FBA Reimbursements for Lost or Damaged Inventory: How to Claim Them
October 13, 2026
When you send inventory to FBA, some of those units will never reach a buyer. They get lost at receiving, damaged in the warehouse, they vanish in a transfer between fulfillment centers, or a buyer returns a unit that Amazon refunded but that never made it back into your inventory. It isn’t an exceptional case: it’s a small, constant fraction of any high-volume seller’s operation.
Amazon has a mechanism for giving you that money back. The problem is that this mechanism changed substantially between late 2024 and 2025, and most sellers are still operating under the old rules — which means, in practice, leaving money on the table every month.
The two changes are big: the claim window went from 18 months to 60 days, and the basis for reimbursement went from sale value to your manufacturing cost. Together they turn what used to be an annual cleanup into an operational routine that, if it isn’t on someone’s calendar, simply doesn’t happen.
what changed, and why it matters so much
The first change was the window. Amazon cut the deadline for filing claims from 18 months to 60 days. You used to be able to run an annual audit, find two years of discrepancies and recover a considerable sum in one go. Today, a discrepancy from 90 days ago simply isn’t claimable. The money isn’t “lost”: it was never claimed.
The second change was the calculation basis. Since the policy update effective March 31, 2025, when Amazon loses or damages your inventory before a buyer orders it, the reimbursement is calculated on your manufacturing cost — what you paid to produce or source the unit — not on the price you were selling it for. That cost excludes freight, handling and duties.
The effect is large. Many sellers report their recoveries fell between 50% and 75% versus the previous scheme. A product that cost $400 to land in your warehouse and sold for $1,200 used to generate a reimbursement close to sale value; now it generates one closer to $400. That’s a structural difference in the economics of running FBA, and it’s worth folding into your cost assumptions rather than discovering it when the first thin reimbursement arrives.
And a third change, this one in your favor: Amazon automated a good share of claims. Clean cases — a unit scanned as lost in a fulfillment center, obvious warehouse damage — are now reimbursed on their own, without you opening a case. That’s good and it reduces work, but it creates a trust trap: automation covers the obvious, not the ambiguous. Cases that require cross-referencing data — an inbound shipment where they received 480 of 500, a refunded return that never came back — still depend on you spotting them.
the windows, one by one
Each type of incident has its own deadline, and they don’t line up with each other. This is the part worth writing down somewhere, because nobody retains it from memory:
- Inbound shipment discrepancies: between day 15 and 60 after delivery. Before day 15 it won’t proceed, because Amazon is still receiving; after 60 it’s closed.
- FBA customer returns: between day 60 and 120 after the buyer’s refund. The logic is to allow time for the unit to physically return before claiming.
- Removal shipments lost in transit: between day 15 and 75 from shipping.
- Damaged or incomplete removals: within 30 days of delivery.
Note the pattern: nearly all of them have a floor as well as a ceiling. Claiming too early is as useless as claiming too late, and it’s a common mistake that burns time and closes cases with no result.
These rules correspond to the global FBA policy. Before building your routine, it’s worth confirming them in your own Seller Central, because Amazon adjusts deadlines and wording fairly often and not always at the same time across marketplaces.
Glossary: inventory valuation, how much capital is tied up →documentation is what sets the amount
This is the most actionable point in the article. Because reimbursement is now based on your cost, Amazon needs to know what that cost is. And you have to prove it.
The concrete requirement: supplier invoices showing per-unit cost, submitted within 60 days of each claim. If you don’t provide that documentation inside the window, Amazon calculates the reimbursement using its own internal estimate, which is consistently lower than actual cost.
Put differently: the seller whose purchase invoices are organized and who can pull per-unit cost in minutes recovers significantly more than the one who has to go hunting for a PDF in an eight-month-old email thread. It isn’t a difference in claiming skill; it’s a difference in filing.
This has a practical consequence beyond reimbursements: your documented per-unit cost stopped being an accounting figure and became an operational asset. It serves the reimbursement, it serves your contribution margin, it serves your inventory valuation and it serves your deductions. If there’s one internal tidy-up project worth doing this quarter, that’s the one.
the four cases automation doesn’t cover
Because Amazon now auto-reimburses the obvious cases, the manual work that remains is worth far more per hour. These are the four that consistently slip through:
Partial receiving discrepancies. You sent 500 units, they received 480. Because most of it arrived, the shipment isn’t flagged as problematic and nobody reviews it. It’s the most frequent case and the most profitable to catch.
Refunded returns that never came back. Amazon refunded the buyer, you paid for the refund, and the unit never returned to sellable inventory. Spotting it requires cross-referencing the returns report against the inventory report, which is exactly what automation doesn’t do.
Units reclassified as unfulfillable with no attributable cause. They show up as unfulfillable with no recorded damage event. Each one deserves review, because the difference between “the customer damaged it” and “the warehouse damaged it” determines whether a reimbursement is owed.
Incomplete removals. You requested 200 units back and 186 arrived. Because the box arrived, the event closes, and the window to claim is just 30 days from delivery.
the routine that makes this work
With 60-day windows, this can’t be a project: it has to be a habit. The minimum routine that works is biweekly and takes less than an hour:
- Review inbound shipments delivered more than 15 and fewer than 60 days ago, comparing units sent against units received.
- Review refunded returns from more than 60 days ago, checking which physically came back to sellable inventory and which didn’t.
- Review inventory adjustments for the period, looking for lost or damaged units that weren’t automatically reimbursed.
- Open the applicable cases, attaching the supplier invoice with per-unit cost from the first message.
- Follow up: an open case is not a resolved case, and the ones left unanswered close themselves.
Steps 1 through 3 are cross-references between reports Amazon already gives you. It’s mechanical, repetitive work, which is exactly the kind of work that stops happening when the week gets heavy — and that’s why it needs an owner and a date, not good intentions.
why this connects to your margin
There’s a reason this topic belongs in a profitability conversation and not only an operations one: lost, unclaimed inventory is margin you already paid for and will never collect.
When you bought that unit, money left your account. If it was never sold and never reimbursed, that cost stays inside your operation disguised as “shrinkage” and ends up spread across the units you did sell, lowering the real margin of your entire catalog without anything in your report flagging it.
In a business with high turnover and thin contribution margins, a fraction of a percent of inventory evaporating unclaimed can be the difference between a SKU that contributes and one that doesn’t. And because the effect is diluted, it doesn’t show up on any line item: it shows up as a margin that “doesn’t match” what the spreadsheet said.
In iqseller this lives where it should: in inventory valuation and in the Profitability module. The panel knows how many units you have, where they are — FBA, Full, your warehouse — and what each one cost you, so the gap between what you bought and what was sold or reimbursed stops being invisible. It doesn’t open the cases for you, but it is what gives the question “why doesn’t my real margin match the calculated one?” a verifiable answer.
Glossary: real net margin, with everything deducted →what to take away
Three things. First: the window is 60 days and it no longer forgives, so the review has to be biweekly and owned by someone. Second: reimbursement is calculated on your manufacturing cost, so your assumptions about the cost of running FBA have changed and are worth updating. Third, and the one that moves the most money: having per-unit cost documented and at hand is what decides whether you recover what you’re owed or what Amazon estimates.
None of the three is difficult. All three fall apart for lack of routine, which is the most expensive way to lose money: in small amounts, every month, with nothing to warn you.