Amazon FBA Reimbursements 2026: Lost Inventory Is Now Paid at Sourcing Cost

When a carton goes missing in an Amazon warehouse, or gets damaged before any customer order, the basis Amazon uses to reimburse you changed in 2025. It used to ask “what were you selling this for?” and pay out of estimated sale proceeds; now it pays based on what you paid to source the item. That difference materially changes what lands in your account for the same incident — and most sellers only discover it when they take their first loss. This article walks through what changed, which claim type is paid on which base, how long the filing windows are, and when nothing is paid at all, based on Amazon’s own policy text.

What changed: estimated sale proceeds out, sourcing cost in

In the redlined (change-tracked) version of Amazon’s FBA inventory reimbursement policy, the old rule is still visible, struck through: Amazon used to compare several price indicators to produce an estimated sale price, then subtract referral and fulfillment fees to arrive at estimated proceeds. That paragraph was deleted. The rule that replaced it reads:

For pre-order lost or damaged events — shipment to Amazon claims, removals claims, and fulfillment center operations claims occurring before fulfillment — Amazon reimburses the sourcing cost of the item.

Amazon defines sourcing cost as your cost to source the product from a manufacturer, wholesaler, or reseller (or to produce it, if you are the manufacturer). The policy also spells out what is excluded: shipping, handling, customs duties, and other such costs. So on an imported product, freight and duty stay on you; reimbursement covers only the goods value on the invoice.

One more nuance: if the item was in unsellable condition when it was lost, damaged, or removed, Amazon states it reimburses at a reduced estimated cost of the unit — below even the sourcing cost.

Effective date: 31 March 2025, not 10 March

The change was announced in December 2024 with an initial date of 10 March 2025. Amazon then pushed it to 31 March 2025, saying it wanted to give sellers more time to manage their costs through the “Manage Your Sourcing Cost” page. The policy text itself confirms the final date: “After March 31, 2025, we will periodically refresh our cost estimates.”

Plenty of news and blog content still says 10 March, because it was published before the delay and never updated. If you are acting on a date, use Amazon’s own text.

Which claim type is paid on which base?

The most common mistake is assuming the change only touches “inventory lost in the warehouse”. The policy is broader:

• Loss on the shipment to Amazon (inbound) → sourcing cost
• Fulfillment center operations (loss or damage in the warehouse, before an order) → sourcing cost
• Removal claims (loss or damage when pulling inventory back out) → sourcing cost
• Loss or damage during inventory replenishment carried out by or on behalf of Amazon → sourcing cost
• Customer return claims (post-order) → sale price minus applicable fees and VAT

In other words, the pre-order / post-order line is the single dividing factor for the reimbursement base. Losses that arise after a customer order are still valued at the sale price.

Worked example: same incident, two different bases

All the numbers below are an example — they change with your real product cost, your real fee rates, and your own Amazon Seller Central data. The point is the mechanism.

Assume:

• Wholesale purchase price (goods value on the invoice): €12.00
• Freight + duty + handling: €3.00 (assumed)
• Your Amazon selling price: €39.90
• Hypothetical 15% referral fee (≈ €5.99) and a fulfillment fee of ≈ €3.50

Old rule (before 31 March 2025): estimated sale price minus referral and fulfillment fees → 39.90 − 5.99 − 3.50 ≈ €30.41.
New rule: sourcing cost → €12.00. The €3.00 of freight and duty is not included, by definition.

The per-unit gap in this example is roughly €18. On a 20-unit carton lost in transit that is a total gap of about €360. Nothing is “deducted” from the reimbursement — the reimbursement is simply calculated lower from the start, and the seller absorbs the difference.

The lesson: FBA loss risk is now a line item written off against cost, not against margin. If you do not know your true per-unit cost you cannot measure that risk at all — the product cost (COGS) calculator helps you separate purchase price, freight, duty, and packaging.

