Eighteen units missing from an FBA shipment, and Amazon says "receiving complete." That happened to me twice in 2025. Here's the uncomfortable truth: learning how to file an Amazon FBA reimbursement claim is one of the highest-ROI skills an FBA seller can have, because Amazon will never voluntarily pay you a dollar more than its system thinks it owes you. This is the full process I've battle-tested: where the claim entry point actually lives, what evidence to prepare, the deadlines that matter, and how to appeal when they say no.
Automated reimbursements still leak money. Here's proof.
Since November 1, 2024, Amazon auto-reimburses some lost-in-warehouse inventory. Sounds great, right? Except the automation misses cases. Not edge cases — real money.
March 2025: I sent 400 units of a small home appliance to a California fulfillment center. The shipment ID showed 382 received. Eighteen units vanished. The Reimbursements report auto-paid for 11 of them. Seven just... evaporated. If I'd trusted the automation, those seven were gone forever.
Here's the counter-intuitive take: since automated reimbursements launched, you need to reconcile MORE, not less. Before automation, everyone knew lost inventory meant filing a claim. Now there's a false sense of security — "the system handles it." The system handles what IT thinks was lost, not what YOU actually lost.
And the payout standard changed too. Since March 31, 2025, Amazon reimburses based on sourcing cost — your manufacturing or procurement cost, excluding freight and duties. If you've entered your sourcing cost in Seller Central, they use your number. If you haven't, Amazon estimates it from "comparable products," which in my experience means low. The cap is $5,000 per unit.
My first batch had no sourcing cost entered. Amazon's estimate came in roughly 40% below my actual cost on those 18 units. I then filled in sourcing costs for every ASIN in my catalog. Lesson learned the expensive way: don't wait until something goes missing. It takes ten minutes in the product cost settings in Seller Central. I re-check mine quarterly — if your costs went up and you didn't update, they reimburse at the old number.
How to file an Amazon FBA reimbursement claim starts with reconciliation
Filing a case before reconciling is the dumbest move — incomplete evidence gets rejected fast. My process is three steps, always in this order:
Step one: pull the Inventory Ledger. Match shipped vs. received vs. sellable quantities per shipment ID, carton by carton. People skip this and file from memory, then Amazon replies "our records show no discrepancy" and the case dies. The Ledger is your source of truth. Everything else builds on it.
Step two: check Inventory Adjustments. This shows Amazon's own adjustment history. Some "lost" units were actually moved to reserved status during a recount — the Adjustments log says so plainly, and filing a case about them just wastes your time. In May 2025 I almost filed over 12 "missing" units that turned out to be reserved during an audit and came back two weeks later. Checking first saved me the embarrassment.
Bonus step: reconcile fees. Download the FBA fee details from the Payments reports and spot-check fulfillment and storage fees per ASIN. Mis-measured dimensions and wrong storage zone calculations happen — checking monthly recovers a few hundred dollars for me, almost every time. Roughly 90% of sellers never do this. That's money left on the table.
Step three: download the Reimbursements report and compare. See exactly what the automation already paid and for which units. Don't re-file what's already paid — chase only what's missing. After this step, you have a clean "owed but unpaid" list.
File only after all three. Your hit rate goes way up, because every unit you claim is documented and the rep has nothing to push back on.
How to file an Amazon FBA reimbursement claim: the actual steps
The entry point: Seller Central > Help > Contact Us > FBA-related issues. Choose the inventory investigation or fee dispute path. One hard rule: one case, one issue type. Lost units and fee overcharges are two separate cases. Stuff them into one case and support will bounce you around — I learned this after getting bounced three times.
Evidence checklist (all required):
- Shipment ID and carton labels: proves you sent it
- Carrier tracking number: proves it arrived
- Purchase invoice: proves what it's worth
- Packing list and outbound photos: nice to have, strengthens the case
Deadlines: most claim types have a window around 60 days. Miss it and nobody can help you — check the latest policy in Seller Central for exact numbers. My habit: reconcile the previous month's shipments on the 1st of every month. Nothing piles up, nothing expires.
One timing detail: don't file in the first two weeks after a shipment arrives. Amazon's receiving scans lag, especially in peak season — the boxes are there but not scanned yet. I give it a 15-day buffer; if the Ledger still doesn't match after 15 days, then I act. Around Prime Day and Black Friday I stretch the buffer to 25 days — peak-season cases get slower replies and are more likely to be closed as "still receiving."
Claims aren't just about lost units. Fee overcharges are claimable too. August 2025: Amazon measured one of my products a full size tier too large, overcharging fulfillment fees by nearly $1 per order. At roughly 20,000 orders a month, that was almost $20,000 walking out the door. The appeal needed my own measured dimensions and packaging photos — measure three times, average it, photograph the tape measure. Support corrected the dimensions and refunded the overcharges. This type of case has the simplest evidence chain and the highest approval rate — yet most sellers don't even know fee disputes exist.
Rejected? You have 48 hours to revive it
The most common rejection reason is simple: a broken evidence chain. You have the shipment ID but no tracking number, or tracking but no invoice — one missing link and the rep rejects it.
June 2025: my damage claim got rejected because my purchase invoice was in Chinese and the rep said they "couldn't verify the cost." Within 48 hours I submitted a translated invoice plus the purchase contract. Case reopened, paid out a week later.
Remember the number: supplementing materials within 48 hours of rejection restarts the appeal. Miss that window and you're filing a brand-new case from scratch, with all the queue time wasted. I now set a 40-hour calendar reminder on every case. Supplement early, don't gamble on the deadline.
My appeal template is three sentences:
- What's the problem (lost/damaged/overcharged, with shipment ID)
- What's my evidence (attachments 1/2/3, listed out)
- What I want (reimburse X units at sourcing cost)
No essays, no sob stories, no yelling at support. Reps read hundreds of cases a day; complete materials and a clear ask get processed fastest. My fastest case went from filing to payout in 4 days — because the evidence was complete on the first submission.
Do the math: DIY vs. commission services vs. ignoring it
Three options, laid out:
| DIY claims | Commission claim services | Ignoring it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | 2–3 hours/month of reconciliation time | 20%–25% commission on recovered amounts | $0 |
| Recovery rate | I hit 90%+ myself | Won't take small cases | 0 |
| Best for | Sellers losing $500+/month to discrepancies | Big sellers with zero time | Sellers whose losses are too small to bother |
My numbers: I lose roughly $800–$1,200 a month to discrepancies. Three hours of reconciling and filing recovers 90% — that's $700–$1,000 back. A commission service taking 25% would cost me $200+ a month for nothing. Doing it myself pays a better hourly rate than running my ads.
In Q3 2025 I recovered just over $3,100 total, spending under 10 hours on it. Nothing else in my business has that ROI.
But there's a cutoff: if your monthly discrepancy loss is under $300, three hours of work to recover $200 pays less than optimizing a listing. In that case, batch a few months together and file quarterly, or hand it to a commission service.
My verdict: losing over $500 a month — do it yourself, no hesitation. Under $300 — batch it quarterly. And one more thing most people don't know: commission services usually only take large cases. Your $40 small claims? Nobody wants them. Small money can only be claimed by you.
One last reminder: go enter your sourcing costs right now. Don't wait until something goes missing. This one I've tested myself — it works.
By Ah K, E-commerce Seller (5 yrs)
