Amazon Stops Returns On Custom & Personalized Items

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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Amazon announced today that effective February 15, 2023, custom and personalized products will no longer be eligible for returns.

Sellers discussed the change in the new Amazon Seller Forums (side note: the new forum experience is, shall we say "less than optimal" - yikes!  😲)

Amazon

Starting February 15, 2023, custom and personalized products purchased on Amazon will no longer be eligible for returns.

We know it can be difficult to accept returns of customized products as they may be hard to reuse or resell. This policy makes it clear to customers that their customized product purchases are final and saves you from manually authorizing returns requests.

Custom products ineligible for returns include those that are made to order or personalized with names, designs, or inscriptions. For more information on product customization, go to Amazon Custom.

To learn more about items eligible for returns, go to About Our Returns Policies.

The number one seller concerns seems to be that this will simply cause buyers to find other ways to force returns, by opening cases or leaving negative feedback or reviews.

That is a pointless policy. Customers will leverage ODR, product reviews, etc to get what they want because "font is too small" or they "ordered by mistake" while uploading three images, placing three texts, etc.

This is a useless policy and it will create more problems than solutions. Customers will now open cases which will directly hurt the sellers even further. Here comes high ODR and more negative feedbacks. Great job Amazon.

Curious how items that are damaged in transit will be handled.

It sounds like if an ASIN is enrolled into customization, return requests are not possible. So if a custom item is damaged in transit, will the buyer need to contact Amazon Customer Service? Will Amazon CS be able to raise a replacement order, or will everything have to be handled via the messaging system?


What do you think of Amazon's new policy on custom and personalized items? Let us know in the comments below!

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.


Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderNone SuchYesterday
They really are pricing themselves into bankruptcy and then sale (privatization) of the carcass whole or in pieces.
Avatar PlaceholderkathyctbcYesterday
I have an issue with Service Metrics too. 24 year Top Rated seller.
I had a customer open THREE separate INAD cases back to back in Feb. She told a bunch of falsehoods in her comments on the case and refused to provide pictures to back up what she was saying, so I called her out on in it with proof that her statements were untrue.

Even though I knew she was trying to scam me, of course, I approved the returns [all 3] and provided a pre-paid shipping label.
She never sent anything back. I got 3 messages from eBay's system saying "We've closed your buyer's return because we have no record that they shipped the item back to you."

However, eBay's system counted all of them against me in my Service Metrics, causing my "Item not as described returns" rate to be: 0.98% even though the buyer was an obvious scammer and didn't return the items.

I didn't have to refund her since she never shipped anything back so there's not a problem there and eBay did remove her feedback, but eBay still counted the cases against me in my 'service metrics' percentage making me look bad in comparison to my peers.
Avatar PlaceholderTaiapanPenguin4 days ago
I tried it to post an IG promo and it couldn't get past the selection stage. Photos errored out and required new photos. If i want to take new photos, i can make a better posting in the native IG post generator.