What Amazon changed, and what it cost you.
Two policy changes rewrote the economics of FBA recovery. Most of this industry is still selling the version that existed before them. This page is kept current.
The claim window: 18 months → 60 days
Amazon reduced the period for filing a manual reimbursement claim from eighteen months to sixty days from the relevant event. Claims submitted after that are not considered, however legitimate they are.
What it actually did
It converted recovery from an audit into a monitoring problem, and almost nobody adjusted.
Under the old rule, a seller could ignore reimbursements entirely, hire someone once a year, and sweep up eighteen months of accumulated errors in a single pass. That was the business model of every large reimbursement service, and it worked.
Under a 60-day rule, that same seller loses roughly five sixths of everything they are owed before anyone looks at it. Not denied — simply expired. A quarterly audit now misses most of the money by construction. Even a monthly one leaves claims sitting for weeks of their short life.
How to spot a service that has not adapted: it still advertises an "18-month lookback" or a "historical audit going back 18 months." In 2026 that is not a feature. It is a description of money that no longer exists.
What it means for you
- Detection has to run continuously, not periodically
- Findings need an expiry date attached, and the queue has to be worked by deadline rather than by value
- Starting sooner is worth real money — every week of delay permanently forfeits a week of claims
- Fee disputes run on a separate clock from reimbursement claims, so both have to be tracked
Valuation: sale price → manufacturing cost
Amazon began reimbursing lost and damaged FBA inventory based on what it cost you to source or produce the item, rather than what you sell it for. Shipping, duties and handling are excluded.
What it actually did
It cut the value of the entire lost-and-damaged category, which was the core product of every reimbursement service. Sellers have widely reported inventory recoveries falling by half or more. A $40 item that once reimbursed near $40 now reimburses what it cost to make.
There is a second, quieter effect. If you do not provide cost documentation, Amazon applies its own internal estimate — and that estimate is consistently lower than sellers' actual costs. So the change did not only cut the ceiling, it also penalised anyone without supplier invoices ready to file.
What it did not touch: fee overcharges. When Amazon bills the wrong fulfillment fee, the refund is the actual dollar difference you were overbilled. Full value, unaffected by this change. The category everyone treats as an add-on is now the category that held its worth — which is why we lead with it. More here.
What it means for you
- Per-unit cost documentation has to be on file before claims go in, not scrambled for afterwards
- High-margin catalogs lost the most; low-margin catalogs barely noticed
- Prevention became structurally more valuable than recovery, because recovery got smaller and prevention did not
- Anyone quoting recovery figures from before March 2025 is quoting a market that no longer exists
Why we maintain this page
Partly because it is useful. Mostly because this whole business rests on one counterparty's policy, and that counterparty changes it without much warning. A service that cannot explain the current rules is not going to notice the next change either.
If Amazon moves something material, it goes here with the date. If you spot a change before we do, tell us and we will credit you on the page.
Last reviewed: August 2026. This page describes our understanding of published Amazon policy and is not legal or financial advice. Always confirm current terms in Seller Central.
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