Amazon returns: what the buyer says and what the warehouse finds are two different columns

A rising return count on a product feels like a quality problem. Often it is not. Sometimes the product is fine and the listing promised something it does not do. Sometimes the buyer simply changed their mind. Sometimes the unit was damaged on the way back and you are owed money for it. Those are four different situations with four different fixes, and the returns report already separates them, if you read two columns together instead of one.

Every claim below points at a column in a report you can download from your own account.

Where the report is

Seller Central, Reports, Fulfillment, then in the Customer Concessions group the Returns report. The file you download is the FBA customer returns report. It lists every returned unit, one row per return, per marketplace.

Four columns matter here:

  • reason. The reason the buyer selected when they started the return. This is a claim, not a finding. Nobody checked it.
  • detailed-disposition. The condition the fulfillment center recorded when it inspected the unit that came back. This is a finding.
  • status. What happened to the unit afterwards, for example "Unit returned to inventory" or "Reimbursed".
  • customer-comments. Free text from the buyer. Often empty, but worth reading every time it is not.

Why two columns and not one

The reason column tells you what the buyer said. The disposition column tells you what the warehouse found. They are filled in by different people at different moments, and they can disagree.

The disposition values you will see most often:

  • SELLABLE: the unit went back into your sellable stock.
  • CUSTOMER_DAMAGED: the buyer opened, used or damaged it. It cannot be sold as new.
  • DEFECTIVE: the warehouse found the unit faulty.
  • CARRIER_DAMAGED: damaged in transit on the way back.

Anything other than SELLABLE lands in your unfulfillable inventory. That is the same bucket we covered in the article on how much of your FBA stock you can actually sell today: returns are one of the quiet ways it fills up.

The four combinations

Put the two columns side by side for one product and look at which combination dominates.

1. The buyer says it is faulty, the warehouse agrees

Reason DEFECTIVE, QUALITY_UNACCEPTABLE or MISSING_PARTS, disposition DEFECTIVE. This is a real product problem. The fix is with the supplier or the packaging, not the listing. If the same SKU shows this repeatedly, it is worth pulling the license-plate-number column too: it identifies the exact returned unit, which helps when you raise it with the supplier or with Seller Support.

2. The buyer says it is faulty, the warehouse says it is sellable

Reason DEFECTIVE or QUALITY_UNACCEPTABLE, disposition SELLABLE. The warehouse could not confirm the complaint. The product may be fine, and the buyer expected something else. That expectation came from somewhere, usually your listing.

3. The buyer says it is not what they wanted

Reason NOT_AS_DESCRIBED or NOT_COMPATIBLE. These two are the most useful codes in the report, because they point straight at the listing. If one SKU collects them, read your title, bullets and images with a single question: what does this page promise that the product does not deliver? A missing size, a compatibility claim that is too broad, a photo that makes it look bigger. Fixing the text is cheaper than any other return fix.

4. Damaged on the way, not by you

Reason DAMAGED_BY_CARRIER or DAMAGED_BY_FC, or disposition CARRIER_DAMAGED. The damage did not happen on your side. For these rows, check the status column. If it says "Reimbursed", Amazon has already paid. If it does not, it is worth asking Seller Support about that specific unit, with the order ID and the license plate number from the same row.

Two traps

NO_REASON_GIVEN is not a reason. Some returns have none. Leave them out of the diagnosis rather than counting them into whichever story you already believe.

Returns lag orders. A return shows up weeks after the order. If you divide this week's returns by this week's orders, the rate will jump around for no real reason. Use a longer window, at least 90 days, and divide returned units by Units Ordered from the Business Report for the same product and the same window.

Fifteen minutes a month

Download the returns report for the last 90 days. Sort by SKU. For your three most returned products, count how many rows fall into each of the four combinations above. Whichever combination wins tells you where to act: the supplier, the listing, nowhere, or Seller Support.

The point is not the return rate. The point is to stop treating every return as the same event. A buyer who changed their mind and a product that breaks look identical in a return count, and they look completely different in these two columns.