The Amazon FBA reimbursement policy is the contract behind everything you're owed when Amazon loses your units, breaks them, botches a return, or overcharges a fee. It's also scattered across a dozen help pages, rewritten twice since late 2024, and quietly stricter than most sellers realize. This is the plain-English version: what Amazon commits to, when it pays automatically, how long you have to claim, and what you can't claim no matter how nicely you ask.
- Since October 23, 2024, most manual claim windows are 60 days — down from 18 months. Miss the window and the money is gone.
- Amazon "proactively reimburses" many lost/damaged and return cases, but automation misses units, underpays values, and skips events entirely. Manual claims still matter.
- Since March 10, 2025 (US), pre-order losses are reimbursed at manufacturing cost, not sale price — upload your real cost data or accept Amazon's estimate.
- Not everything is claimable: customer-damaged returns processed correctly, expired stock, and anything outside the window are all off the table.
- Industry audits consistently find sellers leak 1–3% of annual revenue to unclaimed discrepancies. Monthly audits are now the only safe cadence.
What the Amazon FBA Reimbursement Policy Actually Commits To
Strip away the help-page language and the policy boils down to one promise: when inventory is under Amazon's control and Amazon's process loses, damages, or mishandles it, Amazon compensates you. That promise covers six distinct categories, and each one behaves differently.
1. Lost or damaged in a fulfillment center
Units that vanish or get damaged inside Amazon's warehouses — forklift accidents, misplaced pallets, units that show up in your Inventory Ledger as "damaged" or "misplaced" adjustments. This is the bread-and-butter category, and the one we cover in depth in our guide to warehouse damaged and lost inventory.
2. Customer returns gone wrong
Amazon refunds customers first and asks questions later. The policy owes you money when a refunded item is never actually returned within 60 days, when Amazon damages the item during return processing, or when a sellable return never makes it back into your inventory. That last one — returns not restocked — is the single biggest leak we see across seller accounts.
3. Removal orders
When you pull inventory out of FBA and units go missing in transit or arrive short, that's claimable. "Completed" on a removal order doesn't always mean every unit arrived — removal order losses hide in the gap between what Amazon says it shipped and what actually landed on your dock.
4. Inbound shipments
You ship 500 units to Amazon; Amazon receives 480. Once the shipment closes and becomes eligible for investigation, the missing 20 are claimable — with proof of what you sent. Lost inbound shipments are the category where documentation matters most.
5. Fee errors
Amazon measures your product, and Amazon's measurement decides your fulfillment fee. When the recorded dimensions or weight are wrong, you overpay on every single order until it's fixed. The policy lets you request a re-measurement and dispute the overcharge — see our breakdown of FBA fee overcharges for the mechanics.
6. Unauthorized disposals
If Amazon disposes of or liquidates your inventory without a valid instruction from you, that's a claimable event — and it's the FBA claim almost nobody files, because most sellers never notice the disposal happened.
There's a seventh, adjacent category worth knowing: refund discrepancies, where a customer gets refunded more than they paid. It's not always framed as "reimbursement" in Amazon's docs, but it's your money either way.
Auto-Reimbursement vs. Manual Claims — and Why Automation Misses Things
Since late 2024, Amazon says it "proactively reimburses" most warehouse lost and damaged cases and many customer-return cases. That's genuinely true — a chunk of your reimbursements now arrive without you lifting a finger. It is not the whole story.
Here's what we see when we audit real accounts at the unit level:
- Mismatched quantities. Ten units disappear; Amazon auto-reimburses seven. Nothing tells you about the other three.
- Partial or undervalued payouts. The reimbursement lands, but at a value below what the policy entitles you to — especially since the manufacturing-cost change (more on that below).
- Events that never trigger. A return that's never restocked, a removal unit lost in transit, a disposal you didn't authorize — many of these produce no automatic reimbursement at all. They sit in your reports waiting for someone to notice.
Under the old Amazon FBA reimbursement policy, this was annoying but survivable: you had 18 months to catch what automation missed. Now you have 60 days in most categories. An annual audit catches discrepancies that expired ten months ago. A quarterly audit catches discrepancies that expired last month. Only a monthly cadence keeps you inside the window.
Every reimbursement in your Reimbursements report should match a specific discrepancy in your Inventory Ledger. Every discrepancy without a matching reimbursement is a potential claim. That one-to-one matching exercise — tedious by hand, trivial for software — is the entire game.
