On July 24, 2024, Amazon announced upcoming changes to its Reimbursement Automation and Eligibility Window for claims. The full content of the announcement is available below, or accessible within Amazon’s seller forums.
The update can be broken down to a few key points:
- Amazon plans to make improvements to automatic reimbursements for products lost in fulfillment centers.
- The timeline for requesting reimbursements for some key categories is drastically decreasing.
- Lost or damaged in a fulfillment center claims must be submitted within 60 days of the item being reported lost or damaged (down from 18 months).
- FBA customer return claims must be submitted 60-120 days from the customer return or replacement date (down from 18 months).
- Removal claims for items lost in transit can be submitted 15-75 days from the shipment-creation date. Other removal claims must be submitted within 60 days of the items arriving back to you (down from 18 months).
In case you missed it, Trellis focuses on profitability, with an emphasis on dynamic pricing and advertising. To provide the best updates to our community, our Chief Evangelist Ali Babul sat down with Getida’s Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer Yoni Mazor to share his expertise.
Why Do These Amazon FBA Reimbursement Updates Matter?
With so many things to worry about in your Amazon business, losing 90% of your time to audit Amazon and ensure you’re getting appropriate funds back is astonishing.
Getida mentions that you can expect about 1-2% of your overall revenue to be tied up within these reimbursement claims. Leaving that money behind affects your overall profitability. It’s money you could (and should) be investing back into your business on inventory, product launches, advertising, and more.
If you wish to take the DIY angle to manage these updates, Getida supplied a complete workshop to walk you through the process. Should you wish to save your sanity, Getida is standing by to help! Use the code TRELLIS400 to save on your first reimbursements!
As those funds are returning to your account and you’re looking to grow your profitability even further, get started with Trellis! With our in-depth platform, we’ve helped hundreds of eCommerce sellers sell smarter on Amazon, Walmart, and beyond. Book a demo to see it in action today!
Update on Reimbursement Automation and Eligibility Window to file reimbursement claims
Starting November 1, 2024, we’ll proactively reimburse you for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) items that are lost in our fulfillment centers. We’ll issue the reimbursement as soon as an item is reported as lost by the fulfillment center, which you can track in the Reimbursements report on Seller Central. This more seamless experience saves you time and money by minimizing the need to manually research and file claims for lost items.
Almost all reimbursement claims related to warehouse lost and damaged and customer returns cases will now be proactively reimbursed. However, if you do not receive an automatic reimbursement and you believe that your inventory has been lost or damaged, you will need to file a manual claim. Additionally, all removal claims will still need to be filed manually.
Also starting October 23, we are updating our eligibility window policy. All manual claims must now be submitted within the following timelines:
- A fulfillment center operations claim for an item that is lost or damaged in the fulfillment center must be submitted no later than 60 days after the item was reported lost or damaged.
- An FBA customer returns claim can be submitted between 60-120 days after the customer refund or replacement date. Claims must not be submitted before 60 days to ensure the customer has time to return the item to us for processing.
- A removal claim for items lost in transit can be submitted 15-75 days from the shipment-creation date. Claims must not be submitted before 15 days to ensure the shipment can be delivered back to you.
- All other removal claims must be filed within 60 days of the shipment being delivered back to you.
We understand that you may need to make changes to your current processes to ensure that all claims are submitted within these new eligibility windows. To ensure you have adequate time to adjust, the new policy will go into effect on October 23.The FBA inventory reimbursement policy will be updated once the policy goes into effect on October 23.