Lost inventory, units damaged in the warehouse, returns never restocked, and fee overcharges add up to what reimbursement services quote as 1–3% of annual sales. Enter your numbers to estimate what's sitting unclaimed in your account.
Your store
$
Picks a point in the vendor-quoted 1–3% range: low SKU count 1%, standard 2%, high-volume or heavy 3%. Amazon publishes no loss rate.
Share of claimable cases still unfiled — our assumption: never 100%, sometimes 40%, regularly 15%.
Estimated unclaimed reimbursements
$0
—
Annual leakage (mid estimate)$0
Recoverable window (≈60 days)$0
Assumed auto-reimbursed by Amazon (35%)$0
Likely still unclaimed$0
Find and recover it — contingency services charge only on what they recover
With most claim windows closing ≈60 days after the event, the real value of a managed service is continuous monitoring — catching and filing each case before its window expires — usually taking a percentage only of what it recovers; compare each service's published rate before you sign. DIY tools charge a flat monthly fee and let you keep 100%.
See reimbursement services →
We may earn a commission if you sign up through our links — at no cost to you.
Where the money leaks (and why you never see it)
Amazon processes millions of units a day. At that scale, errors are inevitable — and the cost lands on you unless you catch it. These are the five claim categories that make up almost all recoverable money:
Lost inventoryUnits received into FBA then lost in the network and never found.
Damaged by AmazonUnits damaged in the warehouse or by carriers, not by customers.
Shipment discrepanciesYou sent 100 units, Amazon recorded 92. The gap can be claimed within the shipment's claim window.
Returns not restockedCustomer refunded, but the item never came back to your inventory.
Fee overchargesWrong weight or dimensions inflate FBA fees on every single unit sold.
The claim windows: shorter than they used to be
Since October 23, 2024, Amazon’s claim windows are tight: lost or damaged fulfillment-center inventory must be claimed within 60 days of Amazon reporting it; customer-return claims run 60–120 days after the refund or replacement; removal shipments lost in transit can be claimed from 15 days after the last confirmed movement until 75 days after the shipment was created; other removal claims close 60 days after the return is received. A discrepancy you don’t catch inside its window is gone permanently — there is no reach-back pool. Separately, Amazon’s auto-reimbursement engine settles some lost and damaged cases on its own — but it pays out on sourcing/manufacturing cost, not retail price. Uploading your real sourcing cost keeps that payout accurate, and a manual audit catches the cases and categories the automation skips.
The change that quietly cut your payouts: cost-basis reimbursements
The biggest 2025–2026 shift isn't a new fee — it's how much Amazon pays back when it loses your stock. Since March 10, 2025, inventory lost or damaged before a customer order is reimbursed at your manufacturing (sourcing) cost, not retail price. Amazon excludes shipping, handling, customs duty, and your margin.
What it looks like in practice
A $50 item that cost you $15 to source used to pay back close to $50 if Amazon lost it. Now it pays back $15 — you eat the $35 of margin. If you don't upload your real sourcing cost in Seller Central's Inventory Defect & Reimbursement portal, Amazon estimates the cost from "comparable" listings, which may differ from your real cost.
Two things protect you: keep your sourcing costs uploaded and current so Amazon can't lowball the estimate, and audit aggressively, because the cases Amazon's automation skips or underpays are exactly where the recoverable money now sits. (Notably, the founder of GETIDA, a major reimbursement service, publicly tied this cost-basis switch to Amazon holding FBA fees flat — the savings came from somewhere.)
New 2026 leak: self-prep errors
As of January 1, 2026, Amazon ended its US prep and labeling services. Every unit must now arrive fully prepped and FNSKU-labeled by you or a third-party prep center. Non-compliant inbound shipments trigger an inbound defect fee — roughly $0.32 to $5.72 per unit by size tier and weight (a consolidated missing/late/misrouted charge averages about $0.60/unit), up from $0.02–$0.07. That's a brand-new line of avoidable cost, and prep-center mistakes are now your problem to catch.
Software vs managed service
If your team audits Seller Central reports every week, a DIY tool (flat monthly fee, you keep 100%) can cost less. If claims pile up unfiled, a managed service that handles scanning, filing, and follow-up for a commission tends to recover more in practice — unused insights don't recover cash. Either way, the filing windows are ticking, so consistency beats a once-a-year scramble.
