The Amazon FBA Reimbursement Guide: Every Claim Type and Its Window

The claim types, and the window on each one

Amazon's FBA inventory reimbursement policy groups claims into a handful of categories, and every category has a different clock. Getting the type wrong is the single fastest way to lose a claim that would otherwise have been paid, because Seller Support checks the window before it checks the evidence.

• Lost or damaged in a fulfillment center. File within 60 days of the item being reported lost or damaged on your inventory ledger. Since 1 November 2024, Amazon proactively reimburses most of these without you filing anything — the window mostly matters now for the ones its automation misses.
• Customer returns never returned. A customer is refunded, tells Amazon they're sending the item back, and it never arrives at the warehouse. You can't file before day 60 after the refund or replacement, and you can't file after day 120. That's a 60-day window that only opens two months after the loss, and it is the category we see missed most often.
• Removals in transit. You request a removal order and the carrier loses the shipment before it reaches you. File between 15 and 75 days from when the shipment was created.
• Other removal shortfalls. Fewer units come back than Amazon's own removal record says it shipped. File within 60 days of the delivery date on the removal.
• Fee and dimension errors. Not a loss claim at all — a dispute that Amazon measured or classified your item wrong on a fulfillment fee or a size tier. There's no calendar window in the same sense, but stale settlement data makes older disputes harder to win, so run these monthly rather than saving them up.

The old rule of thumb — an 18-month window on everything — is dead. It hasn't been true since Amazon tightened its windows on 23 October 2024, and a page that still quotes 18 months is quoting a policy that no longer exists.

What changed in the last 18 months, and why it matters to the window

Three changes landed close together and most explainers still describe the world before them. First, since 1 November 2024, Amazon proactively reimburses items it can confirm it lost inside a fulfillment center — no claim required. Second, the windows above replaced a much looser set of deadlines starting 23 October 2024. Third, since 31 March 2025, pre-order losses (units lost or damaged before a customer ever bought them) reimburse at your sourcing cost — your documented manufacturer or wholesaler cost — not the price the item sold for.

The practical effect: the low-hanging fruit is smaller than it used to be, because Amazon is paying a chunk of it automatically now, and what's left pays out at a lower per-unit number than the sale-price era did. The category isn't dead — it moved. Customer-returns-never-returned, fee measurement errors, and claims Amazon's automation genuinely missed are where the money sits now, and none of those three get found by waiting for a notification.

A worked example: what a real claim window looks like end to end

Say a unit is refunded to a customer on 1 March. Amazon's system shows no returned unit received. You cannot file a claim for it on 1 March, or on day 40, or on day 59 — the window doesn't open until day 60, 30 April. You have until day 120, 29 June, to file. Miss that 60-day gate on either end and the claim is dead: too early and Amazon rejects it as premature (the same behavior Amazon's own abuse policy warns against filing), too late and it's outside the window entirely.

Now compare that to a fulfillment-center loss reported on the same date, 1 March. That claim's clock runs from the report, and the window closes 60 days later, on 30 April — the exact date the customer-return claim above was only just becoming eligible. Two claims opened the same day, two completely different deadlines. A calendar that tracks claim type separately from loss date is the only reliable way to run this without missing one.

What Amazon actually pays, and the cap on it

Valuation depends on when the loss happened. A pre-order loss — inventory lost or damaged before it reached a customer — pays your documented sourcing cost, with Amazon substituting its own estimate if you don't provide one. A post-order loss, like an item that vanished mid-return, pays the refund amount minus the fees that would have applied to the sale. Either way, Amazon caps a single-unit reimbursement at $5,000, and it reserves the right to reverse a reimbursement it later decides was paid in error or where the missing inventory turns up. Any recovery number — yours or ours — should be stated net of those reversals, because the gross figure isn't the number that actually lands in your account.

When it goes wrong: denied, missing evidence, or the window already closed

A denial usually means one of three things: the documentation didn't match what Amazon's system already recorded (a sourcing-cost invoice that doesn't tie to the ASIN, for instance), the claim was filed before the window opened, or it landed on a case that duplicates one already resolved. Duplicate and premature filings aren't just wasted effort — Amazon's own policy names “submitting insufficiently researched or premature requests, or submitting a large number of requests in a short time” as activity that can get an account monitored or investigated, so refiling blind is a real risk, not just an inefficiency.

If the window has already closed, there's no appeal that reopens it — the honest answer is that the money is gone, and the useful move is fixing the process that let it close rather than arguing the deadline. If a claim is denied inside the window with real grounds, request the specific denial reason before resubmitting; a second attempt with the same gap in evidence just burns the case history Amazon can see.

Running this as a standing practice, not a once-a-year sweep

Across the accounts we track — 53 seller accounts, 42,096 line items since 10 February 2026 — $803,457 has come back net, after $170,047 in reversals were subtracted from $973,504 gross. That net-of-reversals framing matters more than the total: reversals happen, and a service that only quotes you the gross number is quoting a figure you'll never actually bank. The categories that produced that recovery split unevenly — customer returns never returned was the single largest bucket, well ahead of lost-inbound and warehouse damage combined, which tracks with the window discipline above: it's the category with the latest-opening clock and the easiest one to let slip.

Dr. Shield, from Full Circle, runs this as a weekly discipline rather than a quarterly sweep, filing each case once inside its window with the evidence attached, priced on the call as a contingency fee against what actually comes back. Full Circle has managed more than $500M in Amazon spend across 100+ brands, and the case-craft here — knowing which window governs which claim, and never filing before one opens — is what separates a claim that gets paid from one that gets logged as abuse.