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Selling on Amazon? The MEGA Step by Step Guide to Get THOUSANDS Reimbursed (in 3-5 days)

QDF

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Here's some more Amazon inventory advice I'm finding out right now (unfortunately)

Sometime around the holidays, for some reason, I accidentally sent in a shipment with 229 units instead of the 200 I designated in the shipping plan. I've always reconciled shipments for having too few units, but never thought about doing it for having shipped extra units.

2 months later in the beginning of March, I sent a shipment with 80 units, which UPS ended up losing before it ever got to Amazon's warehouse. I messaged Amazon and as part of their UPS partnered carrier program, Amazon will reimburse me for the lost goods and handle everything with UPS - all I had to do was wait 4 weeks.

Today is 4 weeks. The shipment is still lost (go figure, right?), so I messaged Amazon. They responded and said that 29 of the units were found in the shipment I sent in December - that I sent them incorrectly in the wrong shipment, and they would reimburse me for only 51 units.

How the hell can they find 29 units from a shipment that is lost and likely sitting in the middle of a UPS warehouse somewhere? Not to mention that the shipments were 2 months apart and completely not related.

Overall, this might cost me at least $300-400.

Moral of the story? Reconcile your shipments when you send too many units as well.
 
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amp0193

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How the hell can they find 29 units from a shipment that is lost and likely sitting in the middle of a UPS warehouse somewhere? Not to mention that the shipments were 2 months apart and completely not related.

Yeah, I posted this earlier in the thread, but I think if there are overages in your inbound shipments, they will sometimes hold onto them in order to "reimburse" you with them later.

That may or may not be correct, but it's what makes the most sense to me right now.


What confuses me the most is when a shipment shows I shipped in more than the manifest stated, but I KNOW that I didn't. But then, they say it's been double checked and they found that I indeed shipped in extra units (impossible). I can't explain that.
 

QDF

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Yeah, I posted this earlier in the thread, but I think if there are overages in your inbound shipments, they will sometimes hold onto them in order to "reimburse" you with them later.

That may or may not be correct, but it's what makes the most sense to me right now.

My bad, I probably just missed it earlier in the thread then.

They finally agreed to reimburse me in full for every unit, but had I not looked into it and brought it up, Amazon would have gladly stiffed me.

What confuses me the most is when a shipment shows I shipped in more than the manifest stated, but I KNOW that I didn't. But then, they say it's been double checked and they found that I indeed shipped in extra units (impossible). I can't explain that.

I've had that happen once or twice - I'd imagine the FBA warehouses are pretty chaotic. Wouldn't mind visiting one someday just to see what the process is like.
 

amp0193

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I've had that happen once or twice - I'd imagine the FBA warehouses are pretty chaotic. Wouldn't mind visiting one someday just to see what the process is like.

I think there's a few that do free tours. One in Arizona I think. You gotta reserve a slot in advance. I would love to see it one day.

And yeah, small mistakes here and there are just part of the game, and would probably happen no matter what warehouse/fulfillment solution you used.
 
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James Fake

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Followed these steps for one of my accounts and wanted to post my results: $1656.46

Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 3.40.07 PM.png

Most of the steps, the refunds only go back to 18 months - Wish I would have found this earlier from the previous years. But not sure whether I should be happy that I get this money back, or whether I should be mad Amazon didn't automatically give me this money back to begin with lol.

Anyways; thanks Amp again for this gold nugget thread!
 
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e_fastlane

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If you go to "inventory reconciliation" and run a report for the last 18months, it will show you how many items were Lost, Damaged, and Disposed. Can we just compare the total of those numbers to the total reimbursements within that same time period (but 30 days forward, since they have 30 days to give a refund). Wouldn't the difference in those two numbers be what they owe you, or am I missing something?
 

amp0193

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If you go to "inventory reconciliation" and run a report for the last 18months, it will show you how many items were Lost, Damaged, and Disposed. Can we just compare the total of those numbers to the total reimbursements within that same time period (but 30 days forward, since they have 30 days to give a refund). Wouldn't the difference in those two numbers be what they owe you, or am I missing something?

I think you are 100% correct on this. This would replace step 2 and 3 of the process in the OP, and save a bit of time. The way I outlined will work, it'll just take a bit longer.

A seller central rep walked me through the inventory reconciliation report a couple of weeks after I made this thread. I'd add your post to the beginning of the thread, but it's been too long and I can't go back and edit.
 

amp0193

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or whether I should be mad Amazon didn't automatically give me this money back to begin with lol.

