Guide
FBA Reimbursement Policy Changes: What Sellers Need to Know
Amazon has rewritten big parts of its FBA reimbursement policy over the last couple of years, and every major change has moved in the same direction: less money, claimed faster, with more of the burden on you. Sellers running a once-a-year cleanup under the old assumptions are leaving real money to expire. Here's what changed at a practical level, what it means for your bottom line, and how to adapt without hiring anyone.
Claim windows collapsed from months to weeks
The headline change: eligibility windows got dramatically shorter. Sellers used to have as long as eighteen months to claim many discrepancies; current windows for several claim types — including fulfillment center lost and damaged inventory — are now on the order of weeks to a few months from the event. The exact number varies by claim type and has been revised more than once, so treat Seller Central's policy pages as the source of truth rather than any blog post, including this one. The operational consequence is fixed regardless of the exact figure: any audit cadence slower than monthly now silently forfeits claims.
Reimbursement values moved to cost basis
The second structural change is how much a lost or damaged unit pays out. Amazon shifted reimbursement valuation for lost and damaged inventory toward your product's sourcing or manufacturing cost, rather than the sale-price-based valuations sellers previously saw. Amazon estimates that cost for you unless you provide your own figures — and its estimate is not guaranteed to be generous. For sellers with healthy margins, the same lost unit now reimburses meaningfully less than it once did. Two practical responses: check whether Amazon's cost estimates for your catalog are accurate and correct them where the option is offered, and treat prevention-side money like fee errors as relatively more valuable than it used to be.
More auto-reimbursement, less visibility
Amazon has leaned harder into proactively reimbursing losses it detects, which sounds like good news and partly is. The subtle cost: auto-payouts make sellers complacent. When credits show up unprompted, it's easy to assume the system catches everything — but the auto-reimbursed cases are precisely the cleanly-recorded ones. The messy losses, unreturned refunds, and measurement errors still need a human (or software) to notice them. The audit question has effectively flipped from 'what went wrong?' to 'what went wrong that was never paid?' — a reconciliation between two reports rather than a reading of one.
What this does to the recovery-service math
Percentage-based recovery services were built for the old regime: long windows, sale-price payouts, fat backlogs of aged claims to harvest. Shorter windows mean there's no eighteen-month backlog for them to mine — recovery is now a continuous, small-batch process. Cost-based valuations mean each claim pays less. Yet the standard fee is still roughly 25% of recovery. Handing over a quarter of a shrinking pie for work that's now mostly routine reconciliation deserves a rethink; the economics have quietly tilted toward flat-fee tooling and DIY.
The audit routine that fits the new rules
Adapt with cadence, not heroics. Monthly at minimum — ideally every couple of weeks — pull the Inventory Adjustments, Reimbursements, FBA Customer Returns, and inbound shipment reports. Net every loss, damage, and unreturned refund against actual credits, and file whatever's unmatched immediately rather than batching for 'later' — later is now outside the window. Add a quarterly pass on fee accuracy: verify Amazon's recorded dimensions and weights against reality for your top SKUs, because measurement errors compound on every unit shipped and aren't subject to the same expiry dynamics. Twenty minutes on a schedule beats a heroic annual archaeology dig that recovers nothing.
Let software watch the windows for you
The new policy regime punishes exactly one thing: not looking often enough. That's a scheduling problem, and scheduling problems are what software is for. RefundFox scans your FBA reports on a cycle, nets every adjustment against every reimbursement, flags what's claimable before it expires, and writes the claim text for you — for a flat monthly fee instead of a percentage of your own money. It's in early access now: join the waitlist and we'll invite you as slots open, so the next policy tightening costs you nothing.
Stop leaving FBA money on the table
RefundFox scans your own Amazon reports, flags every unreimbursed unit, and writes the claim text — for a flat monthly fee, not a 25% cut. We're in early access.
Join the waitlist →Frequently asked
How long do I have to file an FBA reimbursement claim now?
Far less than the old eighteen months — current windows for several claim types are weeks to a few months from the event, and they vary by claim type. Check Seller Central's reimbursement policy for the current figures and audit monthly.
How does Amazon calculate FBA reimbursement amounts now?
For lost and damaged inventory, valuation is now generally tied to your product's sourcing or manufacturing cost rather than its sale price. Amazon estimates the cost unless you supply your own figures, so verify its estimates for your catalog.
Are FBA reimbursement services still worth 25%?
The math is worse than it was: shorter windows mean no aged backlog to harvest, and cost-based payouts shrink each claim. Flat-fee software or a disciplined monthly DIY audit now captures the same money for far less.