Hi everyone.

This is a probably a stupid topic to talk about but whatever. Also I apologise if this topic has already been mentioned by other people somewhere, but I don’t have the time or energy to scroll through all the forums.

Anyway, I had a buyer order an item, and then they messaged me (using Amazon’s message system) that they were unsatisfied with the item and wanted a refund. I responded to their message saying to please return the item at which time I will be happy to offer a refund. It has been a couple of days since I sent the message, but I still have not yet received any kind of “return request” or the item returned - although for both these things it might be a bit early for anything to happen, so this isn’t really a concern. At this point there is still almost a month for the buyer to do anything.

But it got me wondering. Do buyers ever return unwanted items WITHOUT activating the “return request” within their Amazon accounts? Surely that must happen sometimes? For all I know the unwanted item might be being returned to me right now and I might receive it in a few days. Well I just wondered if there are any kinds of problems that might occur in the Amazon “system” somewhere with items returning that aren’t officially requested / activated.

Also, if the item does get returned without a "return request", I presume I can still refund the buyer?