This is the story of how one small checkbox almost cost me my entire Amazon account. It happened about ten years ago, when I was moving from reselling goods from local shops to making wall decals in my own workshop. The main characters in this story, though, were black bird window decals.
I had discovered FBA, Fulfillment by Amazon. You send your goods to their warehouse in the USA, and they take care of storage, packing and delivery to the customer. I decided to try it with black bird shapes for windows, intended to help real birds avoid flying into the glass. We made a test batch of 100, packed each one in a separate bag and sent them off.
Everything went smoothly at first. Amazon accepted the goods, sales started and the whole batch sold within a couple of months. We happily made another 200, sent them to the warehouse and I went on holiday with nothing to worry about.
Then an email arrived during my holiday. My account was suspended, my funds were frozen and Amazon accused me of selling used goods. They also asked me to remove my stock from their warehouse. I was shocked, because our vinyl decals were made for one use. You could not apply them, peel them off and sell them as new again. I appealed and asked them to check the warehouse and the goods, because I believed there had been a mistake.
A week later, I received a brief reply. They said everything had been checked, the decision was final and they could not restore my account. The message mentioned an Order Defect Rate above 1% and repeated the accusation of selling used goods as new. I had one final appeal left. I started searching forums and YouTube, trying to understand how the system had reached this decision.
Eventually, I found a setting that explained what could have happened. When I joined FBA, I had left the settings at their defaults. One option allowed returned goods to go back on sale if a warehouse inspection found them to look new. For our decals, that turned out to be a serious problem.
I pieced together a possible chain of events. A buyer had opened the decals, perhaps creased them or tried applying them, then returned them saying the packaging was untouched and they had simply changed their mind. A warehouse employee could have accepted the package as unopened and put it back on the shelf as new. The next buyer received crumpled or used decals and complained about being sold used goods. With a small number of orders, a complaint like that could seriously affect the account's metrics.
In my final appeal, I explained this possible chain of events in detail. I asked Amazon to trace the specific order and check whether the item had previously been returned by another buyer. I explained that our decals were for one use and that a visual inspection could have missed the damage. I also asked them to inspect the remaining stock to confirm that we had sent new, properly packed goods.
Another week of silence followed. Then Amazon replied that its internal investigation was complete and my account had been restored. I immediately went into the settings and removed that checkbox.
Since then, I have chosen paid disposal for these returns. I would rather have an item destroyed than risk it being sold as new after an inspection mistake and putting my entire business in danger. That was how a default setting cost me two stressful weeks of holiday.
