Every quarter Amazon loses, damages, or mis-charges on inventory inside its fulfillment network, and most sellers leave 1-3% of revenue sitting in unclaimed reimbursements. Here's the exact playbook we use to audit, document, and recover what you're owed.
Get a free auditUsed by brands recovering 6-7 figures in unclaimed FBA reimbursements
FBA reimbursements are the closest thing to free margin on Amazon, money you've already earned, sitting in a queue waiting to be claimed. But the system is designed to be missed. Auto-reimbursements undercount. Claim windows expire. Reports don't reconcile cleanly. And Seller Support will reject any claim that isn't bulletproof on the first attempt.
Reimbursement recovery isn't complicated, it's a discipline. The brands that recover the most run the same audit every 30 days, attach the same evidence on every claim, and never let a Shipment ID age past its claim window. Here's the process.
Pull Inventory Adjustments, Received Inventory, Reimbursements, and FBA Customer Returns reports. Reconcile against shipment manifests and removal orders to surface every discrepancy older than 30 days.
Every case opened with Seller Support references a specific Shipment ID, FNSKU, order ID, or removal order ID, plus the exact unit count and the exact dollar amount owed. Vague claims get rejected.
Roughly 30-40% of first-pass claims get denied with boilerplate. The recovery comes from reopening with additional evidence, escalating to a senior Seller Support rep, and citing the specific policy section. Persistence is the strategy.
Seller Central → Reports → Fulfillment. Export the last 18 months of Inventory Adjustments, Received Inventory, Reimbursements, FBA Customer Returns, and Removal Order Detail reports.
For each discrepancy, assemble the exact data Seller Support requires. Missing fields are the #1 reason claims are denied on first review.
Seller Central → Help → Get Support → Selling on Amazon → Fulfillment by Amazon → Inventory issues. Pick the matching subcategory (lost inbound, lost inventory, damaged, destroyed, customer return, fee overcharge).
Amazon typically responds in 3-7 days. Roughly a third of first-pass claims get denied with boilerplate, that's not the end, it's the beginning.
The single biggest driver of recovery isn't the claim quality, it's never missing a claim window. Build the audit into a monthly close.
When Amazon loses, damages, destroys, or disposes of your inventory inside its fulfillment network, or makes a fee or customer-return error in your favor, you're owed money back. Reimbursements are the formal claims process for recovering that money through Seller Central.
Most claim types have an 18-month window from the date of the discrepancy. Lost-inventory and warehouse-damaged claims fall under this window. Customer-return reimbursement claims typically need to be filed within 60 days after the 45-day return window closes, so roughly 105 days from the original ship date.
Sometimes. Amazon auto-reimburses certain warehouse-lost and warehouse-damaged units, but the credits are easy to miss and frequently undercount the actual loss. You still need to audit FBA inventory reports against shipment, removal, and reimbursement reports to catch the gap.
At minimum: the Inventory Adjustments report, Received Inventory report, Reimbursements report, FBA Customer Returns report, and the shipment summary (Shipment ID, FNSKU, units shipped, units received). Amazon will reject claims that don't reference specific Shipment IDs, FNSKUs, or order IDs.
Lost: Amazon can't locate the units inside a fulfillment center. Damaged: units were damaged by Amazon (warehouse or carrier), not the customer. Destroyed: Amazon destroyed the units, usually after a removal order or quality flag. Disposed: Amazon disposed of units at your request or under their unfulfillable inventory policy. Each has its own claim flow.
Yes, and many sellers do, they typically take 15-25% of recovered funds. The trade-off: speed and coverage vs. margin. Mid-size brands doing $1M-$10M on Amazon usually recover more by combining a monthly internal audit with a paid service for the long-tail edge cases.
Send us read-only access to your Seller Central reports. We'll come back with a line-item list of every unclaimed reimbursement we find, what it's worth, and the claim window before it expires. No retainer, no commitment, just the number.
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