Amazon has opened FBA Returnless Resolutions to sellers on its UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish stores. If you enrol, an eligible return gets refunded and your customer keeps the item, with a price ceiling you set anywhere from 1 to 75 in local currency (euros, or pounds on Amazon.co.uk). Amazon’s announcement gives no start date, but it went up in late October and trade coverage dates the launch to the week of 27 October. Before you enrol, know that you get no reimbursement on those units and they still count toward your return rate.

What changed

  • Markets. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK, per Amazon’s Seller Central forum announcement. Ecommerce News reports the same five, and says the programme was already available on Amazon.com.
  • Price ceiling. You set a maximum item price of €1.00 to €75.00, or £1.00 to £75.00 on Amazon.co.uk.
  • Scope. You can apply it to all ASINs with an optional CSV exclusion list, or to selected ASINs only.
  • Where the setting is. Settings, then Fulfilment by Amazon, then FBA returns evaluation & ownership settings. Outcomes appear on the FBA Returns page, in the Return status column.
  • The money. Amazon says these returns are not eligible for inventory reimbursement and count toward your return rate, and that the high return rate fee is not charged on them.
  • Who decides. Amazon evaluates each return individually. Ecommerce News reports that it weighs product price, the customer’s return history, product category and your account status, and that you must be in good standing. Amazon’s forum post only says returns must meet the eligibility criteria, without listing them.

What it means for a private-label seller

The ceiling is a price, but your loss is your landed cost. When a customer keeps the unit, you give up the stock. A standard return might come back sellable, or come back damaged and qualify for reimbursement. A returnless one can do neither. So the useful comparison per ASIN is your landed cost against what a physical return costs you in handling, storage and removal, weighted by how often your returns actually come back sellable.

The maths favours products that rarely come back sellable. Think of opened consumables, hygiene items or anything your returns data shows you end up removing or disposing of anyway. You were already losing that unit, so you stop paying to move it. A product that usually returns in resale condition is the opposite case: you’d be swapping a recoverable unit for a saved logistics cost.

It won’t fix a return-rate problem. Because these returns still count, an ASIN close to its high return rate threshold stays close to it. Only the fee on these particular returns goes away. If customers are returning a product because the listing oversells it or the product fails, this setting hides the physical evidence from you. Those returned units are often how you find out what went wrong.

You give up control of the decision. You choose the ceiling and the ASINs. Amazon decides which returns qualify, and the forum post doesn’t publish the test. Ecommerce News notes the option has already drawn seller criticism, without quantifying it. A customer who learns that a cheap item doesn’t need to go back is a risk you can’t price from the outside.

What this doesn’t tell you

Nothing public shows what share of your returns would qualify, how often the same customer would be approved, or whether sales or reviews change. Amazon’s forum post also doesn’t say whether the setting starts off for everyone, though its wording is “when you enrol”. We couldn’t open Amazon’s full help page from outside Seller Central, so read the eligibility and refund terms there. Don’t assume US programme terms carry over to Europe.

What to do about it

  1. Open the setting and confirm its current state on each store you sell in. It takes a minute, and it tells you whether this affects you yet.
  2. Pull your FBA returns report by ASIN and sort by return condition. Your candidates are the ASINs where most returns end up unsellable.
  3. Compare landed cost with your real cost of a physical return for those ASINs. If the landed cost is the bigger number, leave that ASIN out, even if it’s under your ceiling.
  4. Start with selected ASINs, not all ASINs with exclusions. The trade-off is more setup work and less saved logistics cost, in exchange for a mistake that stays small.
  5. Check the Return status column after a few weeks and compare the return rate and refund cost of those ASINs with the same period before you enrolled. Peak-season returns will skew this, so don’t treat one Q4 window as a verdict.
  6. If you sell mostly higher-priced items, you can ignore this for now. Anything above the €75 or £75 limit can’t be covered by the price setting.

Sources