Annoyed with Amazon seller

[RefundWoes]

I ordered a Christmas.present for my son from a third party seller at the end of last month.

A couple of days later it was marked as dispatched, but then a couple of days after that I got a message from the seller saying they had discovered the item had been damaged while in storage in the warehouse, and as they didn't have another I could either choose something else from their listings or have a refund.

I asked for a refund (it was a specific thing my son asked for and other Amazon sellers had it, so there wasn't anything else I was interested in buying).

A couple of days later the seller replied saying they were happy to give me a refund and it was being processed on their system. A week later, still no refund.

I'm annoyed that the seller marked it as dispatched when obviously it wasn't, it was still in the warehouse and hadn't even been looked at, and I'm annoyed that when they discovered the item was damaged they didn't automatically refund me, and annoyed that I still haven't been refunded.

What should I do?

Wait a couple more days to see if the refund comes?

Contact the seller and ask if the refund has been processed? (Thought to be honest if they were to say it has or that it will be I wouldn't really have much faith in them)

Request a refund using the Amazon form?

Contact Amazon, they are really helpful. Use the chat function x

Use the Amazon form. They are really quick at getting it sorted out and they will contact the seller on your behalf making them pay you back ASAP. It’s happened to me a couple of times and I’ve always got the refund quickly when I’ve gone directly through Amazon (they have an online chat thing you can use to speak to someone)

I don't think it's the seller, it's amazon. I ordered some books which were damaged in transit, these were from amazon themselves. It took 3 weeks for the refund to come through.

Thanks for your replies. So it looks like going through Amazon is the best way then. I suppose if it turns out the refund has been processed and is just being slow for some reason the seller can tell Amazon what's going on with it.

Three weeks is a long time to wait, Hellohah I've only had refunds direct from Amazon when I've accidentally bought Kindle books on "one click" when trying to scroll past and I've only ever had to wait a day or two. And the same a few years ago when I bought some books from a third party seller that went missing in transit, I got the refund a couple of days after contacting them to query where the books were.

go with Amazon

they are very strict on sellers using their platform.

Amazon are super duper helpful and you can chat to an agent online live

If you bought it on a credit card then phone the card provider to do a chargeback

From an amazon seller point of view (to hopefully add some insight). Most sellers use a third party software to process orders so for us i don't see what someone has ordered until i've printed the label and marked it as dispatched. Occasionally something sells that is damaged or has been stolen from our shop, but not sure why they took so long to tell you unless it was the weekend. Refunds can take up to ten days, once the seller has processed it amazon have to complete it but it's painfully slow, but you should see it's processing, if you don't the seller hasn't done thier bit! Hope that gives you a bit of insight and hope you get it sorted out soon! As others have said if the seller won't sort it out amazon will.