Amazon's return policy loophole was discovered! A seller stole 4.95 million and was arrested

Recently, Amazon broke the news that someone took advantage of Amazon's return policy and made nearly 5 million yuan! The seller involved has been sued by Amazon and the Xiamen Procuratorate!

Recently, the prosecutor's office of Xiamen Siming Court filed a public prosecution, claiming that a man named Zhou discovered a loophole in Amazon's advance payment refund, formed a gang, used purchased credit card information to open an Amazon store, and then uploaded a large number of low-priced products. He then used his own registered buyer account to purchase these products, and applied for a high refund due to product quality issues, and then controlled his own seller account to directly agree to the refund in the background.

Because Amazon will advance these refunds first, and then deduct the money from the seller's account. However, the store credit cards applied for by these stores were rejected, and Amazon had no way to deduct the refund from the seller. Zhou got the refund paid by Amazon for free. The gang also operated a large number of these sellers and buyers' stores to earn refunds, making a total profit of 4.95 million yuan , and was eventually arrested by Amazon and Xiamen law enforcement departments.

What else can I say after reading this news? It’s all because of Amazon’s own relaxed return policy. We sellers have long been screwed by this refund policy.

We have previously reported that Amazon's loose refund policy has spawned a group of consumers who use rhetoric and loopholes to refund but not return products, causing sellers to send out goods for nothing. This was exposed when the seller accidentally discovered that he had a large number of orders that were refunded but not returned. In fact, this situation has been happening sporadically before, but few people noticed it.

This is because Amazon further relaxed some of its refund policies and conditions last year. There are even video tutorials online that specifically teach people how to communicate with Amazon customer service to get a refund while keeping the goods.

In the middle of the year, Amazon teamed up with the police to catch a habitual freeloader. Before he was arrested, he had conducted hundreds of transactions on Amazon and successfully applied for non-return refunds for more than 300 of them. The value of the free goods was as high as 300,000 US dollars!

The reason why sellers suffer in this freeloading link is that they sell goods honestly, so Amazon can deduct the money from the sellers. Zhou, the seller who made 4.95 million yuan from Amazon this time, also discovered this and used this loophole of advance payment to teach his brother-in-law a good lesson.

Will the return policy be tightened?

Allowing consumers to return goods with confidence can, to a certain extent, reduce their psychological burden of spending money, promote their transactions, and leave themselves with an impression of "good after-sales service", so unilaterally tightening the return policy is not advisable. I estimate that it may still be necessary to crack down on freeloaders and strengthen audits to reduce the possibility of freeloader orders. Don't panic if you encounter a large number of sellers who refund but don't return goods. Come to our communication group to discuss coping experiences and methods with everyone!