Amazon lost it. Now it decides what it was worth.
Units go missing inside fulfillment centers, get damaged in handling, or vanish between one warehouse and another. Amazon reimburses for that — but since March 2025 it pays your manufacturing cost, and if you have not documented what that is, it uses an estimate of its own.
What actually goes wrong
- Lost in the fulfillment center. The unit was received, then disappeared from inventory with no order and no disposal record.
- Damaged in Amazon’s custody. Not carrier damage, not customer damage — damaged by the warehouse, which makes it Amazon’s.
- Lost in transfer. Units moved between fulfillment centers and only some arrived.
- Disposed without instruction. Stock destroyed with no removal order from you.
- Adjusted away. An inventory adjustment with a reason code that never resolves into an order, a return, or a reimbursement.
Amazon reimburses some of this automatically. Not all of it, and not always at the right value — which is the part worth your attention.
The March 2025 change is the whole story now
Before it, a lost $40 item reimbursed near $40. After it, the same unit reimburses what it cost you to make.
That single change cut the value of this entire category, which is why services built around it look less impressive than they did — and why the ones still quoting pre-2025 recovery figures are quoting a market that no longer exists.
The part that costs people money quietly: if you have not given Amazon a manufacturing cost for a SKU, it applies its own internal estimate. That estimate is consistently lower than sellers’ actual costs. So the change did not only lower the ceiling — it penalised everyone without documentation ready to file.
Source: Amazon, FBA inventory reimbursement policy · Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal, where the cost is set.
What we do about it
- Reconcile the ledger, not the summary. Every adjustment that never resolves into an order, return or reimbursement is a candidate.
- Get the cost on file first. We collect supplier invoices during onboarding, before claims go out, so units are valued at what they cost you rather than what Amazon guesses. How that works.
- File inside the window. Sixty days from the event, and it is not negotiable — the window moved in late 2024 and most of the industry is still selling the old one.
- Refuse the weak ones. A claim we cannot evidence costs you the credibility of the next one. What we refuse to file.
Worth being straight about: this is the category everyone advertises, and it is now the smaller half of the money. The bigger half is fee overcharges, which the March 2025 change did not touch at all — an incorrect fee still refunds the full dollar amount you were overbilled.
Find out what Amazon owes you.
A free audit takes ten minutes to set up. You get a findings report with real dollar figures, and no obligation to do anything with it.