So I recently attempted to return a couple of items on Amazon, items I bought from third-party Amazon sellers. Being a third-party Amazon seller myself, I was honest with my returns - I put "no longer wanted/needed" as the reason for the return. I could have lied and put "item was damaged upon arrival" or "item was not as described", but I didn't.

I was promptly ass-reamed by the most assholiest Amazon seller on the planet.

They started out by informing me that they would be charging me a 15% restocking fee, and that I should feel lucky because by rights they could charge up to 20% since the reason was "buyer's remorse". (They literally put that into the email to me.) They also told me that they would be deducting $13 for "return shipping fees".

Wait whoa hold up for a second.

The item had been shipped to me with FREE SHIPPING in the first place, and I would (obviously) be paying to ship the item back to the seller, since the return was "buyer's fault" instead of "seller's fault" (e.g., damage would be seller's fault). So, the seller was telling me that I would literally have to be paying TWICE to ship the item back to them.

lolno.

The item was $56, so a 15% restocking fee (~$8.40) plus this mysterious $13 "shipping fees" shit plus however much it costs ME to ship the fucking thing back to them - I'd probably be only getting like $20 back from the return - not even worth returning the item at that point.

On this seller's Amazon Detail page, it states: "For products where shipping has been offered free, we will also deduct the actual shipping charge from the return amount."

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you don't get to do that, friend. I'm pretty sure that's a violation of policy.

I asked around on the Amazon Seller forums, and several of the other sellers seemed to agree that it's pretty shady (if not a straight-up violation) that the seller gets to deduct "shipping fees" from my return when they shipped the item to me with free shipping in the first place.

I've contacted Amazon Support about it twice, but they are, uh, less than concise in answering, let's say. I filed an A-to-Z Claim about it, which was denied, and I've just CALLED Amazon Support on the phone. The support person was also somewhat incomprehensible (even though the phone number insisted I was calling Seattle), but I'm pretty sure she agreed that the seller was violating policy and didn't get to arbitrarily deduct $13 from my return for the shipping that they apparently didn't charge me in the first place when they shipped the item to me.

We'll see how it goes when I actually finally return the item to these asshole sellers, but the lesson is this:

If you ever have to return an item to an Amazon third-party seller, LIE and say the item is damaged or not as described, even if it isn't. Damage the goddamned thing yourself if you have to. Because apparently it's not worth trying to be honest, and Amazon's system is set up to screw both buyers AND sellers. (I've gotten screwed over by buyers plenty of times as a seller.)

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In other news, I'm still blind in one eye and I'm still in the middle of Migraine Shitstorm 2014. I literally have not had a pain-free day since Memorial Day. I'm having a MRA scan on Wednesday and then I don't know what the fuck kind of specialist to see any more. I can't stay on narcotic painkillers forever and they're not doing shit for the pain anyway.