Is this estimate accurate?
It's a planning estimate based on the 1–3% of annual sales range that reimbursement services quote, applied to the roughly 60 days of leakage that is still claimable and adjusted for your inventory profile and prior auditing. Two inputs are our assumptions, not published figures: that Amazon's automation already settles about 35% of claimable value, and the share left unfiled by sellers who audit sometimes (40%) or regularly (15%). Your real recoverable amount depends on your actual discrepancies — only a full audit of your Seller Central data (by you, a tool, or a service) gives a precise figure.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Amazon owe FBA sellers?
Reimbursement services say sellers typically recover 1–3% of annual sales from lost inventory, units damaged by Amazon, shipment discrepancies, customer returns that are never restocked, and fee overcharges. Amazon reimburses some of these automatically; the rest is paid only if you find the case and file it inside its window.
What is the 2026 reimbursement filing window?
Since October 23, 2024, the windows are short: lost or damaged fulfillment-center inventory must be claimed within 60 days of Amazon reporting it; customer-return claims run 60–120 days after the refund or replacement; removal shipments lost in transit can be claimed from 15 days after the last confirmed movement until 75 days after the shipment was created; other removal claims close 60 days after the return is received. Missed windows expire permanently — audit monthly, not annually. Amazon auto-reimburses some lost/damaged cases, but on sourcing cost rather than retail price, so manual audits still catch money the automation misses.
Does Amazon's auto-reimbursement pay me back automatically?
Only partly. The auto-reimbursement engine settles some lost and damaged cases on its own, but it pays on sourcing/manufacturing cost rather than retail, and it skips categories like shipment discrepancies and fee overcharges entirely. A manual audit of your Seller Central reports is still the only way to capture what the automation underpays or ignores.
Do reimbursement services cost money upfront?
Managed services usually charge a commission on what they recover rather than an upfront fee; rates differ, so compare each service's published terms. DIY tools charge a flat monthly subscription instead and let you keep 100% of recoveries.
Every one of the five leak categories above lives in a report you already have. The routine that catches them: pull the Inventory Adjustments report and filter for lost and damaged adjustment codes — anything Amazon logged as lost or warehouse-damaged and didn't later reconcile is a claim candidate. Reconcile each closed shipment against what Amazon received; a 100-sent, 92-received gap that never resolved after the investigation window is claimable with your carrier documents. Cross the Returns report against refunds: a refund with no matching return receipt within a reasonable window is the "returns not restocked" leak. And spot-check billed dimensions on your top SKUs against your own measurements — a wrong dimension inflates the fulfillment fee on every unit sold until someone notices. Thirty minutes a month covers a catalog of moderate size; what doesn't fit in thirty minutes is the signal you've outgrown DIY.
The 60-day clock: recovery is a cadence, not a project
Put this page's numbers on an illustrative $500,000-a-year store: at the vendor-quoted 1–3% range, $5,000–$15,000 leaks per year — roughly $400–$1,250 every month. Under the claim windows in force since October 23, 2024, most of it becomes unclaimable about 60 days after the event (returns allow 60–120 days; removals lost in transit up to 75 days from shipment creation). There is no pool quietly accumulating for a rainy-day audit: a month you skip is a month of leakage that mostly expires forever. That reframes the service-versus-DIY question. A managed service's real product isn't reach-back — nothing is further back — it's continuous monitoring that files each case before its window closes, for a commission on what it recovers (rates differ by service). DIY keeps 100% and beats the clock if you genuinely hold a monthly rhythm; DIY on an irregular schedule loses every claim whose window closes first. Software sits between: flat fee, you file, the deadline discipline is still yours. Pick whichever you'll actually sustain — with these windows, consistency is the whole game.
Making the cost basis work for you, not against you
Since reimbursements pay sourcing cost rather than retail, your uploaded costs are now the ceiling on every payout — and Amazon's estimate is the floor you fall to without them. Three disciplines follow. Upload your real sourcing cost for every active SKU in the Inventory Defect & Reimbursement portal, and update it when supplier prices move — a stale low cost from two years ago underpays every future claim. Keep the invoice trail that proves those costs; when Amazon's estimate lowballs a claim, the supplier invoice is the dispute evidence. And when automation settles a lost-inventory case at an estimated cost below your real one, treat that as an open item, not a closed case — the gap between Amazon's estimate and your documented cost is itself recoverable money, and it's exactly the category the automation never fixes on its own.
