What has been your experience with return fraud/abuse this year?

We are moving into some of the best months of the year as far as sales velocity goes and I can’t help but look back on my sales/return/fraud data for this year and feel concerned.

My return rate this year has been off the charts and I’ve been selling the same items for years. This year returns have nearly tripled despite us taking action to reduce returns by adjusting listings, providing “thank you” notes, offering live troubleshooting/product support, etc.

My main concern is the huge uptick in return fraud. 50% of our returns now are fraudulent or abusive. “Buyers” are returning empty boxes, items stripped of parts, missing vital accessories, or completely swapped items.

The other 50% of returns consist mainly of nonsense reasons “no longer needed” and “bought by mistake” making up a majority of them. As long as they come back complete and unaltered I consider them valid.

I’ve moved my focus from growing my business on Amazon to making sure I am caught up on filing safe-t claims, charging restocking fees, fighting A-Z claims, and disputing fraudulent chargebacks.

My question is, where does the Amazon customer base go from here? It seems buyers are becoming more and more emboldened to commit fraud by the day and a considerable percentage of the buyers have seem to become rotten.

What’s been your experience over the past 10 months? Any theories on why this might be the case (economic conditions, lack of consequence, etc)?