Amazon returns through An Post

schmooschmoo

After chatting to Amazon about returning a defective purchase they said, no problem, we'll refund it and cover return shipping. Just print these pages out stick the relevant labels on. If you incur any extra charges with shipping we'll refund that when we get a receipt.

I'm paraphrasing but it led me to believe that incurring a charge for postage was unlikely and only in unforeseen circumstances. With that, I confidently brought the item into An Post with two labels stuck on the box: an address and a 'international customer return / commercial invoice'. I handed them the additional 'commercial invoice' page that was instructed of me by Amazon and had a very clear 'bill to:amazon' printed on it.

The guy behind the counter said no chance. Postage wasn't covered and pointed at the 'postage required' square above the return address on the address label. I asked him what about the invoice and the 'bill to' but and he shrugged his shoulders and just said the 'postage required' bit was all he was interested in.

Who messed up here? Amazon's instructions, my interpretation, or the An Post guy's knowledge? I asked Amazon and they didn't want to explain, just sort the situation for time's sake and have issued new labels, asking me to pay the full postage and get it refunded after. I'm happy with the outcome but none the wiser about what I should have done.

jackinthemix94

An Post are right - Amazon's policy for Ireland now seems to be pay postage and they'll refund. It's absolute BS really.

schmooschmoo

Thanks jackinthemix94. Do you (or anyone else) know if a local post office can deal with processing and attaching the required postage? It's a very large and heavy box that's under their max dimensions and weight, but barely.

The reason I ask is the guy seemed surprised by the 'postage required' text in the upper-right corner of the parcel and pointed at it being needed, rather than tally up a price and ask me to pay it. Though maybe he heard my confusion clearer than I thought and didn't want to be a part of the mess until I'd figured it out myself.

As far as I know, local An Post offices can print out a sticker for any amount of postage and stick it onto a parcel. Even in the hundreds.

ED E

As long as its not too big for their scales they'll weigh it an give you a price. If you're happy with it they'll label it and give you a receipt with the tracking code(if paid for).

joe250

I am having the same problem with returns.There used to be free returns from Ireland but my last 2 returns I had to email receipt to get amazon to refund me the cost of postage.Also there are Commercial Invoice for customs.Have amazon left the Eu already:-).

Jay12342

OP as stated on the email you would have received from Amazon if you looked through the Additional Instructions for mailing your parcel bullet points you would have seen one of the points states

"Please note that this label is postage paid for your convenience, subject to our Returns Policy. You won't have to pay postage for this parcel."

So if your product failed to meet Amazon's returns policy that would be why you were required to pay postage, I suspect Amazon have a few different label types depending on the criteria you fall into

ED E

So just to update this, returned an item that was DOA. Returns "checkout" said they'd refund up to £9 postage.

I thought I'd have to chase them with the receipt from AnPost to get this but no, instantly credited to my account when processed in Fife. AP charged €9.05 so £9.00 was just about bang on.

TheDriver

I found this with amazon on last few occasions with faulty/broken items and on all occasions when I moaned about it, they said to just keep the item and forget about it.........