Filing discipline: win rate beats volume
Reimbursement claims are adjudicated by people and systems that see mass-filed noise all day, so the way to get paid is precision. Per category, the evidence that closes cases: shipment discrepancies want the bill of lading, proof of delivery, and carrier-recorded weights; lost and damaged claims want the adjustment-report line plus your cost documentation; returns claims want the refund record and the absence of a matching return receipt; fee overcharge claims want your measured dimensions with photos against the billed ones. File after Amazon's own investigation window has run — filing earlier gets denials that are technically correct — and never re-file a denied claim unchanged. One well-documented claim that wins sets a pattern for the next ten; a hundred sloppy ones get your account's claims read skeptically.
More questions sellers ask about reimbursements
How often should I audit for reimbursements?
Monthly, in the same session you reconcile settlements — and monthly is a deadline, not a preference: since October 23, 2024 most claim types close about 60 days after the event, so any longer cadence guarantees part of your leakage expires unfiled. A monthly rhythm also keeps each audit to about thirty minutes and the evidence fresh.
Amazon already auto-reimbursed a lost unit — is that case closed?
Not necessarily. Auto-reimbursements pay at Amazon's cost estimate, and if your documented sourcing cost is higher, the difference is worth a case with your invoice attached. Automation also skips whole categories — returns not restocked and fee overcharges chief among them — so an auto-payment on one unit says nothing about the rest of the leak.
What evidence wins a shipment-discrepancy claim?
Carrier paperwork: the bill of lading or tracking chain, proof of delivery, and recorded weights that show the full quantity left your dock. Pair it with the shipment's receiving history in Seller Central. Claims without carrier documents come down to your word against the warehouse scan — with them, the discrepancy is arithmetic.
Is auditing worth it for a small store?
Run the percentages: at $50,000 a year, the vendor-quoted 1–3% range is $500–$1,500 — compare that with the time a DIY check takes and with any service's minimum fee. The calculator above scales the estimate to your revenue, inventory profile, and audit habits; let that number, not a blanket rule, decide how much process you buy.
Sources & how this page is maintained
Figures on this page reflect Amazon's published FBA reimbursement policy as of 2026 (FBA inventory reimbursement policy, with its fulfillment center, customer return and removal claim pages, read October 11, 2026): the March 10, 2025 move to sourcing-cost-basis reimbursements, the claim windows in effect since October 23, 2024 (lost or damaged fulfillment-center inventory must be claimed within 60 days of Amazon reporting it; customer-return claims run 60–120 days after the refund or replacement; removal shipments lost in transit can be claimed from 15 days after the last confirmed movement until 75 days after the shipment was created; other removal claims close 60 days after the return is received), Amazon's auto-reimbursement behavior, and the 2026 inbound defect fee ranges — all as published in Seller Central policy pages and Amazon's fee-change announcements. The 1–3% range is a figure reimbursement services quote (for example Threecolts: "Most sellers reclaim 1–3% of their annual Amazon or Walmart sales"), not an Amazon figure; it is used for estimation and labeled as an estimate; report names refer to standard Seller Central reports. Marginely is an independent seller-tools site, not affiliated with Amazon or any reimbursement service. The services link above is an affiliate link — the commission disclosure sits beside it, and commissions don't change the estimate, the DIY guidance, or the advice that small stores often shouldn't buy a service at all. We review this page when Amazon changes reimbursement policy or claim windows. Found a discrepancy? Tell us via the about page — we verify against the source and correct. Official sources: Amazon Selling Partner pricing, Fulfillment by Amazon, Seller Central — Inbound defect fees and Seller Central — 2026 US Referral and FBA fee changes summary. Measured on September 15, 2026: these Seller Central pages return a short shell to a plain request but serve their full text to a browser, so the amounts here can be re-checked from a public document after all — the inbound defect fee table carries $0.32 as its lowest per-unit charge and $5.72 as its highest for shipments created on or after January 15, 2026, and $0.02–$0.07 for shipments created before that date.
Last reviewed: October 11, 2026 · next scheduled review with Amazon's next reimbursement policy change.
Estimates from Amazon's published FBA reimbursement policy and claim windows — not financial advice. Check your own Seller Central reports before filing a claim.
