General

Topic Auditing Amazon

MrBean

19-Feb(#1)

To those of you that are big Amazon users, you may want to audit your data. I've had issues many times over the years that I've caught, but after awhile, it's hard to keep up and you 'hope' Amazon is managing all of this properly behind the scenes.

First they took away the return center, then they took away the reporting center, now they have us put in a request to get a zip file of a crap ton of disconnected csv files.

I found a guy that built a tool (https://www.ordigo.io/) to pull and summarize data directly against your account. It's pretty decent, but has some gaps. Sadly, an order that has multiple shipments, he dupes the totals on. Some of the unknown statuses are funky, but overall, it's a great start to a larger audit. There's no emphasis on returns and fitlering that without exporting. Been in chats with him, trying to influence some changes.

Simply be reviewing all my "return started" statuses, I've already uncovered $1500 worth of orders that I was supposed to be refunded on, that I was not (ranging up to 6 years ago).

I was really surprised, that working with Amazon support over chat, they've already issued all of them.

Next step is to start comparing orders that state refunded, but were not. This will be a nightmare, because getting access to old statements and manually comparing data ... not fun. Going to request Synchrony (Amazon Store Card) send me a CSV so I can load data into SQL and do a quicker compare.

Hope this helps

MrBean

19-Feb(#2)

Also, be warned, if you're at all like me ... you may not want to know your all in spend, holy crap is that alarming

loztdogs

19-Feb(#3)

Do folks not confirm refunds on returned items during the time frames the return should be refunded??? Maybe I’m just ocd about my money.

MrBean

19-Feb(#4)

loztdogs wrote:

> Do folks not confirm refunds on returned items during the time frames the return

> should be refunded??? Maybe I’m just ocd about my money.

I do typically, but the sheer quantity of stuff I buy/return, not always top of mind. With how Amazon massively neutered our ability to audit, it's even worse now. Even if they say a refund was issued, not always accurate.

benstylus

19-Feb(#5)

$1500 in unpaid returns is astounding. If I discovered that, my first thoughts wouldn't be "wow I need to do more on my end to monitor this" but more along the lines of "WTF Amazon? How does this even happen? Fix it NOW."

I already only use Amazon sparingly (mostly as a last resort) but if I found they had literally been robbing me for six years? I'd be absolutely livid. If I were in your position I would look for any other alternatives to spending another cent there.

(I guess on the plus side, at least you know where you are getting part of that money to pay your taxes this year!)

MrBean

19-Feb(#6)

benstylus wrote:

> $1500 in unpaid returns is astounding. If I discovered that, my first thoughts wouldn't

> be "wow I need to do more on my end to monitor this" but more along the lines of

> "WTF Amazon? How does this even happen? Fix it NOW."

> I already only use Amazon sparingly (mostly as a last resort) but if I found they

> had literally been robbing me for six years? I'd be absolutely livid. If I were

> in your position I would look for any other alternatives to spending another cent

> there.

> (I guess on the plus side, at least you know where you are getting part of that money

> to pay your taxes this year!)

In fairness, $1100 was a single item, that was only a month ago, that I've contacted them 4x on ... but the other $400 was split amongst 6 transactions, one of my wife's account too.

I've always suspected with how much I buy/return, that I wasn't getting all my refunds. This is only a starting point with the limited access to the data that I have. I plan on going deeper at some point, but I guarantee you this happens all the time, to everyone. It's alarming to say the least.

More than ever, I'm confident this is why they took away customer access to the returns dashboard, and then custom reporting. Now they make it painful and complicated, for the sole reason that they're ... screwing us over.

benstylus

19-Feb(#7)

Knowing about it and continuing to buy from them is not going to fix the problem.

MrBean

19-Feb(#8)

benstylus wrote:

> Knowing about it and continuing to buy from them is not going to fix the problem.

I don't disagree with ya there!

benstylus

19-Feb(#9)

It's interesting how entangled our lives can get with certain companies.

Some people use Amazon for nearly everything and trying to pull away from it even slightly would be like tearing off the world's largest band-aid.

Other people gotta have their Starbucks every morning like clockwork. Or they wait a half hour for food in the wrapped around the building 2 lane drive thru at chick fil a.

Being set in our ways is kind of like an emotional addiction.

MrBean

19-Feb(#10)

Oh, Amazon is absolutely an addiction. They've made it far too convenient. One step closer to Wall-E.

benstylus

19-Feb(#11)

MrBean wrote:

> Oh, Amazon is absolutely an addiction. They've made it far too convenient. One step

> closer to Wall-E.

I find it to be the opposite. Trying to find the things I want and the actual search results are buried under paid product placements. Trying to browse a particular category and getting tons of unrelated things. For me, the actual shopping experience is just a mess.

Most of the time if I see something I may want to buy I add it to my cart and save it for later because there's no guarantee I'll ever find it again otherwise.

Porksta

19-Feb(#12)

I bought a Christmas gift using my credit card (and $3 in gift cards). I had to return the gift, they credited me the full amount in gift cards. It wasn't a big deal since I bought the wrong item so I was just going to buy something else, but thought it was weird I got a 100% refund in credit.

MrBean

19-Feb(#13)

@Porksta you can specify if you want a return to original payment, or gift card, it defaults to the latter.

Porksta

19-Feb(#14)

Ah, okay thanks.