A recent example: My wife was visiting friends in Arizona, so I took advantage of that and ordered a bunch of items from Amazon that she could bring back with her and not have to pay duty on returning to Mexico. (You are allowed $300 duty free as an airline passenger.) She had taken an extra, empty suitcase just for that purpose.

Well, it turned out that the shipper that Amazon used (they rotate indiscriminately among USPS, FedEx, UPS, and maybe others) did not serve the particular rural area where her friends lived, so the packages were returned to Amazon as undeliverable.

Amazon made the return process absolutely transparent and effortless on my part. They sent me followup emails and immediately refunded the full purchase price without my having to deal with any of it. A least three of the packages were not "Fulfilled by Amazon" but through third party vendors. Amazon took care of it all without requiring any input from me.

Yes, it was disappointing to miss the duty-free shipment window, but only one of the items was important enough to me to re-order and pay for import to Mexico, which I have done. Think how much work I would have had to do had I not had Amazon as intermediary. I'd still be dealing with it now, six weeks later.

tanstaafl.