This seems like pretty normal behavior actually... they attempted to deliver the order, there was a failure to deliver, and so they are refunding it. I think it

This seems like pretty normal behavior actually... they attempted to deliver the order, there was a failure to deliver, and so they are refunding it. I think it comes off weird just because of Amazon's kind of lazy implementation. I've had a nearly identical experience and I believe the reason is some shortcuts in Amazon's integration with UPS. In my case, I ordered a fairly expensive item from Amazon, it was late on delivery, and then I saw (via MyChoice) that the UPS tracking had been updated with a note along the lines of "merchandise missing, returning carton to shipper." It seemed like either someone had stolen it in shipping or something had happened that broke the box open. In any case, this decision by UPS to "return to sender" seems to have automatically triggered return processing on Amazon's side, as I got a "We couldn't deliver your item" email from Amazon followed a couple of days later by a slightly incongruous email telling me that my return had been received and a refund issued. They did not hold back any return fee, I got the full amount back. Overall I have no complaints about their handling, other than that the item was sold out so I'm now waiting on a restock which is slightly annoying... but that's the chip shortage for you. As for what the seller faced, it's sort of hard to know... while not the friendliest in the world I can imagine Amazon holding back some funds from the seller in this case because the risk of things being lost in transit (or stolen after delivery) is well-known to online sellers and something they presumably price in. On the other hand, around a year ago I had a series of Amazon orders all get stuck in the tracking and ultimately cancelled... at the same Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Southern California. They must have been having some kind of serious problem there, but it was annoying that they just kept trying to fulfill my orders out of the same place.