Amazon announced a new returns dashboard for sellers to get “clearer insights into your returns and inventory recovery,” in one central location, regardless of channel. It comes at an opportune time: Amazon’s extended holiday returns policy requires that items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2025, can be returned until January 31, 2026.
The new dashboard provides the following:
- ASIN-level insights: View detailed return metrics and trends, including top return reasons and recommended actions to help reduce return rates.
- Performance metrics: Track trends over time and monitor critical review rates.
- Recovery insights: If you’re enrolled in Grade and Resell, you can review recovery metrics such as net recovery, sold units, and total sales of graded items.
- Resource center: Manage reports, act on customer feedback, and track returned items to recover value efficiently.
- Settings: Manage returns and recovery settings for both FBA and Fulfilled by Merchant products.
In response to Amazon’s announcement, a seller asked, “when is Amazon going to realize that 85% of return reasons are lies to get free shipping for the return itself? The one and only way to know the real reason is to inspect upon return and let the seller determine the best course of action. Amazon should start asking for proof before a return is authorized. Sellers have to prove their argument, so should buyers. Customer feedback is also skewed against the seller, again, lies.”
Sellers can learn more about the dashboard on the Returns & Recovery: Insights and Opportunities help page on Amazon. Included in the dashboard are the following key metrics, including the value that sellers recover from unsellable customer returns:
– Total returns: Number of units with customer return requests.
– Return rate: The percentage of shipped units with return requests.
– Customer refunds issued: Total amount refunded against return requests, including refunds without a return.
– Critical review rate: Percentage of one, two, or three-star rated customer reviews.
– Grade and Resell graded units: Sum of customer returns that were successfully graded into the different used conditions.
– Grade and Resell sold units: Sum of Grade and Resell units sold to customers.
– Grade and Resell total sales: Sum of your sales from Grade and Resell.
– Net recovery: Net recovery is calculated by summing your Grade and Resell sales less Grade and Resell fee, FBA fulfillment, and FBA referral divided by total Grade and Resell sales.
The issue of returns aren’t just a “pet peeve” for online sellers – they have financial and reputational consequences. CNBC aired a segment on the topic in June of this year, interviewing seven Amazon sellers “to find out what’s changed as they face new fees, rising fraud, and shrinking margins amidst ever changing tariffs.” A seller told CNBC that two returns of reusable swim-diapers by buyers was made worse by Amazon failing to detect they were returned soiled and resold them as new, with her business nearly tanking as a result. You can watch the segment in the following YouTube video:
