Amazon’s APRL Scheme Leaves Sour Taste In Sellers’ Mouths

In a highly-debated move, Amazon UK has announced that as of 5 July 2021, all Amazon Sellers must offer customers a Prepaid Return Label or Returnless Refunds for items that fall under Amazon’s Return Policy. In other words, Amazon Sellers will have to cough up the fees to return items at the whim of customer demands for almost all of the items found on Amazon, with only a handful of exceptions that are exempt from the update. While Amazon claims this change of policy has come about as a result of listening to feedback from its customers, the backlash from Amazon Sellers has been significant.

Dubbed Amazon Prepaid Return Label (APRL), almost as if a nod to April Fool’s Day, the new policy allows customers to initiate returns via Amazon’s Online Return Centre (ORC), which Amazon will automatically authorize. Customers will then receive a tracked Prepaid Return Label through APRL, while the postage fees will be immediately deducted from the Seller’s account as soon as a courier receives the item and scans the Prepaid Return Label. Customers will have the option of selecting Royal Mail or Hermes to ship the items back, but Sellers can at least breathe a sigh of relief that this feature is only (currently?) for domestic sales.

Tracked Returns or No Returns

Adding insult to injury for Amazon Sellers, the new rules also indicate that all Prepaid Return Labels must include a tracked shipment method, regardless of whether the customer ordered the item with tracked shipping in the first place. Amazon also went so far as to note that Prepaid Return Label may not be suitable for low-priced items, so Sellers have the option of selecting Returnless Refunds, allowing customers to keep the item and receive a refund without the need to return it. It looks like a win-win for customers, but these new regulations will surely hit many Amazon Sellers hard. And all this on the heels of the new restock limits policies pushing a lot more warehousing holding and handling fees back onto sellers.

One shred of hope for Amazon Sellers is that they can apply for exemptions for items deemed as high-value, large-size, or those that require unique delivery methods, but the final decision still rests with Amazon as to whether or not it will be exempt.

Amazon also noted that if Sellers wish to continue trading on its platform, their acceptance of this new program is obligatory, and as such, they should familiarize themselves with all of the policy’s terms and conditions as well as Amazon Buy Shipping Services.