship Data
    (description, bullet points, category, etc.)

To create Pricing and Inventory feeds, eliminate from your feed any product data that typically does not change (particularly Product, Relationship and Image information). You can maintain a separate feed that contains full product data which you can upload when that data changes. Below are the fields required for creation of Pricing and Inventory feeds:

• sku, item-price, currency – this will update just your price (you can submit sale prices in this feed)
• sku, quantity, leadtime-to-ship – this will updated your quantity; leadtime-to-ship must be included if the item does not have the default 1-2 day leadtime-to-ship

- Brent M.

Read the latest Amazon Product Ads news

This week we launched the March 2010 Amazon Product Ads newsletter.
 
Here's what's in our latest edition:
-Your Ads in More Places
-Don’t Miss a Click with Ref Tags
-New Resources for Agencies and Feed Aggregators
-Resolving Your Content Violations
-Recap of Product Improvements

To receive the monthly Amazon Product Ads newsletter simply subscribe today. Updates on our latest product enhancements, optimization tips and announcements will be sent to your inbox every month.

-Michelle S.

This week we launched the March 2010 Amazon Product Ads newsletter.
 
Here's what's in our latest edition:
-Your Ads in More Places
-Don’t Miss a Click with Ref Tags
-New Resources for Agencies and Feed Aggregators
-Resolving Your Content Violations
-Recap of Product Improvements

To receive the monthly Amazon Product Ads newsletter simply subscribe today. Updates on our latest product enhancements, optimization tips and announcements will be sent to your inbox every month.

-Michelle S.

What is the status of my case?

You’ve probably already noticed that many of Amazon’s e-mails contain a subject line that starts with a case ID number. When you contact Amazon Seller Support with an issue, we track your issue through our case system. We understand your concerns are important, and we do our best to research and resolve them as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, some cases take longer than others depending on the complexity of the reported issues. The wait can be painful, but not receiving any updates during the wait would be just plain agonizing.

The Amazon Services Case Log was created to alleviate this pain point. This functionality:

• Allows Seller Support to update your case in real time by leaving a contact within the case that can be seen through the case log (no need to create a new e-mail or call Seller Support to find out the status).
• Captures communications between you and Amazon by logging all messages to and from Seller Support (no more worrying about missing important messages and updates).
• Sends e-mail confirmation when you create or update a case (which includes the case number for your convenience).
• Provides historical case history if you’re looking for helpful information from previous cases (no need to scan all your old e-mails).
• Gives you the ability to add a message directly to your case (ensuring that all related information is kept in one place).
• Tells you the status of the case (if it’s “open,” we’re working on it).

In addition, when you contact us by phone, you can help us assist you even faster by providing the case number, which is now clearly visible in the Amazon Services Case Log!

- E.K.