Seller Beware with Amazon

We've enjoyed selling items with Amazon. We've been able to turn old items we've never used into cash, but I'm absolutely disgusted about Amazon's A-Z Guarantee.

For those of you who don't know, Amazon's A-Z Guarantee basically says that any buyer can make a claim 30 days after the purchase date of an item requesting a refund. This claim is then forwarded to the seller who can make a responses. This sounds like a fair process, but in reality is a complete sham for the seller...the responses aren't even read and nearly all claims are granted to the buyer. Let me share our example with you:

We recently sold a textbook (75 dollars) to a buyer. We started getting e-mails a few weeks later with the buyer stating that they didn't receive the book. We gave the buyer the benefit of the doubt and responded very nicely. The buyer then started asking questions which only now seem suspicious like "Did you get delivery confirmation?" and "Did you get tracking on the item?". We were a little worried, but thought that we were standing on pretty good ground, because we could easily provide documentation that we had shipped the book. Just a few hours ago, we received a notice that the buyer had filed an A-Z claim, we figured it would probably come down to that, so we typed up our response which included our shipping information, and a note stating that we could provide documentation that the item had shipped. Not more than a minute had passed by, before we noticed that the buyer's claim had been granted and that the money would be withdrawn. We were ticked, here we had stated that we could provide PROOF of shipping, and no further notice was given to us. Amazon even took back SHIPPING fees. So right now, we're out the textbook, and out the 5 bucks we sent on shipping it. This is just opening up a world of risk to Amazon sellers. Even if I gave the benefit of the doubt to the buyer that they truly did not receive the item, eventually the item is going to show up (unless it's completely lost in the mail...which is likely very rare), and they're going to get a book for free.

What this means is that if a buyer buys an item from an Amazon seller, that buyer can make a claim 30 days later that says something to the effect of "I ordered Item X but have not yet received Item X" and receive a full refund.

After researching this issue, we found that these claims are nearly always awarded to the buyer. Other sellers have been forced to give refunds on items even though they could produce tracking and delivery confirmation that the buyer had received the item. What more proof does Amazon need than DELIVERY CONFIRMATION?? So I have two lessons that I've learned from this:

1) Stop selling items on Amazon
2) If I buy items from Amazon Sellers I can get them for free