Amazon's FBM Return Label Rule Starts December 18, 2026

Amazon has told US sellers that, from December 18, 2026, address-only return labels will no longer satisfy its requirements for most returns on seller-fulfilled orders. An address-only label is the option where the seller supplies a return address and the customer arranges and pays for postage. As reported in October 2026, that option is going away for most US FBM returns.

Under the new rule, a seller has seven calendar days from the return request to do one of two things inside the Manage Seller-Fulfilled Returns workflow in Seller Central: upload a prepaid return label, or issue a full refund without asking for the item back. If neither happens in time, Amazon has said it may issue a returnless refund automatically and deduct the amount from the seller's account. The buyer keeps the product.

Two details matter more than they look. The clock starts at the return request, not when the item arrives back. And a label sent through Buyer-Seller Messaging, or any other channel outside the returns workflow, does not count. Heavy and bulky items are temporarily excluded, but as of October 2026 the notice does not define heavy and bulky or say when the exclusion ends.

"The risk is not the label. It is a return request that sits in a queue for a week while nobody owns it, and the refund goes out without the product ever coming back."

Tom Reiter, Product Research & Operations Specialist

This is the second step of a change that started earlier in the year. As reported, from February 8, 2026 all US seller-fulfilled returns moved onto Amazon's prepaid return label program, which ended the earlier exemption for high-value items. The December notice covers the case that was left over: sellers who supplied their own address and let the customer pay postage. Confirm the exact wording in your own Seller Central notifications, since the notice was sent by email and reported secondhand.

The December rule lands in the middle of Amazon's extended holiday return window, which Amazon has now said will run every year. In a Seller News post dated October 16, 2026, Amazon said items bought on Amazon.com between November 1 and December 31, 2026 can be returned until January 31, 2027, with Apple-brand products returnable until January 15, 2027. As reported, it covers FBA and FBM orders alike, needs no action from sellers, and has no opt-out. Amazon described the extension as one that will apply every year.

Put the two together and a seller-fulfilled order placed in early November can generate a return request in late January, well after the December 18 rule is live. That means the heaviest return weeks of the year run straight into a stricter, time-limited process. The table below separates what is confirmed from what is still open.

Where the sources do not line up. As reported by PPC Land on October 19, 2026, the public Manage Seller-Fulfilled Returns help page did not yet mention December 18 or the seven-day window, and in places it still described a two-day deadline for international returns, optional seller-paid labels for exempt SKUs, and steps that use Buyer-Seller Messaging. It is not yet clear whether the international deadline changes, or whether SKU-level exemptions survive. Who pays for the label is also worth checking: one reading is that prepaid describes how the label is arranged, while cost still follows Amazon's existing return-reason rules. We have not been able to confirm that against Amazon's own wording, so treat it as something to verify in your account rather than settled.

FBM sellers who handled returns by hand. If your process was to reply to a return request with an address, or to send a label through messages, that process stops being compliant on December 18 for most US orders. The change is less about cost than about where the action has to happen: inside the returns workflow, inside seven days.

Low-price, high-volume catalogs. On items where return shipping costs close to the item price, a returnless refund may be the cheaper option anyway. The difference after December 18 is that you want to choose it deliberately, with a set threshold, rather than have it happen by default when the window lapses.

Multi-channel sellers. If Amazon FBM orders share a warehouse and a team with your own site or other marketplaces, Amazon returns now run on a stricter clock than the rest. Order management software that pulls returns from every channel into one queue is one way to keep the Amazon ones from sitting unseen. FBA orders are handled by Amazon and are not affected by the label rule, although the extended holiday window applies to them too.

None of this needs new software to start. It needs an owner, a threshold and a daily habit, in place before the holiday returns arrive.

If you also track return rates by product, this is a good season to look at why items come back in the first place. Our guide to reducing your Amazon return rate covers the listing and packaging causes that show up most often.