A marketplace return dispute is decided on evidence created before the parcel left your hands: the weight the courier recorded, the video of the seal going on, the code printed on the outer. What you write after it comes back decides nothing.
Nothing here wins a claim you have no evidence for. What has to be in place before the parcel goes out belongs with everything else in the money that leaves after the sale.
Start with the size of the loss. A return that arrives wrong costs you more than the piece, and that total decides how hard the claim is worth chasing. The RTO Loss Calculator adds those lines up for one return, so the decision has a number behind it.
Customer ne dusra product wapas bhej diya — ab platform kya dekhega?
A desk somewhere opens the file and works through three records: the weight the courier captured at pickup, the unbroken video of that parcel being sealed, and the code printed on the outer.
Most sellers send something else first — a message explaining that you have sold for four years and have never done this. It is true, and a desk cannot act on it.
There is no published figure for how often these claims succeed, and any percentage you are shown comes out of one seller’s own year.
The window is short and it started without you, but worry about it second. A claim filed inside the window with nothing attached loses in the same afternoon as one filed late.
What does the parcel itself have to carry before it leaves?
Four decisions made a week earlier settle most of this claim: where the tape runs, whether the seal is destroyed by opening, what is printed on the outer, and the weight that goes on the manifest.
Run the tape along the joint a knife has to cut, and sign across it or use tape printed with your shop name. A re-taped parcel then arrives looking re-taped. A seal is worth nothing unless opening the parcel destroys it. That is why a pouch closed with a plain strip proves so little: it opens and closes again with no trace, and no photograph of it can tell a desk whether anyone got in.
The code on the outer label ties one parcel in the courier’s system to one piece in your stock register. Without it, the strongest thing you can say about a returned parcel is that it is one of the several you sent that week.
Nothing else belongs on the outside. A label that names the contents tells everyone who handles the parcel exactly what is worth taking.
What does a dispatch video have to show to be evidence?
One take, no cuts. That is the whole of what makes a dispatch video evidence, because a cut, however innocent, leaves a gap where a desk can picture a different piece going in.
Film four things in one run: the piece itself, the packed pouch going into the box, the label with the order ID and AWB readable on screen, and the seal going on over the joint. Finish on the label. Without an order number in frame, a clip of the piece cannot be tied to any parcel at all.
The video is the weakest of the three records, because you shot it yourself. It backs up the weight and the code; on its own, against a buyer who will not back down, it rarely decides anything.
Photograph the same four stages as well — a still is what opens on a bad connection. Attach the file to the claim exactly as the camera wrote it, because a mark burnt across a frame looks like a photograph somebody has edited. Your shop name goes on the copies that travel, the ones that end up on WhatsApp while a buyer argues, and the Bulk Watermark Adder stamps a whole set of them in one pass.
Why is the weight on the manifest the strongest number I have?
You wrote the invoice, you shot the video and you printed the label. The courier weighed the parcel. That is what makes the manifested weight the strongest evidence in the dispute, the only number in it recorded by somebody with nothing to gain either way.
The argument is short. A set booked out at 210 g packed and returned at 96 g gives two measurements of one parcel, both taken by the same carrier. Only one thing explains the gap between them, whatever either side says about it afterwards.
How much the weight proves depends on how much of the parcel the piece is. A 6 g pendant inside 180 g of box and padding moves the total by about 3%, which a pickup weighing will not reliably show. On a piece that light, the seal and the code have to carry the claim.
A weight discrepancy the platform recovers from your payout is a different matter, settled at another desk, and the settlement guide takes that one apart.
What goes in the claim, and in what order?
Checked in August 2026: Meesho, Amazon and Flipkart each publish their own claim window inside their own seller panel. Each counts it from an event the platform records for you, usually the return being marked delivered back to you. Read the start date off your own panel the day you need it.
Put the facts before the argument. A desk reads until it finds a number, and most claims bury theirs. In order: what was ordered and what came back, in one sentence; the order ID and the return AWB; dispatch weight against return weight; the code on the outer against the code of the piece. Then attach the unbroken video and the seal photographs themselves.
Leave the complaining out. A paragraph about how long you have been selling pushes the two numbers that decide this down the page, past where a desk stops reading.
File once, completely. A thin first claim followed by three additions reads as a story being assembled, and a re-opened claim is rarely read as carefully as a first one.
Do I file against the courier or against the marketplace?
You file with whoever engaged the carrier, and your own view of who is at fault does not come into it. On a marketplace-managed shipment the platform booked the courier, so the carrier’s desk will not take your claim and the platform’s is the only one open to you. On a parcel you shipped yourself, both are open and they run on separate windows.
| What the parcel shows | Whose desk decides it | The evidence it turns on | Where the window is published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sealed, wrong piece inside | The marketplace | Dispatch weight against return weight; the code on the outer | Your seller panel |
| Sealed, empty | The marketplace first, the carrier second | The weight gap, and the seal intact in both photographs | Both |
| Opened or re-taped in transit | The carrier, on a parcel you booked | Seal photographs at pickup; the carrier’s own tamper note | The carrier’s terms and its claim form |
| Never arrived back at all | The carrier | The booking receipt, the manifested weight, the tracking record | The carrier’s terms |
Both claims can be live at once, and on a self-shipped parcel they usually should be. The windows run in parallel, and it is the same file attached twice.
Why does the declared value cap what I can get back?
Type the real figure into the declared-value field at booking. That one field is the ceiling on everything the carrier can ever owe you, whatever the piece is worth, and it cannot be changed once the parcel has moved.
Declare less than the piece is worth to save a little on the risk charge and you have set that ceiling low yourself, weeks before anybody asks you about it.
Which carriers cap their liability where, which exclude precious jewellery outright in their terms, and what cover costs against what it saves are questions of arithmetic, and they have a page of their own.
Should I be counting these by the month instead of one at a time?
One claim is worth filing on its own evidence. A month of them asks something else, which no claim answers: what the returns took out of the month against what the delivered orders put in.
Price a month of them in one pass and the figure that comes back is the one to set your packing spend against. Tape that destroys itself, a printed code on every outer and thirty seconds of video cost a few rupees a parcel. The month is the only view wide enough to say whether that spend is earning its keep.
The numbers tell you which fight to have. Then go and look at the next parcel going out: the tape, the code and the thirty seconds of video are the part still in your hands.