Amazon: A-to-z Guarantee Changes

[mandy]

Earlier today, we launched changes to the Amazon.com A-to-z Guarantee claim submission process for buyers. Because A-to-z Guarantee claims are a key indicator of seller performance, we want to share information about the changes with our seller community.
Today's changes to the A-to-z Guarantee claims process on Amazon.com are designed to improve the customer experience by providing buyers with a new step-by-step Wizard-style interface to streamline the filing of claims. Buyers will be given greater visibility into their order resolution options while also using a structured process that will allow Amazon to collect more detailed data about potential problems with orders. This process includes a form for buyers to provide carrier and tracking details for seller shipments and for returns.
We expect sellers to provide buyers with timely and professional resolution to their order problems. However, many sellers have expressed frustration in the past when buyers did not contact them before filing Guarantee claims, and we have made significant changes to address this concern in our new design. We emphasize specific issues sellers can resolve and encourage buyers to communicate with sellers about problems with their orders throughout the new claim submission process.
While buyers are not required to contact sellers, we have taken every opportunity in the claim submission process to highlight the seller as the first point of contact for all order-related questions and concerns. Here are specific elements of our new A-to-z Guarantee claims process that focus on buyer-to-seller communication:

• When a buyer first enters the A-to-z Guarantee claim process, we will retrieve all of the messages concerning an order that were sent by the buyer and seller through our contact system and present them to the buyer for review.
  [li]When there has been no prior contact with the seller, the buyer will be presented with a basic two-step resolution process. Their first option will be to contact the seller and wait before proceeding to file a claim....[/l][/l]

full announcement: http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=164626&tstart=0