FBA Shipment Without FNSKU Labels: What Happens

Your FBA shipment arrived and the units have no FNSKU labels on them. Until last year that was an annoyance. Since January 1, 2026 an FBA shipment without FNSKU labels costs you money on the way in and coverage on the way out, because Amazon no longer offers prep and item labeling services for FBA shipments in the US store.

Here is what happens, in what order, and what you can still do about it.

What happens to an unlabeled FBA shipment now

Amazon ended prep and item labeling for the US store on January 1, 2026. The change covers everything that ends up in FBA, including inventory you send in directly and inventory that arrives through Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, Amazon Global Logistics, Amazon SEND and Supply Chain Portal.

Two consequences land on unlabeled units, and they are separate.

The first is a charge. When inventory turns up without the required prep or item label, Amazon routes it through an exception path and can bill unplanned services fees, also called FBA inbound convenience fees. They are charged per unit and they slow down how fast your inventory becomes sellable. The current rates live on that Unplanned services page inside Seller Central, along with where the charges appear in your account and how to dispute one you think is wrong. Read them there: we could not open that page from outside a logged in session, so we are not quoting a rate we have not confirmed. Sellers in the forums describe historical unplanned prep charges in the range of $0.20 to $1.50 or more per unit, which is what other sellers report rather than a published number.

The second consequence is the expensive one. A shipment created after January 1, 2026 that arrives without proper prep and item labeling is not eligible for reimbursement if those units are damaged or untraceable. Unlabeled units are exactly the units a fulfillment center struggles to trace, so the inventory most likely to go missing is now the inventory you cannot claim. We covered that side of the change in detail in FBA prep and labeling reimbursement eligibility.

One detail worth knowing: shipments created before January 1, 2026 still received prep and item labeling even when the boxes arrived after that date. That grace no longer applies to anything you create today.

Which units arrived without a label?

Check my inbound

Fixing an FBA shipment that has no FNSKU labels

If the boxes have not arrived yet, intercept them. Sellers in the Seller Central forums consistently recommend calling the carrier and having the freight returned so you can label it and send it again. That is seller advice, not an Amazon procedure, and it only works while the shipment is still moving. Weigh it against the unplanned services rate for your unit count and against the delay of a second transit leg.

If the units are already received, go to the Inbound Performance Dashboard. An Amazon moderator confirmed in the seller forums thread on the January 2026 prep rule that prep defects are flagged there. The same moderator said prep defects do not affect your Account Health Rating, which means nothing will warn you through the account health screen. You have to go and look.

Then reconcile the charges. Open the Unplanned services page linked above to find where the per unit fees appear in your fee reports and what the dispute route is. Disputing a charge that was genuinely caused by missing labels is unlikely to go anywhere, but a charge on units that were labeled correctly is worth the case.

Do not plan around a reimbursement. If those units later show up damaged or untraceable, the shipment was created after January 1, 2026 and the coverage is not there. Treat the loss as real and decide whether to pull remaining unlabeled stock with a removal order instead of leaving it exposed through Q4.

How to stop it happening again

Label before the box leaves your hands. That is the whole rule now, and it applies to FNSKU labels on every unit, not just to the carton.

If a third party preps for you, the gap is contractual. Amazon's position, stated by a moderator in that same thread, is that contracts and transactions with a service provider are between you and that provider, and that you pursue the provider for a prep error rather than Amazon. So the labeling standard, the FNSKU source and the liability for a mislabeled batch belong in the agreement with your prep center before Q4 volume goes through it.

Check receipt on the first shipment from any new prep partner rather than the fifth. A prep defect found on one shipment is a conversation. The same defect found after four more shipments is inventory you cannot claim spread across a quarter.

Two related failure modes are worth knowing while you are in the inbound reports: units that arrive but never get counted, covered in FBA shipment closed with missing units, and shipments marked delivered that never check in, covered in FBA shipment delivered but not checked in.

The short version

An FBA shipment without FNSKU labels is now a per unit charge plus an uninsured position. The charge you can measure on the Unplanned services page and dispute if it is wrong. The uninsured position you cannot fix after the fact, which is why the labeling step moved from convenience to control.

#FBA#prep#labeling#reimbursements

👋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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