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.
Source: Amazon, FBA inventory reimbursement policy
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.
Source: Amazon, FBA inventory reimbursement policy · Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal, where you enter your manufacturing cost
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
Fulfillment fees became price-dependent
Standard-size fulfillment fees split into three price bands — under $10, $10–$50, and over $50. The same physical item now costs a different amount to fulfill depending on what you charge for it.
Source: Amazon, Update to U.S. Referral and FBA fees for 2026 · 2026 rate card
What it actually did
It broke the assumption every size-tier calculation had been built on: that fulfillment cost is a function of the box. It is now a function of the box and the price. The average increase was about $0.08 per unit, but the average hides the shape of it — small standard items in the $10–$50 band rose roughly $0.25 per unit, and items over $50 rose about $0.51.
The part that creates new errors: a price change can now move a SKU into a different fee band. That means a repricing decision — a promotion, a competitive drop, a seasonal markup — can change what Amazon charges you to fulfill an item that has not physically changed at all. Fee errors used to originate at the measuring station. Now they can originate in your pricing tool.
What it means for you
- Any size-tier analysis run before January 2026 is stale, because the boundaries it was built on moved
- Fee monitoring has to watch price changes, not only dimension changes
- Promotions and price cuts have a fulfillment-cost consequence that is easy to miss when you are looking at margin
- The band boundaries are worth designing around, the same way tier boundaries always were
A 3.5% increase across every FBA fulfillment fee
Amazon added 3.5% to all FBA fulfillment fees in the United States and Canada. No new fee types — every existing one simply became larger.
Amazon puts the average at $0.17 per unit for US FBA, calculated on your fulfillment fee rather than your sale price, so it scales with item size. It also covers Remote Fulfillment with FBA from the US into Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Multi-Channel Fulfillment and Buy with Prime picked it up two weeks later, on 2 May 2026.
Source: Amazon, Fuel and logistics-related surcharge: FBA, MCF and BWP in US and CA
What it actually did
It raised the cost of every mistake by 3.5% without changing anything about how mistakes happen. An item sitting in the wrong size tier was overcharged by a certain amount before April; after April it is overcharged by that amount plus 3.5%. The same is true of every unclaimed error still inside its window.
Why an across-the-board rise matters more than it sounds: percentage increases compound on top of existing errors rather than replacing them. A wrong measurement that cost $3.73 a unit in December costs more now, on the same wrong measurement, for the same reason it always did — nobody corrected the record.
What it means for you
- Every fee-error estimate calculated before April 2026 understates what the error is costing today
- Packaging work that was marginal at the old rates may clear the bar at the new ones
- The case for correcting the underlying record, rather than only claiming the refund, got stronger
Holiday peak fulfillment fees, with the surcharge on top
Peak fulfillment rates run from 15 October 2026 to 14 January 2027. Amazon states the average per-unit increase over non-peak rates matches last year’s — but this is the first peak season where the 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge applies on top of the peak rate.
What it actually does
It stacks three things that used to be one thing. A unit shipped in November 2026 is billed at the peak rate, on the January price-band structure, with the April surcharge applied — and Q4 storage already runs at roughly triple the off-peak rate. Every one of those was announced separately and lands together.
Why this one is worth acting on before it starts: a size-tier error costs you the difference on every unit you ship. In Q4 you ship more units, at higher rates, with a surcharge multiplying the total. The same wrong measurement that was quietly expensive in June is loudly expensive in November. Anything you intend to fix in packaging should be fixed before 15 October, not after — and stock you do not intend to sell is cheaper to clear now than to store through the peak.
What it means for you
- Fee errors cost measurably more between mid-October and mid-January than the rest of the year
- Packaging changes have a deadline this year, not just a payback period
- Aged stock held into Q4 is charged peak storage on top of any surcharge it has already earned
- Amazon’s Revenue Calculator and Fee Preview already reflect peak rates, so estimates built from them are current
Hear about the next change before it costs you
When Amazon moves a claim window, a valuation rule, or a fee boundary, we update this page — and email the people on this list the same day, with what it means in dollars. No newsletter filler, no schedule. Only when something actually changes.
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.
Sources
Every date and figure on this page comes from Amazon’s own published material. Check them — that is the point of listing them.
- FBA inventory reimbursement policy — claim windows and valuation
- Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal — where manufacturing cost is set
- Update to U.S. Referral and FBA fees for 2026 — Amazon’s own announcement letter
- 2026 US Referral and FBA fees — the rate card itself
- Fuel and logistics-related surcharge — the 3.5% announcement
- FBA product size tiers and FBA fulfillment fees
Last reviewed: September 2026. This page describes our understanding of published Amazon policy and is not legal or financial advice. Always confirm current terms in Seller Central — some of these pages ask you to sign in.
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