FBA ODR puts our account at risk (what the heck?)
Hi everyone,
This is an odd issue that I've never seen before and I found only one other instance of such issue reported in the forums (with no definite resolution so far).
In short: FBA miss-handled a return in a customer's order. He filed the chargeback, which put our FBA ODR above 1%, which triggered "your seller-fulfilled offers are at risk at deactivation". Yep, really. I'm not joking.
Longer version:
Today we noticed a lovely message on the front page of our Seller Central account:
"Your account is at risk of deactivation.
A critical event has occured with your account that has caused it to be at risk of deactivation"
We went to Account Health and saw the following message there:
"Your account is at risk of deactivation.
Your seller-fulfilled offers are at risk of deactivation. Your Order Defect Rate is 3.12%; the target is 1%"
Below that, in the actual Order Defect Rate metirc we see two numbers:
Seller Fulfilled - 0.31% (under 1%, everything is good there)
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) - 3.12% (1 in 32 orders over the 60-day period)
We downloaded the ODR report and only order is in it. When we looked at the order, we confirmed that this was, indeed, and FBA order, and there is a chargeback, associated with that order. We, of course, don't see it on the list of chargebacks because this is an FBA Order chargeback, i.e. everything is handled by Amazon there. It shows that Amazon issued full refund to this order two weeks ago and the Refund Reason was "Return Processing Error". My guess is that Amazon FBA miss-managed the return (or the customer did something shady with the return), i.e. they initially didn't refund the customer, but then he complained and they issued the refund, but the customer also filed the chargeback with his card issuer.
I called Account Health specialists today (Case ID 14842580661). I could barely understand what he was saying due to the accent, but, basically, he told me that this is not Account Health problem and I need to contact Amazon FBA instead by opening a new case in seller support. So I did that - Case ID 14842635691 (no response so far, but I just created that case).
Anyway, the question that I have for you folks: have you had an issue like this and how did you manage to resolve it?
Amazon FBA is a tiny percentage of our sales at Amazon and it has been less than a year since we began experimenting with the FBA. Most of our listings are in the SFP program.
Obviously, the bots are incorrect because the warning refers to seller-fulfilled orders, but uses the ODR from the FBA. Moreover, why in the world is FBA's error (return processing error, as they admit in the refund notes) causing me the headache? Things like FBA Order Chargebacks should never be seller's issue.
I fear this issue might drag on through the SS cases, as it appears the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I would appreciate if a Community Manager would chip in here too.
Thanks for reading!
FBA ODR puts our account at risk (what the heck?)
Hi everyone,
This is an odd issue that I've never seen before and I found only one other instance of such issue reported in the forums (with no definite resolution so far).
In short: FBA miss-handled a return in a customer's order. He filed the chargeback, which put our FBA ODR above 1%, which triggered "your seller-fulfilled offers are at risk at deactivation". Yep, really. I'm not joking.
Longer version:
Today we noticed a lovely message on the front page of our Seller Central account:
"Your account is at risk of deactivation.
A critical event has occured with your account that has caused it to be at risk of deactivation"
We went to Account Health and saw the following message there:
"Your account is at risk of deactivation.
Your seller-fulfilled offers are at risk of deactivation. Your Order Defect Rate is 3.12%; the target is 1%"
Below that, in the actual Order Defect Rate metirc we see two numbers:
Seller Fulfilled - 0.31% (under 1%, everything is good there)
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) - 3.12% (1 in 32 orders over the 60-day period)
We downloaded the ODR report and only order is in it. When we looked at the order, we confirmed that this was, indeed, and FBA order, and there is a chargeback, associated with that order. We, of course, don't see it on the list of chargebacks because this is an FBA Order chargeback, i.e. everything is handled by Amazon there. It shows that Amazon issued full refund to this order two weeks ago and the Refund Reason was "Return Processing Error". My guess is that Amazon FBA miss-managed the return (or the customer did something shady with the return), i.e. they initially didn't refund the customer, but then he complained and they issued the refund, but the customer also filed the chargeback with his card issuer.
I called Account Health specialists today (Case ID 14842580661). I could barely understand what he was saying due to the accent, but, basically, he told me that this is not Account Health problem and I need to contact Amazon FBA instead by opening a new case in seller support. So I did that - Case ID 14842635691 (no response so far, but I just created that case).
Anyway, the question that I have for you folks: have you had an issue like this and how did you manage to resolve it?
Amazon FBA is a tiny percentage of our sales at Amazon and it has been less than a year since we began experimenting with the FBA. Most of our listings are in the SFP program.
Obviously, the bots are incorrect because the warning refers to seller-fulfilled orders, but uses the ODR from the FBA. Moreover, why in the world is FBA's error (return processing error, as they admit in the refund notes) causing me the headache? Things like FBA Order Chargebacks should never be seller's issue.
I fear this issue might drag on through the SS cases, as it appears the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I would appreciate if a Community Manager would chip in here too.
Thanks for reading!
0 resposta
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Update:
Case transferred, then closed, and we saw a new Case ID 14849471591 created instead. Received a reply from the SS team with a general ODR template (quiz might be offered, explanation of how ODR works).
Basically, the problem was not understood by Seller Support. I replied and asked to read my initial message again and to escalate to Leadership or Supervisor if the SS team member is unable to understand or help.
As expected, this will be dragging on...
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Second update. Seller Support continues to play silly. Here is what they replied with:
"The ODR metric is defined as the number of orders with a defect divided by the number of orders in the time period of interest. These defects include negative feedback, A-to-Z Guarantee claims, and chargeback claims.
As order ID 111-8074821-2800223 has a chargeback claim it has affected the ODR. You must work toward achieving and maintaining an order defect rate of less than 1% over the 60-day time period displayed in Seller Central."
They are still not getting the fact that this chargeback was for an Amazon FBA order because the Amazon failed to process the FBA order return properly. Under no circumstances FBA's failures should affect seller-fulfilled offers eligibility in any way (and FBA's too for that matter, since FBA's processing errors causing order defects should not count against sellers).
@Bryce_Amazon, can you assist here please? Case ID 14849471591. I saw that you helped with FBA issues before. perhaps, you can help us here too.
Thanks!
LeviDylan_Amazon
Hello @Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ,
Thank you for posting on the Seller Forums.
My goal is to give you further assistance. I would like to forward your information to continue researching this matter further. Please continue to post any relevant information in relation to this topic, such as a case ID or performance notification received, so it can be addressed and forwarded as well.
Wishing you the best,
LeviDylan
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
The issue mysteriously disappeared today. FBA ODR reset to zero, no "Your account at the risk of deactivation" message anymore. No response in any of the SS cases. Not sure if Amazon figured the issue out and actually fixed the glitch, or if someone manually overrode the system and removed the FBA chargeback from our metrics so it would not throw our metrics off.