Anyways; thanks Amp again for this gold nugget thread!

Glad you got some money back man!


Amazon has all the data, there isn't any reason they couldn't cross-check once a month and auto-reimburse you. It makes me mad too.
 
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e_fastlane

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I think you are 100% correct on this. This would replace step 2 and 3 of the process in the OP, and save a bit of time. The way I outlined will work, it'll just take a bit longer.

A seller central rep walked me through the inventory reconciliation report a couple of weeks after I made this thread. I'd add your post to the beginning of the thread, but it's been too long and I can't go back and edit.
I'm sure MJ can edit it for you.

I'm still not 100% sure how to use all the numbers in that report to figure out what they still owe you. Do you know which numbers on the report your supposed to add/subtract to figure out what they haven't paid you for?
 

amp0193

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I'm still not 100% sure how to use all the numbers in that report to figure out what they still owe you. Do you know which numbers on the report your supposed to add/subtract to figure out what they haven't paid you for?

First, you'll need to download the Reimbursement report for the last 18 months.

Look at the net number for lost inventory and found inventory. Don't count units lost in the last 30 days. If the net is negative, then compare against the reimbursement report to see how many "lost" events you were reimbursed for for that FNSKU.

Look at the number of damaged, and compare against the reimbursement report to see how many "damaged:warehouse" for that FNSKU.


So, still not super quick, but using the inventory reconciliation report saves a step or two.
 

amp0193

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Spent a couple hours on Monday going through these steps again for the first time since February. I got $588.42 back.

But it should have been a lot more.


Here's why:

Amazon's reconciliation reports are flawed in the way that they function. They only pull data from the last 18 months.

This means, that Amazon was seeing reimbursements that were issued in October 2016 and February 2017 (reimbursements that could have been for items damaged up to 18 months before those dates), but Amazon could NOT see some of the lost/damaged/missing units for which these reimbursements were issued, as many of them would have been earlier than 18 months before today. So, they counted these reimbursements against my total current missing/damaged items... items which have gone missing/damaged in the last 3 months.

So essentially, it was working against me to have requested refunds in both February 2017, and October 2016, because I had lots of reimbursements in the system, but the items they reimbursed were no longer in the system. Resulting in a lot of the following results:

"Items missing/damaged: 2
Items reimbursed: 5

Therefore, no reimbursement is needed"


Not sure why an Amazon seller rep thinks that results like that make any sense whatsoever.


What this means, is that for some of these FNSKUs, I won't be able to be reimbursed for the missing/damaged items until 12-18 months from now, when the past reimbursements for them have been cleared out the system, and won't be counted against more recent missing inventory.

That is really frustrating.
 
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Last edited:

RisingStars

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3) LOST IN WAREHOUSE INVENTORY

What it is:

An Amazon Fulfilment center lost some units of your product. If they haven’t found it in 30 days, then you can be reimbursed.


How to do it:

1a. In Seller Central go to Reports --> Fulfillment -->Inventory --> Inventory Adjustments

1b. Click the download tab, and download everything for the last 18 months (to the 1st of the 18th month)

1c. You’ll get a text file, but just open it up in Excel.

1d. Sort the data so the REASON column only shows “M” (missing)
1e. DELETE any lines with a date in the last 30 days.
1f. Sort the data so the REASON column only shows “M” and “F” (Missing & Found)

1g. Sort the data so the FNSKU column only shows the first FNKSU.

----this sheet is now ready----


2a. In Seller Central go to Reports --> Fulfillment --> Payments --> Reimbursements

2b. Click the download tab, and download everything for the last 18 months (to the 1st of the 18th month)

2c. Sort the data so the REASON column only shows “Lost_Warehouse”
2d. Sort the data so the FNSKU column shows the same FNSKU you selected in step 1g.


3. In the Inventory Adjustment sheet, highlight the entire QUANTITY column. Take note of the SUM.


4. In the Reimbursements sheet, SUM the amounts in the QUANTITY-REIMBURSED-TOTAL column. ADD this number to the SUM from step 3.

