With effect from today, Amazon USA will ship every item with an automatic returns label meaning for items fulfilled by USA based sellers we understand the buyer does not need to contact you, so long as the return fits within Amazons returns policy.
This move is intended to streamline the returns process for both the buyer and the seller. Your customer now no longer needs to contact you to get authorisation for a return.
Unfortunately, this may mean returns of items where you previously could have solved an simple issue for the customer. It is possible to exclude certain ASIN’s from this but that needs to be agreed directly with Amazon.
We suspect it is only a matter of time before this policy is introduced to the UK market.