Amazon FBA Reimbursements: Every Claim Window

Amazon FBA reimbursements are the money Amazon owes you when its own operation loses, damages or fails to return your inventory. Since October 2024 most of it is paid automatically, and the part that is not has a deadline that starts running without an email. This guide covers every claim type, its exact window, the report that proves it and what Amazon actually pays.

What Amazon reimburses, and what it does not

The FBA inventory reimbursement policy covers inventory lost or damaged while it is in Amazon's care: inside a fulfillment center, in transit to Amazon on an inbound shipment, during a removal back to you, and in the customer return flow when the customer is refunded and the unit never comes back.

It does not cover inventory that was never Amazon's responsibility, demand you lost while the unit was missing, or the costs around the unit. That last part is the one that changed.

How much Amazon pays: manufacturing cost, not selling price

Amazon used to reimburse against an estimate of what the unit would have sold for. It now reimburses the product manufacturing cost of the affected inventory: your cost to source the product from a manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller, or to produce it if you are the manufacturer. Shipping, handling, customs duties and other costs are excluded.

That change was announced for March 10, 2025 and then moved to March 31, 2025 to give sellers time to load their own costs. Since then the number Amazon pays is the number in your sourcing cost record, not a market estimate.

A full example, with a unit that costs 6.10 dollars to source and sells for 24.99 dollars:

• 40 units reported lost in a fulfillment center.
• Under a selling price basis, 40 by 24.99 dollars, less fees, lands near 700 dollars.
• Under the manufacturing cost basis, 40 by 6.10 dollars is 244 dollars.
• If Amazon's estimated sourcing cost for that ASIN is 4.20 dollars instead of 6.10 dollars, you are reimbursed 168 dollars and lose 76 dollars for a field you never filled in.

The unit economics numbers there are an illustration. The mechanic is not: the reimbursement follows the cost on record, so the cost on record is the first thing to fix. It lives on the Manage Your Sourcing Cost page inside the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal, and how to submit your own sourcing cost is worth doing before anything goes missing rather than after.

Every claim window, in one place

Amazon replaced the old 18 month window with short, case specific ones. These are the current windows.

Lost or damaged in a fulfillment center. File no later than 60 days after the item was reported lost or damaged. The clock starts on Amazon's report date, not on the day you noticed.

Units missing from an inbound shipment to Amazon. No sooner than 15 calendar days and no later than 60 calendar days from the shipment delivery date, effective September 5, 2024. The shipment also has to be in Closed status to be reconciled. If yours closed short, what to do when an FBA shipment closes with missing units walks through the reconciliation itself.

Customer return never sent back. Between 60 and 120 days after the customer refund or replacement date, per the customer return claims policy. Earlier than 60 days is rejected on purpose: the customer still has time to return the unit.

Removal lost in transit back to you. Between 15 and 75 days from the shipment creation date, per the removals claims policy.

Any other removal problem. Within 60 days of the removal shipment being delivered back to you.

Shipment to Amazon, other cases. The shipment to Amazon claims policy holds the full list for inbound cases that are not simple missing units.

Read them together and the pattern is clear: most windows are 60 days wide, several of them cannot be opened early, and all of them start on a date Amazon sets.

Is a lost unit still unpaid this month?

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What is automatic and what is not

Since November 1, 2024 Amazon reimburses items lost inside a fulfillment center proactively, as soon as the item is reported lost, with no claim from you. Warehouse damage and customer return cases are also largely automated now, and they land in the same place as everything else.

Automatic does not mean complete, and it does not mean correct. The two failure modes worth checking every month are a unit reported lost that was never reimbursed, and a reimbursement that was later reversed. Both are documented: what to do when Amazon loses FBA inventory and never reimburses it covers the first, and the reversal clause is narrow enough to be worth reading in full.

The reports that prove each case

A claim without the report behind it is a case that gets closed. These are the four to know.

• Reports, then Payments, then Reimbursements. Every reimbursement Amazon has already paid, with its reason code and the case or order it belongs to. Open this one before filing anything: a large share of manual claims are duplicates of an automatic reimbursement that already went through.
• FBA Inventory Adjustments. The event log. Units added or removed from your inventory with a reason code, which is where a lost or damaged unit first appears with the date that starts your 60 day clock.
• Reports, then Fulfillment, then FBA Customer Returns. Whether the unit came back, in what condition and when, which is what a customer return claim rests on.
• Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal. Inventory, then Inventory Defect and Reimbursement. Warehouse lost, warehouse damage and customer returns in one place, plus Manage Your Sourcing Cost.

A monthly routine that catches the leaks

1. Download FBA Inventory Adjustments for the month and pull every lost and damaged event with its date.
2. Download Reimbursements for the same period and match. Anything on the first list and not the second is a candidate.
3. Reconcile every inbound shipment in Closed status that received fewer units than it shipped, staying inside the 15 to 60 day window.
4. Check FBA Customer Returns for refunds older than 60 days with no unit returned, and file those between day 60 and day 120.
5. Confirm your sourcing costs are loaded for the ASINs that matter, because a claim approved against the wrong cost pays the wrong amount.

Two notes on scope. Reimbursements are detection and documentation work, not a licence to file in volume: a wave of duplicate or unfounded claims is its own risk. And a returned unit costs you more than the reimbursement covers, because the fees around it run on their own clocks. Refunds on the referral fee follow rules of their own, and how long you have to file a SAFE-T claim is the companion deadline to the ones above.

What to take away

The policy is not hostile, it is short. Amazon pays cost, not price, and it pays it inside windows that are measured in weeks. The seller who downloads two reports a month collects; the one who waits for an email finds out after day 60.

#reembolsos#fba#inventario#seller central#pilar

👋Hey! I'm Amara

Press at SellerKey.co

☕ Espresso. Never a latte macchiato.

I cover Amazon fee and policy changes: what changed, when it applies and where Amazon published it.

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