When Amazon fulfils your orders, it also handles millions of your units, and things go wrong. Units get lost, damaged, and mis-processed. In many of those cases Amazon owes you money, and a lot of it never gets claimed because nobody’s looking.
What FBA reimbursements actually are
Under the FBA model, Amazon takes responsibility for your inventory once it’s in their network. When they lose it, damage it in the warehouse, or mishandle a return, their policy is to reimburse you. Some of this is caught and credited automatically. But not all of it, and the gaps are where the money quietly sits. On an account doing real volume, those uncaught cases add up over a year.
The common categories worth checking
A few recurring places where discrepancies show up:
- Lost or damaged inbound shipments, where fewer units were received than you sent.
- Warehouse-damaged inventory, units damaged in Amazon’s possession, not by a customer.
- Customer returns that were refunded to the buyer but never actually returned to your inventory, or came back damaged.
- Fee and measurement errors, where a unit’s weight or dimensions are recorded wrong and you’re overcharged on fulfilment fees.
- Removal and disposal issues, where units were lost or mishandled during a removal order.
Amazon catches some of what it owes you automatically. The rest sits there until someone reconciles the reports.
Why you don’t get all of it automatically
Amazon’s systems credit many discrepancies without you asking, but the reconciliation isn’t perfect and it isn’t complete. Some cases need you to identify them from your reports and raise them. If nobody on the account is regularly checking inventory and reimbursement reports against what actually happened, those claimable cases simply expire unnoticed. It’s not that the money is hidden, it’s that finding it takes deliberate, ongoing work most sellers never get to.
The claim windows matter
Reimbursement eligibility is time-limited. Amazon sets windows on how far back you can raise different types of claims, and once a case ages past its window, it’s gone. This is exactly why reconciliation needs to be a routine, not a once-a-year scramble, by the time you get around to it, some of what you were owed may no longer be claimable. Amazon updates these policies periodically, so it’s worth checking the current rules rather than assuming last year’s windows still apply.
How to actually claim, the right way
The honest version: pull your inventory ledger and reimbursement reports, reconcile them against your shipments, returns, and adjustments, identify genuine discrepancies, and raise properly evidenced cases with Seller Support. Keep it accurate and legitimate, claim only what you’re genuinely owed and can support with the data. Amazon has tightened its stance on how reimbursement claims are pursued, so following their current process and policies matters. Done cleanly, it’s simply recovering money that’s rightfully yours; done sloppily, it creates account risk that isn’t worth it.
The takeaway
FBA reimbursements are one of the quietest sources of recoverable cash in an Amazon account, precisely because they require someone to look. Build reconciliation into your regular operations, respect the claim windows, and keep every case clean and evidence-backed. Over time it’s real margin, recovered from money you’d already earned and simply hadn’t collected.