Amazon FBA Reimbursement Policy Claim Windows (2026)
On October 23, 2024, Amazon cut its claim eligibility windows by roughly 90%. The 18-month window many blog posts still quote is dead. Here's what applies today:
| Claim category | Window opens | Window closes | Current window | Pre–Oct 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lost / damaged in fulfillment center | Item reported lost or damaged | 60 days after the report date | 60 days | 18 months |
| Customer returns | Day 60 after refund/replacement (customer gets 60 days to return) | Day 120 after refund/replacement | 60–120 days | 18 months |
| Removals — lost in transit | Day 15 after removal shipment creation | Day 75 after removal shipment creation | 15–75 days | 18 months |
| All other removal claims | Shipment delivered back to you | 60 days after delivery | 60 days | 18 months |
| Inbound shipments | Shipment becomes eligible for investigation (after delivery + Amazon's receiving window) | About 60 days after eligibility | ~60 days | 18 months |
| Fee disputes (weight / dimensions) | Fee charged (request a re-measurement first) | Roughly 90 days after the charge | ~90 days | ~90 days (unchanged) |
Two quirks worth flagging. Customer-return claims can't be filed before day 60, because the customer has that long to physically send the item back — file early and Amazon rejects the claim as premature. Removal-in-transit claims similarly can't be filed before day 15. So the returns window is really a 60-day slot that opens two months after the refund, and if you're not tracking refund dates, it opens and closes without you ever noticing.
Under the current Amazon FBA reimbursement policy, a unit damaged in an FC today becomes permanently unclaimable in 60 days. There is no appeal, no exception process, no "we didn't know." If your last full account audit was more than a month ago, you almost certainly have claims expiring right now. We wrote a full post on how the 60-day deadline works and what waiting costs you.
The March 10, 2025 Change: Reimbursements at Manufacturing Cost
The second big policy shift changed not when you can claim but how much you get. Effective March 10, 2025 in the US, reimbursements for inventory lost or damaged before a customer order — warehouse losses, inbound losses, that whole class — are based on your manufacturing cost: the product cost alone, excluding shipping, duties, and handling.
Items lost or damaged after a customer order (a return Amazon destroys, for instance) are still reimbursed at the sale price minus fees. But for pre-order losses, the sale-price payout is gone.
Here's the part that costs sellers real money: Amazon uses its own "estimated manufacturing cost" unless you tell it otherwise. That estimate is a model's guess at what your product costs to make. If you have strong margins — if you source well, or sell a differentiated product — Amazon's estimate can sit well below your actual cost, and every reimbursement pays out short.
The fix is simple and most sellers haven't done it:
- In Seller Central, find the section where Amazon displays its estimated manufacturing cost per SKU (surfaced through the reimbursement settings under Fulfillment by Amazon).
- Compare Amazon's estimate against your real per-unit cost — product cost only, excluding freight, duties, and handling.
- Where Amazon's number is low, upload your actual cost data. Amazon then uses your figure for future reimbursements.
Reviewing and uploading your manufacturing costs is a one-time exercise per SKU (plus updates when your costs change). Skip it and you accept Amazon's estimate on every future lost or damaged unit. For the full payout math — including a worked example of what an undervalued reimbursement costs a $100k/month seller — see How Much Does Amazon Owe Me? The 2026 FBA Reimbursement Math.
What's NOT Claimable (Honest Expectations)
Half of doing reimbursements well is knowing what not to file. Claims for these will be denied, and filing junk claims wastes your time and clutters your case history:
- Customer-damaged returns, correctly processed. A customer wrecks your product and Amazon accurately grades it as customer-damaged? That's a cost of selling, not a claim. (If Amazon caused the damage during processing, different story.)
- Expired or defective inventory. Product that aged out or was defective when you shipped it in is on you.
- Sellable returns properly restocked. If the unit came back and went back into your available inventory, the system worked. No claim.
- Anything outside the window. A warehouse loss from four months ago is gone. Full stop.
- Discrepancies already reimbursed. If Amazon auto-reimbursed the event — even partially at a value you dislike but that matches its cost data — refiling the same claim gets denied. (Disputing the value with your own cost documentation is a separate, legitimate path.)
