The hassle of dealing with returns and damaged inventory is the bane of every Amazon seller’s business. There’s a variety of reasons why your customers return their goods, or your stock gets damaged. Depending on the circumstances of the return or damage, you may be eligible for reimbursement of the product by Amazon.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, shipping 5 billion products with the prime in 2017. As you can imagine, their fulfillment centers are busy 24/7 picking, packing, and shipping parcels to customers all over the globe. It stands to reason that employees and machines working at the fulfillment centers will eventually make a mistake and damage your inventory.

Amazon offers a 6-month return policy on all sales as part of their customer service policy. Therefore, the majority of returns received at their fulfillment centers are for used or damaged goods. Amazon recognizes this issue and makes provision to reimburse sellers for inventory returns and handling damage.

How Do You Apply for Inventory Reimbursement?

Amazon Reports is a data service available to all sellers. The reports cover reserved and stranded inventory, as well as inventory adjustments, and many others. From this report, you will get the last 18 months of data. Amongst the data, the most important thing is the FNSKU codes which are Amazon's way of keeping track of items inside their warehouse.

Now there are two ways you can do the next step and if you do it right it can speed up the whole process. The first option is to send the whole file which could end up taking more time for Amazon to check and find your lost or damaged items. The second one is you pick out the lost or damaged items yourself and just send those.

While Amazon does everything possible to facilitate reimbursement for returned and damaged goods, the responsibility is on the seller to create and file the claim. You might not even be aware that your merchandise is damaged until you sift through the inventory adjustments report.

Checking For Lost Inventory

Here you are looking if the quantity of missing and found inventory match. If they do not match Amazon either made a mistake and gave you some extra stock or the other more likely one is that they are lost. The next step is pulling all the codes and their meanings into your report with an Excel formula. If you are experienced with Excel you can use the Vlookup formula and if not you will have to do it manually.

Checking For Damaged Inventory

After this checking for damaged inventory is easy. There should be three rows related to the same FNSKU as the image below shows.

Match ‘’Damaged Sellable -1’’ and ‘’Damaged unsellable +1’’ and ‘’Transfer to Holding Account -1’’.

What this means is that the item has been returned to Amazon as damaged, added to your inventory temporarily and then returned to you.

Save all the remaining rows as a separate CSV file which you will send to Amazon Seller Support and raise your case with them.

The Benefits of Utilizing FBA Reimbursement Tools

If spending hours crunching data and populating spreadsheets sounds like a nightmare, consider using an automated to handle your reimbursement claim. Amazon might owe you hundreds or thousands of dollars in returns, and all you need to compile a claim and receive this rebate is a tool for Amazon seller refunds.

Using software like this is essential for any FBA seller, and it's the most straightforward and cost-effective means of recovering your money for Amazon's mistakes. Automated tools come with a price tag, but the cost of the software is well worth the investment when you consider the time saved.

With an automated reimbursement system, all you need to do is allow the tool access to your latest Amazon reports and the software does the rest. With just a few clicks of a mouse, the program crunches all of your data and accurately compiles your claim including the related FBA fees involved.

Once you have your application ready, submit it to Amazon for settlement within three to four days.

Wrapping Up

As an Amazon merchant or FBA Seller, you have the right to reimbursement on damaged or returned goods.

Amazon does offer refunds, but it’s up to you the seller to monitor your inventory and file a claim.

Avoid the time spent on compiling damage reports by using automated software solutions.

You may be surprised at the amount of money Amazon owes you for used or damaged stock, what will you do with the cash injection into your business?