Filing windows: 60 / 45–105 / 15–75 days

“60 days” circulates as if it were a single number, but there are in fact three separate windows, depending on the claim type. From Amazon’s Germany/EU seller announcement (effective 9 January 2025):

• Fulfillment center lost or damaged: within 60 days after the item is reported lost or damaged
• Customer returns: 45–105 days after the return or replacement (you cannot file before day 45)
• Removal — lost in transit: 15–75 days from the shipment creation date
• Other removal claims: 60 days after the shipment is delivered to you
• Valuation appeal (if the amount came in low): 60 days after the reimbursement

Previously most claims had an 18-month window. The shortening took effect on 23 October 2024 in the US and 9 January 2025 in the EU/UK. Some third-party pages claim the window went back to 18 months; that contradicts Amazon’s own announcements.

Shipment-to-Amazon claims were explicitly excluded from the shortening — Amazon says so in the announcement. Verify the window that applies to that claim type in the current policy text inside your own Seller Central; the numbers circulating online do not agree with each other.

Careful: the customer return window is 60–120 days in the US, but 45–105 days in Germany, the EU, and the UK. Do not apply a number you read in US-focused content to a European account.

When Amazon pays nothing at all

Per the policy text, every one of these conditions must hold for eligibility:

• The item must be enrolled in FBA at the time it was lost or damaged
• It must comply with FBA product restrictions and FBA inventory requirements
• You must have shipped the exact product and quantity declared in the shipping plan
• The item must not be pending disposal, and must not have been disposed of at your request or through Amazon exercising its right
• The item must not be defective and must not have been damaged by the customer
• Your seller account must be in normal status when the claim is filed

The German policy text adds an exclusion specific to customer returns: if the returned parcel arrives with a damaged box or packaging, a missing factory seal, missing packaging, tape or a shipping label applied over the box, or in a different box, Amazon does not reimburse.

Finally, a paid reimbursement is not final. The policy explicitly reserves the right to reverse the credit if the reimbursement was made in error or if the item is later found and returned to your inventory. So before you mark a reimbursement as closed, keep watching the following statements.

Report your own cost, or Amazon estimates it

This is the most consequential practical outcome of the new regime: if you do not report your sourcing cost, Amazon uses its own cost estimate, derived from the costs of similar products (Amazon’s own, other sellers’, and wholesale channels). You report your cost on the “Manage Your Sourcing Cost” page inside the Inventory Defect & Reimbursement (IDR) portal. After 31 March 2025 Amazon refreshes its estimates periodically; you can track affected products in the status column on that same page.

The cost you report can be rejected. The rejection reasons documented in the policy are:

1. It is an outlier relative to similar products or to Amazon’s estimate
2. The document you submitted is fake, altered, or illegible
3. Your account is suspected of fraud, a serious policy violation, or non-compliant selling
4. A cost update or amount-appeal decision was already made for the same product in the last 30 days and no new information was provided

If rejected, payment is made at a previously approved amount or at Amazon’s estimate. The full list of accepted document types sits on an Amazon help page that requires login; open it from your own account before deciding which document to upload, and follow the list you see there.

Per-unit cap: €2,000 in Germany

The policy sets the maximum reimbursement for a single unit of an FBA-eligible item at €2,000 in Germany (£2,000 in the UK, CAD 5,000 in Canada). For anything above that, Amazon suggests third-party insurance. The $5,000 figure that appears in US-focused content does not apply to Germany.

If you sell high unit-price items, this cap is a real risk boundary: on a unit worth more than €2,000, the difference stays with you if it is lost.

Automatic reimbursement exists — but “no tracking needed” is false

In Germany and the EU, since 15 January 2025 Amazon proactively reimburses FBA items lost in a fulfillment center (in the US, since 1 November 2024). The UK announcement uses broader wording that also mentions damage and customer return cases. The exact scope of the automation is not consistent even across Amazon’s own announcements.

The one certainty: removal claims still have to be filed manually. So “everything is automatic now, I don’t need to track it” is a sentence that costs money. The safe reading: items lost in the warehouse are reimbursed automatically; removals are manual; everything else runs on the 60 / 45–105 / 15–75 day windows above, and the right to claim lapses when a window closes.

