Both ends of the warehouse leak.
Stock going in gets received short. Stock coming out gets billed for and never arrives. Neither shows up as a problem anywhere — you find them by counting what you sent against what was booked, and what you paid to remove against what turned up.
Removals
- Paid for, never delivered. A removal order charged and shipped, and nothing arrived.
- Delivered short. Fewer units than the removal order specified.
- Billed at the wrong weight tier. Removal fees are weight-banded, and the same measurement errors that inflate fulfillment fees inflate these too — see fee overcharges.
- Cancelled by Amazon, still billed. The order was cancelled at their end and the charge stayed.
Removal claims run on their own clock, separate from the inventory window — items lost in transit have a different eligibility period from everything else.
Inbound shipments
- Received short. You sent 500, Amazon booked 480, and the shipment closed.
- Received and lost before check-in. Units arrive, then disappear between the dock and the shelf.
- Closed with a discrepancy nobody reconciled. Amazon flags a variance and the case never gets opened.
- Placement fees charged against a shipment that was never fully received.
The thing that makes inbound different: the window. Most inventory claims now have about 60 days; an inbound shipment can be claimed until nine months after it was created, once Amazon marks it eligible for research. To open the request Amazon asks for one thing — the supplier invoice showing the date, the product and the quantity purchased. The answer is fast and mostly automated, often the same day, and many come back paid. Some come back denied: the partnered carrier “never picked up”, or the plan and the receipt “did not match”. Those are answered on Amazon’s own numbers — the units its warehouse counted, the carrier charge on its own shipment summary — and, where you have them, the carrier proof of delivery and the packing list. We write that reply before we file, so a denial is answered the same hour it lands.
Inbound shipment reimbursement: the nine-month window, what Amazon asks for, and what it pays →
What we do about it
- Read Amazon’s own per-item shipment reconciliation every day for every shipment inside the nine-month window, including shipments already closed.
- Track every removal order from charge to delivery, and flag the ones that never landed.
- Check removal fee weight bands against measured weights, not declared ones.
- File with the supplier invoice, which is what Amazon’s form asks for, and have the appeal written before the automated denial arrives — built from the counts on Amazon’s own shipment page, plus your proof of delivery and packing list where they exist.
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.