Amazon FBA Inventory Reimbursements: Guidelines for FBA Reimbursements from 2025 – What Merchants Need to Know
FBA Inventory Reimbursements, in English FBA Reimbursements, are both a curse and a blessing for every marketplace seller. On one hand, sellers receive money back that they are legally entitled to; on the other hand, the manual case analysis and submission is a hell of a job and hardly economically feasible to carry out manually.
From 2025, Amazon is also changing the guidelines for FBA Inventory Reimbursements, after the update had already come into effect in the USA in October of the previous year. In this blog article, we clarify which guidelines now apply for FBA reimbursements and how merchants can support their ROI with automated case analysis and submission.
New Guidelines for Amazon FBA Sellers from January 2025: Here’s What It’s About
Shortened Application Deadlines
Until now, it was the case for many types of cases that sellers had up to 18 months to file a reimbursement request due to an FBA error. This deadline is now being shortened to an average of 60 days. This means that merchants selling via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) now have only a fraction of the previous time available to submit requests to Amazon.
This is likely to pose several challenges for many sellers who have previously aligned their workflows to a time window of 18 months. By January 2025, merchants must have processed all their reimbursement claims and submitted them to Amazon in order to still receive the full amount of the reimbursement they are entitled to. Time-wise, this is likely to become extremely tight for all those who have let their reimbursement management slide.
New Deadlines for Amazon FBA Inventory Reimbursements:
If FBA sellers do not act immediately, they may lose up to three percent of their annual gross sales.
Proactive Compensation for Items Lost in Fulfillment Centers
Starting mid-January, Amazon will also implement an improvement to the FBA service: From January 15, 2025, the retail giant will proactively compensate third-party sellers when items are lost in the fulfillment centers. A separate application is no longer necessary in such cases.
However, this does not apply in all cases. If an automated reimbursement is not triggered, even though an item was lost or damaged, sellers still need to submit a manual request to Amazon. The same applies to remission requests, which still require manual submission.
Merchants who do not analyze their FBA reports and check for FBA errors cannot be sure to actually receive the reimbursements they are entitled to.
What does this mean for merchants?
Many Amazon merchants view the policy adjustment rather negatively. While some types of cases are now reimbursed proactively, the shortening of application deadlines weighs more heavily. Additionally, sellers cannot rely on proactive reimbursements, so they still need to closely monitor their inventory.
In addition, the deadline shortening will come into effect next month, meaning that the last one and a half years must be processed in an extremely short time. FBA sellers should therefore act now and tackle their reimbursement management. Fortunately, this does not have to mean weeks of tedious work.
SELLERLOGIC Lost & Found Full-Service is the professional solution of the German market leader for FBA audits and your partner for the professional analysis of Amazon FBA Inventory Reimbursements. Especially in an increasingly stringent regulatory environment, the use of such technologies is crucial to save time and resources while maximizing ROI.
What types of FBA errors are there?
During the processes related to the storage and shipping of items, various errors can occur that necessitate FBA Inventory Reimbursements. Here are some of the most common types of errors:
Conclusion
The new FBA guidelines starting January 2025 present significant challenges for Amazon sellers. The drastic shortening of deadlines for reimbursement requests requires quick and precise action, as otherwise, substantial financial losses are at stake. Even though Amazon proactively compensates for some types of errors, the responsibility for Amazon FBA Inventory Reimbursements still largely rests with the merchants in many cases.
Therefore, it is all the more important to establish an efficient and automated reimbursement management system. Tools like SELLERLOGIC Lost & Found provide an optimal solution to systematically analyze FBA errors, meet deadlines, and claim reimbursements in full. The use of such technologies is crucial when time and resources should be saved while maximizing ROI.
The message is clear: Merchants who act now and optimize their FBA reimbursement management can also succeed in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
An FBA Inventory Reimbursement is a refund from Amazon for losses or damages to a third-party seller’s inventory caused by errors on Amazon’s part.
Amazon refunds the purchase or wholesale price of a product if it is lost in a fulfillment center, damaged, or if a customer does not properly return the item.
FBA storage fees are the costs that Amazon charges for storing a third-party seller’s products in the FBA fulfillment centers. These depend on volume, weight, and storage duration.
Amazon charges between €0.25 and €1.06 per item, depending on the size and weight of the product.
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