How to return AirPods Max to Amazon successfully?

I’m experiencing the same issue, however I haven’t opened the Apple packaging or even broken the seal on the AirPods I ordered, and I’m still getting this message on Amazon. Any idea what to do from here? The AI chat says it’s unable to help with this type of request

For anyone seeing finding this on google in the future, Amazon makes it (slightly) hard to return Airpods that you purchase, even if they are unopened within the return period. If you try to just click the regular return button you get a message of: "Contact an expert and confirm that you have completed a factory reset of your device to remove your personal data before returning it. They can help you reset it if necessary." I bought a pair of Apple Airpod Pro 2s off of Amazon and returned them the next day, but still had to go through their annoying process.

To initiate the return, you just have to go to your orders page and next to the AirPods their is an option for "Get Product Support", which is a yellow button at the top. Click this and request that they call you on your provided phone number. Click through a couple menus to get to "product support and returns" and then the person on the phone can initiate the return and generate the standard Amazon return email that you should have been able to get with a simple click. Also, annoyingly, they will only arrange as UPS pickup. You can't just bring them to a whole foods or print a label to ship them back. It's really deceptive of them to make this process so difficult that surely some people just give up on the return.

I had this same problem, but was able to figure out the issue. Once you have reset the device and it doesn’t show in your device list, go into Settings > Bluetooth and remove the AirPods Max from the list. Once that is done, you should be able to initiate the return with Amazon.

I also had the exact same problem. I used the AI chat and they connected me with a live support person who helped. They said because of the cost of the product, they needed to send UPS to pick up the item to be sure it doesn’t get lost or stolen. They set that up and will have UPS call to set up the pick up on the next business day. Good luck - hope you get to return it.

I just had the same problem with a pair of new AirPod Pro2 that I purchased from Amazon less than 2 weeks ago. The sound quality when used as hearing aids to listen to my stereo was horrible with lots of high frequency overload, no matter what sound cancellation I used. Amazon did the "you have to talk to a support specialist" thing. It took three tries to get a phone call to successfully connect. Nothing was said about needing to unpair first. They just asked why I wanted to return them and then proceeded to set up the UPS pickup. Something is going on here. Maybe Apple is trying to cut down on returns on a problematic product, not sure. I will think twice about buying Apple products of any significant cost from Amazon in the future.