Never Miss an Amazon Refund Opportunity with Zapier

Having Amazon reimburse us Amazon sellers seems to be a point of pride in the community.  Rightfully so, in my opinion.

When Amazon allows a customer to return an item against their own terms it may irritate us.  However, this is a good opportunity to ensure we get paid anyway.  It’s not difficult to do and there have been plenty of blog posts and even step by step walkthroughs on how to submit a reimbursement claim.

Never Miss an Amazon Email

Today I want to show you a hack to be sure you never miss an email from Amazon.

If you are like me and try to practice an inbox zero strategy this may not be for you.  That’s OK.

You may be like some of my friends (you know who you are) who have a ton of emails.  Either you are unable to get through because of the sheer volume or it just doesn’t bother you.  This hack may be right up your alley.

Enter Zapier

If you have not heard of Zapier it is very similar to IFTTT but, arguably, more powerful.

They have an awesome Zap (what they call their automations) that will automagically push an email from Gmail over to a Google Sheet based on a set of rules.

So, what you can do with this is make sure that any email from do-not-reply@amazon.com is never missed.

All you need to do is check your Google Sheet regularly.

How to Set up a Zap

Now, let’s get into the meat of this post.  How to actually set this Zap up and make sure it runs smoothly.

The first thing you will need to do is have a Google Sheet set up.  I won’t go into how to do that or you will be here all day reading different how to’s.

I will show you what mine looks like though.

As you can see, it is simple.  You will want to name the Sheet (Amazon Emails is what I used) to make it easily searchable.  This is especially important if you are an avid user of your Google Drive, like me.

Next you will need to head over to create your Zap.

So you don’t have to do too much work you can just click here to go directly to the correct Zap Template.  If you don’t already have an account with them you will need to create one.

Once you are inside the template just scroll to the bottom and click on Create This Zap.  This will pull up the Trigger screen, it should say Gmail Trigger, and you can click Continue.

Then you will be asked to connect your Gmail account if you haven’t already.  You will also be given the option to test the account and ensure it is working properly.  Do this.  That way you will not need to come back later and fix anything.

After you have connected your Gmail account you will need to input a Boolean Search String.  This will allow Zapier to find a single or multiple emails from Amazon and save them into your Google Sheet.

Here is how I set mine up.  I added Bezos because we are tight and I don’t want to miss his funny cat memes.

Take note that there is no space between the colon and the email address.

Once you click on continue you will be brought to a screen to test what you have set up.  Zapier will search your email (including the trash) to find a recent email from any of the email addresses you included in the search string.

If everything has been done correctly so far you will continue on to a Successful test screen.

Remember when I said you needed to have a Google Sheet made and at the ready?  Now is the time you will need it.

Next Zapier will create a row in your spreadsheet.  You will want to make sure that you named your Google Sheet something simple and easy to find.

All you have to do at this step is click Continue

Zapier will now instruct you to head on over to your Google Sheet and put in some header information.

I used Sender, Email Address (of the sender), and a link to the email.  The email address header was probably overkill and maybe i should have used Subject instead so be sure to play around with yours and choose what is best for you.

The next item on your list of things to do is to connect your Google Sheets Account with Zapier.  If you gave your correct Google information previously Zapier should have done this for you.

In this case you will just need to test to ensure that your account is connected and then continue.

On this step you can also edit the name of your Google Sheets Account.  This may be helpful if you have multiple google accounts attached to your Zapier.

If you do have multiple Google Accounts attached to your Zapier you will see at the top that you can actually search by name.  This can be especially helpful if you are using this automation to help clients.

You’re next step is to test Google Sheets.  This step will ensure that the proper information is submitted to the proper cells in your Google Sheet.

You are almost finished!  Keep reading.

OK, we are there.  You should now see a congratulations screen.  It looks a bit like this.

You have now completed setting up a Zap.  Your emails will automagically be sent to a google spreadsheet (or the emails of your clients) so that you can check them and never miss one.

How Do I Actually Use This

Good question Kemosabe.

Use this for yourself.  Make sure you do not miss the opportunity to get a refund from Amazon for a product that has been damaged, returned inappropriately, or otherwise absconded improperly by the Amazon machine.

They don’t mean it, but it happens.

Use this for your clients.  Maybe you help people get reimbursements.  This would be a great way to ensure you see all of the emails, or, your employees and assistants see all of the emails.  This will also keep you out of other sellers inboxes making things much easier to manage.

Now, tell me how you might use this?  You guys are smarter than me.  Also, what other tips and tricks do you have that might help the community?

Leave me a comment below and share this with your friends so we can crowd-source some really great information.