A separate line: FBA fees charged on wrong measurements

Independent of loss and damage reimbursement, there is a second kind of unfair deduction with its own policy: overcharged FBA fulfillment fees when your product’s dimensions or weight were measured incorrectly on Amazon’s side. Per Amazon’s US help text, a request for this type must be submitted within 90 days of the date the fee was charged. The same text states that where the seller’s declared values differ from Amazon’s verified measurement, Amazon’s measurement governs, and that a re-measurement request is not accepted if the item has already been re-measured twice in the last 60 days.

Note: that 90-day figure is documented on Amazon’s US help page; we could not verify from a German-language primary source that the identical window applies in Germany (the relevant help page requires login). If you file a measurement dispute, confirm the window in the current help text inside your own Seller Central.

To sanity-check volumetric weight on your side, the volumetric weight calculator and the Amazon FBA calculator let you see how your declared dimensions relate to the fee tier.

The 2026 picture: the regime stands, fees came down

As of 2026 there is no Amazon announcement reversing the sourcing-cost regime, and current seller-forum threads indicate it is being applied. Separately, and on the positive side, Amazon announced a European fee reduction for 2026: an average decrease of €0.17 per unit, with apparel and FBA parcel fee changes effective 15 December 2025 and the rest effective 5 January 2026. The average reduction on FBA parcel fees was reported as €0.32.

These two developments do not cancel out: a few cents off the fee side does not close a several-hundred-euro difference in the reimbursement base of a lost carton. Keep them as separate lines in your profit planning.

How to catch an unfair deduction yourself

Nobody tells you whether the amount Amazon paid is correct — that check belongs to the seller. A practical routine:

1. Compare every reimbursement against your own purchase document. If the amount paid is below your real sourcing cost, you have a valuation appeal: 60 days after the reimbursement.
2. Put the windows on a calendar. 60 / 45–105 / 15–75 days — once a window closes the claim right lapses, whatever the amount.
3. File removal claims manually. Automation does not cover them.
4. Keep your sourcing cost current. If you do not report it, Amazon estimates it; if your purchase price changed, update the entry.
5. Watch for reversed reimbursements. If the item is later found, the credit can be pulled back.
6. Track measurement-driven fee differences separately. Different policy, different window.

The first five live in Seller Central, the sixth in your fee breakdown. Menu names and report labels change from period to period; the logic of the check does not.

Three frequently asked questions

Are freight and customs duty included in the reimbursement?

No. Amazon’s definition limits sourcing cost to your cost to source the item from a manufacturer, wholesaler, or reseller, and explicitly excludes shipping, handling, customs duties, and other such costs.

Are customer returns also reimbursed at sourcing cost?

No. For post-order customer return claims the base is still the sale price, minus applicable fees and VAT. The sourcing-cost base applies to pre-order events.

Can I appeal the reimbursement amount?

Yes — the policy allows a valuation appeal within 60 days of the reimbursement. For it to be accepted, the document you submit has to be legible, consistent, and plausible relative to similar products.

Let a system watch the deductions

You file the reimbursement claim yourself in Amazon Seller Central; there is no shortcut that does it for you. But the hard part is not filing — it is noticing: which order was charged more than expected, which reimbursement came in below cost, which window is about to close. Connect your Amazon account to Verimle and it reads the SP-API financial events: the Profit X-ray derives real net profit per product, a commission alert fires when the effective deduction rate drifts from the baseline, and refund events are collected in the return analysis. That is how you answer “was this reimbursement below my cost?” with your own figures instead of a guess.

The features that draft a dispute — deduction objection and the Lost Money Radar — currently run on Trendyol accounts only; there is no endpoint on the Amazon side that submits an objection. If you also sell on Trendyol, the deduction check tool applies the same logic there.

Important note: All amounts here are examples and do not replace Amazon’s current official policy text. Policies differ by marketplace (Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com) and are updated from time to time. Always verify the exact rules and windows that apply to you from your own Amazon Seller Central account. Primary sources for this article: Amazon’s redlined FBA reimbursement policy (DE), the Amazon Seller Central Germany announcement (windows and automation), and the 31 March 2025 delay announcement. To test FBA cost items with your own product, use the Amazon FBA calculator; for the general cost structure of FBA, see what FBA is and what it costs.