A-bis-Z-Garantieanträge, A-to-z Guarantee Claims, or A-to-Z claims. What are they and how to respond to them?
Customers shopping on Amazon are used to transactions proceeding with full satisfaction for them. This applies to product compliance with the offer, delivery time, contact with the seller, as well as return handling, including the time in which money is refunded.
When these points are violated, customers sometimes open a so-called A-to-Z claim in addition to messages to the seller describing their dissatisfaction. This is a form of claiming a transaction, a complaint about the transaction process submitted to Amazon portal support. Unfortunately, this is a very harmful form of expressing dissatisfaction by the customer for the seller, because it results in lowering Amazon account metrics, i.e., creates a defect.
Most Important Rules:
1. We always respond to an A-to-Z claim within the designated 3-day timeframe, no response means automatic “admission of guilt” and a defect on the account. Sometimes Amazon investigates the matter based on what the customer wrote in the claim content and doesn’t expect our response immediately, but only a minimal portion of claims proceed this way.
2. We describe the transaction process in detail. Dates, times, important correspondence content.
3. We never badmouth the customer, we don’t use terms that insult the customer, regardless of what the customer did, even if they openly want to scam us for a new product – we describe it in detail, but politely, making it clear that we did everything to make the transaction successful.
An open A-Z claim gives the seller an opportunity to present their position and if we do it well, our action didn’t violate Amazon rules, and the customer opened the claim e.g., under emotional influence, we can avoid a defect on the account.
When responding to a claim and preparing a version of events from the seller’s position, you should describe as accurately as possible the transaction process up to the moment the customer opened the claim, as well as what we did after opening if the context requires it.
We start by providing the purchase date, shipping date and product delivery date – the first two dates and the tracking number we also enter in the claim response form.
We describe in detail information about our contact with the customer, e.g.:
The customer claims they received a product inconsistent with the description and informed us about it on April 24, 2018. On April 25, 2018 at 9:30 AM an email was sent to the customer in which we proposed a partial refund if the customer keeps the product” – we can absolutely even insert here the content of that message we sent to the customer
. We continue “In response, the customer on April 26, 2018 at 11:00 AM sent us a reply in which they expressed approval for our proposal” – we also insert the content of that message . On April 27, we made a partial refund to the customer’s account in the amount of 20 Euro, according to the proposal made by email on April 26, 2018. On April 29, 2018, the customer to our surprise opened a claim, citing product inconsistency with description as the reason. We were convinced that since the customer agreed to our terms, it meant the matter would end amicably.
Since we always put our customers’ welfare first, we would like to provide the customer with a free return label and once we receive the product, the customer will receive the full amount paid. At the same time, we inform that we made every effort to ensure this transaction proceeded fully successfully for the customer and when the customer expressed dissatisfaction on April 26, 2018, we came forward with a problem-solving proposal, which the customer accepted on April 27, 2018. Therefore, we ask that this claim has no impact on our Amazon account statistics.
A response written this way should defend itself during review by the Amazon team, which may ask us to send a return label to the customer, and after receiving the returned product, refund the full amount the customer paid. However, if after refunding the money a defect appears on the account, you should write an appeal against this decision to the address from which the claim information came. We describe the case similarly to the claim. However, we add a few sentences about how much we care about good customer service and always act for customers. If your account is actually managed well, i.e., shipments are on time, there are no product shortages and canceled orders, Amazon regulations are not violated, there shouldn’t be a problem with removing the defect. Despite the possibility of contacting English-speaking employees of all Amazon versions and the possibility of responding to an A-to-Z claim in this language, we always respond to an A-to-Z claim in the language appropriate for the Amazon site the case concerns, i.e., for amazon.de in German, for amazon.fr in French, etc. From experience I can say this gives us better chances for a positive result.
Remember that the best way to deal with A-to-z Guarantee Claims is simply to avoid them. That means quick contact with the customer, responding to every important email from the customer, particularly regarding their dissatisfaction.
If you have questions or would like to use our help when writing A-to-Z claims, please contact us.
