Overview

Amazon is tightening its international returns policy for sellers who fulfill cross-border orders into Germany and the United Kingdom. Effective August 11, 2025, the response window for return requests from .de and .co.uk customers drops from four calendar days to three. Sellers who miss this deadline face automatic customer refunds charged to their accounts with no recourse through SAFE-T claims.

What's Changing

• Three-day response window — Sellers fulfilling orders from outside Germany or the UK now have one fewer day to respond to return requests from customers on those marketplaces.
• Automatic refunds at seller expense — Failing to provide an approved return option within three days triggers an automatic refund debited from your account, and these charges cannot be disputed via SAFE-T claims.
• Amazon-prepaid labels for FBM — Amazon is introducing its own prepaid return label service for Fulfilled by Merchant cross-border returns on the German marketplace through carriers like DHL and DPD.
• Both marketplaces affected simultaneously — The policy applies to Amazon.de and Amazon.co.uk starting the same date.

Approved Return Methods

Sellers must offer at least one of three return options to remain compliant. The first is providing a domestic return address within the customer's country paired with a prepaid return label. Amazon offers programs through Seller Central to help establish a local return address for sellers without a physical presence in Germany or the UK.

The second option is supplying a prepaid international return label back to your fulfillment location outside the customer's country. All return shipping costs fall on the seller with this approach, making it the most expensive route for high-volume cross-border operations.

The third option is issuing a returnless refund, where the customer keeps the item and receives a full refund. This can be automated through Seller Central's automated resolutions feature and is often the most practical choice for lower-value products where return shipping would exceed the item's worth.

Amazon's New Prepaid Label Program