Amazon's system marked an item I returned a year ago as not received and charged me for this return, but the chat bot already knew they had received it.
Wait, so you got charged a year later after returning it? They only issue refunds when it has been sent back, so they are charging you for their own inventory mismanagement, or worse.
They often do the whole “we’ll refund immediately as a courtesy but you need to return it by x or you’ll be charged” thing— in this case for whatever (infuriating) reason they charged me even though it’s clear their own system (their chat bot) knew the item had been marked as received on their end. I dropped it off at a brick and mortar store too!
It's possible this is yet another courtesy refund thingy and they think they don't have it but they think the price of the item is not as important as making you happy as a customer.
I feel like I had this happen as well but the chat bot was smart enough to be like "this dude spends a fuck ton on Amazon and this item was only $12, I'll just mark it received and get dude the money back."
The bot did not refund me, I talked to a real person via the chat and they said the carrier team didn’t mark it received and that they would “disarm the retro charge” and refund me. We’ll see if it goes through.