- Inbound losses you can't document. No proof of what you shipped (invoices, packing lists, carrier confirmation), no reimbursement.
Anyone who tells you everything is claimable is selling something. The real opportunity isn't in stretching the policy — it's in the enormous pile of legitimate claims that expire unfiled every month.
How Compliant Filing Works
Amazon's terms require that claims be accurate, documented, and filed once. That matters more than it used to: sloppy mass-filing — duplicate claims, claims for already-reimbursed events, claims without evidence — creates account risk. Compliant filing means checking each discrepancy against the Reimbursements report first, filing within the window with documentation attached, one case per discrepancy, and tracking every case to resolution (Amazon closes cases without paying more often than you'd hope; a polite, evidence-backed follow-up reopens them).
This is exactly the standard ClawbackPro was built around: unit-level detection, full reimbursement-to-discrepancy matching before anything is filed, and 100% policy-compliant cases — because a reimbursement isn't worth an account health problem. If you're weighing doing this yourself versus using software or an agency, we've broken down the real numbers in DIY vs. Software vs. Agency: The Real Cost of FBA Reimbursement Recovery.
The 10-minute monthly self-audit checklist
Whether or not you ever use a tool, run this in Seller Central once a month:
Pull the Inventory Ledger for the last 60 days
Reports → Fulfillment → Inventory Ledger. Filter to adjustment events. These codes mark units misplaced, damaged, disposed, or found — every negative adjustment is a potential claim.
Match adjustments against the Reimbursements report
For each lost/damaged/disposed event, look for a matching reimbursement ID. No match after Amazon's processing time = a claim candidate. Check quantities too — partial reimbursements hide here.
Check refunds older than 60 days with no return
Pull the returns and refunds data for orders refunded 60–120 days ago. Refunded but never physically returned and never reimbursed? That's inside the claim window right now.
Reconcile recent inbound shipments and removals
Compare units shipped vs. units received on every closed inbound shipment, and units expected vs. units arrived on every removal. Investigate every shortfall while the window is open.
Spot-check fees on your top 5 SKUs
Compare Amazon's recorded dimensions and weight against your own measurements. A wrong size tier bleeds money on every order — request a re-measurement if they don't match.
Review your manufacturing-cost data
Confirm Amazon is using your uploaded costs, not its estimates, for any SKU where the estimate runs low. Update figures when your sourcing costs change.
Ten minutes a month won't catch everything a unit-level audit catches — but it will catch the big leaks before the 60-day clock runs out on them.
Amazon FBA Reimbursement Policy: FAQ
What is Amazon's FBA reimbursement policy?
It's Amazon's commitment to compensate sellers when Amazon loses or damages inventory in its fulfillment centers, mishandles customer returns or removal orders, loses inbound shipment units, overcharges fees due to measurement errors, or disposes of inventory without permission. Each category has its own eligibility window, and since October 23, 2024, most manual claim windows are 60 days — down from 18 months.
How long do I have to file an FBA reimbursement claim in 2026?
It depends on the category: 60 days for fulfillment center lost/damaged claims (from the report date), 60–120 days after the refund for customer returns, 15–75 days from shipment creation for removals lost in transit, 60 days from delivery for other removal claims, roughly 60 days for inbound shipments once eligible for investigation, and roughly 90 days for fee disputes. See the table above for the full breakdown.
Does Amazon automatically reimburse lost or damaged inventory?
Partially. Since late 2024 Amazon proactively reimburses most warehouse lost/damaged cases and many return cases. In practice, automation misses units, pays partial quantities, undervalues items, and skips whole event types. Because the manual window is now only 60 days for most categories, anything automation misses expires fast — which is why monthly audits matter.
How much does Amazon reimburse per lost or damaged unit?
Since March 10, 2025 (US), units lost or damaged before a customer order are reimbursed at manufacturing cost — product cost excluding shipping, duties, and handling. Amazon uses its own estimated cost unless you upload your actual cost data, so upload real costs if the estimate runs low. Units lost or damaged after a customer order are still reimbursed at the sale price minus fees.
Can I get reimbursed for customer-damaged returns?
Generally no — if the customer damaged the item and Amazon graded and processed the return correctly, that's a cost of doing business. What is claimable: refunded items never returned within 60 days, returns Amazon damaged or lost during processing, and sellable returns that never got restocked to your inventory.