Maybe you already know this, but Amazon misplaces or breaks a lot of your products. And while Amazon is supposed to reimburse you for these items, sometimes they forget to pay you back for your lost or damaged inventory.

If you aren’t keeping up with the lost products or damaged inventory and thinking that Amazon will always notify you, think again. Amazon is a huge company and thousands of employees are involved on daily basis but sometimes it becomes difficult for them to keep track of the lost or damaged products.

Firstly, you need to know that Amazon owes you for the following:

  • Missed and damaged inventory from the warehouse.
  • Orders in which the customers have been refunded, but you didn’t get the item back in stock.
  • Damaged and lost items while being received at FBA fulfillment centers.

In this article, you’ll get to know about the areas where Amazon loses your products and how to get your money back from Amazon.

How Products Can Be Lost On Amazon?

  • Some loss may occur when you ship your items to Amazon, and the Partnered carrier (which is UPS) loses or damages the inventory. In this case, Amazon is responsible for reimbursement of the lost or damaged inventory.
  • Let’s say you shipped 30 units to Amazon, and the inbound team only checked in 25 items, so Amazon owes you for 5 units.
  • Your products were received by an Amazon warehouse but lost afterward.
  • Sometimes, customers request a return and get refunded immediately, but forget to send back the product or return a different item.
  • The customer returned the product, but Amazon forgot to put back that item in your inventory.

How to Check Your Lost Or Damaged Inventory On Amazon FBA Shipments?

From your “Seller Central Account”, go to manage “FBA shipments” from inventory.

Look into shipment plans through the manage FBA shipments section below inventory, you will be able to trace the sent units, and the units received at the fulfillment enter.

If the quantity isn’t the same, you have to click the “Reconcile tab” and submit a request and select an option.

  • If the quantity in discrepancy shows a positive number, you need to request the warehouse to search for your lost or damaged inventory.
  • But if the quantity is negative, you will select the option of units not shipped or missing.
Seelct an option to claim your missing units

When you ask Amazon to search, they either find that product and add it back into your stock or you’ll get the reimbursement for your lost product.

How Can You Claim Reimbursement for Lost or Damaged Inventory?

There are several methods to claim reimbursement for your lost or damaged inventory. Let’s get into some details

1.    Use Amazon FBA tools For reimbursement

There are many reimbursement tools for your Amazon business that may cost you a bit. However, these various tools simplify the task of claiming your reimbursements.

These tools may vary from each other based on their features and functions.

2.    Manually Track Lost or Damaged Inventory

This is the cheapest option. But sometimes doing it by yourself can go wrong and things can get complicated.

This method can be time-consuming for those sellers who are not expert in understanding the reports of Amazon. Unless you are a data expert in understanding Amazon’s reports, this may not be the right method for you.

3.    Hire A Virtual Assistant To Get Your Work Done

The last method is to hire a virtual assistant to get your job done. This means you can outsource your work from claiming on seller central to downloading reports.

One of the important benefits of outsourcing your reimbursement is that you can have the flexibility to decide the work you choose to outsource and get all your tasks done by a virtual assistant.

This method can be a great time saver for many Sellers on Amazon!

Conclusion

Amazon stores and processes orders of millions of items every day. Thousands of machines and employees are involved and mistakes are bound to happen. But… you don’t have to suffer for it!

Now that you know how to deal with lost or damaged inventory you can ask for action to be taken to set things right again. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile your inventory to reports on your Amazon account, frequently.

Hopefully, this article was useful. You can read more helpful articles on Alpha Repricer’s blogs!

Alpha Repricer is an Amazon repricing software. It helps sellers increase sales and profits by winning Buy Box more often and optimizing their prices. Check us out with a 14-day free trial.