What You Need to Know About Updates to Amazon’s A to Z Guarantee

This month, Amazon announced an update to its A to Z Guarantee, stating that it will pay up to $1,000 if a customer suffers property damage or personal injury from a product purchased in their third-party marketplace, at no expense to the seller.

If a customer chooses to file a claim through the A-to-Z claims process, they must agree that they will not file a claim through an alternative forum until Amazon has a chance to resolve the claim.

Why is Amazon making this change now?

Last month, The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) filed a complaint against Amazon over the sale of hundreds of thousands of hazardous products being sold by third-party sellers using its FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) program. 

Amazon’s update to its A to Z Guarantee is a direct answer to this. They hope this change will increase the trust that customers have shopping for products on the Amazon.com marketplace. That trust has been eroded over recent years by aggressive counterfeit sellers and foreign-based sellers outside the jurisdiction of US courts.

How will this policy affect Amazon sellers?

At this time, it remains unclear how this policy will benefit honest and trustworthy Amazon sellers. With the potential for customers to return products for a cash sum that far exceeds the price of the actual product, it’s possible that it will increase the number of claims against sellers, once it becomes well-known that Amazon will settle any agreement on the Seller’s behalf, up to $1000.

It’s likely that this will result in a significant increase in return rates, and consequentially cause Amazon to suspend products that fall victim to those rates, even if those return rates are within the normal range for the product category.

What does this cost the seller?

Nothing- the process, outcome of the claims, and payments will be completely taken care of by Amazon.