5. If the resulting number is negative, this FNSKU has lost units that need to be reimbursed.

6. Repeat steps 1g through 5, selecting the next FNSKU down each time, until you get through all of your FNSKUs.

7. Open a case with Amazon. Help --> Contact Us --> Selling on Amazon --> Fulfillment by Amazon -->FBA Issue --> Something Else --> Email


8. Use the following text:
Hello,
I need a reimbursement for inventory that was lost by the Amazon fulfillment center

The FNSKUs that need reimbursement are:

X00136B2W2
X00141DMDN
X0016WN8I2
X00148SIM4
X001434706



9. Amazon will respond within a few hours and you will GET PAID in 3-5 business days.

NOTE 1: I recommend only copying 5 lines of transactions per case. If more than that, and your case may get escalated, and it will take longer to resolve. So, I open a bunch of cases, with 5 FNSKUs each.

NOTE 2: You may get some false positives, that Amazon doesn’t think need to be reimbursed, but I’ve gotten the process pretty close to being correct.

NOTE 3: If you have a high dollar sku, or a lot of units damaged for one sku, it's better to open these up in their own separate case, so that you can fight seller central if they mess it up.

Hey @amp0193

thank you for this awesome and detailed guide. I've already tried one step (Lost_Inboud) and got 150€ back.
I have a question about step 3: I've downloaded the inventory adjustments report and selected only the "M" and "F" reason for one FNSKU. Separately I got 85 "Missing" but also exactly 85 "Found". Does that mean they've found everything and I don't get anything back? In the reimbursement table I have zero "Lost_warehouse" reimbursements.

It's weird cause I have on FNSKU with 2 units "Missing" but 7 "Found". Since its my own brand and I am the only seller I wonder how can they find more than they've lost?
 

amp0193

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Hey @amp0193

thank you for this awesome and detailed guide. I've already tried one step (Lost_Inboud) and got 150€ back.
I have a question about step 3: I've downloaded the inventory adjustments report and selected only the "M" and "F" reason for one FNSKU. Separately I got 85 "Missing" but also exactly 85 "Found". Does that mean they've found everything and I don't get anything back? In the reimbursement table I have zero "Lost_warehouse" reimbursements.

It's weird cause I have on FNSKU with 2 units "Missing" but 7 "Found". Since its my own brand and I am the only seller I wonder how can they find more than they've lost?

85 missing + 85 found = yes, they've found everything.

I've had some cases with founds being higher than the total number of missings. I'm not exactly sure why this would be the case, but it happens.
 

samuraijack

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Got some questions fer yer:

Anyone use the services in the original post?

Is there a time limit where one should do this? Or else reimbursements would "expire".?
 
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amp0193

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Is there a time limit where one should do this? Or else reimbursements would "expire".?

For the inventory stuff (#2 and #3) you can only do the previous 18 months.

I don't think there's a time limit on the others.
 

QDF

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I'm doing step #5 again here....been about 6 months since I've done it and AMZRefund estimates I should get another $2500.

One thing I've noticed is that step 5 doesn't account for if you issued the refund yourself (not Amazon's customer service). I'm trying to find a report where I can find out which orders I issued the refund for so I can add that into the spreadsheet in step 5. I don't want to send a bunch of Order ID's to Amazon and have that many of them be non-reimburseable due to this.

Anyone know of a report where I can find this info?
 

amp0193

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I'm doing step #5 again here....been about 6 months since I've done it and AMZRefund estimates I should get another $2500.

One thing I've noticed is that step 5 doesn't account for if you issued the refund yourself (not Amazon's customer service). I'm trying to find a report where I can find out which orders I issued the refund for so I can add that into the spreadsheet in step 5. I don't want to send a bunch of Order ID's to Amazon and have that many of them be non-reimburseable due to this.

Anyone know of a report where I can find this info?

Hmm, interesting, yeah I get what you're asking.

I can't think of a way to do this though. A refund is a refund in the system...

I can't think of a way to not have some false postivies as a result of the manual refund.
 
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amp0193

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I made a mistake recently.

I discovered that Amazon had charged $1.50 too much on the fees for one of products, for hundreds of transactions.

I thought, to save some time, I would open up 70 cases with 10 order IDs each (each case worth $15 total to me).

10 orders was too much though, and 95% of the cases got escalated... meaning I got "thank you for your patience" emails every 3 days for all of the cases, going on 3-4 weeks now. Eventually, each case is slowly getting investigated and refunded, but it is a huge pain. Much more of a pain, then opening cases in groups of 5-7 order ids.

I could've done 1 case with 700 Order ids, but i'm not sure that it ever would've been answered. That'd be a days work for any one rep....
 

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This thread is complete GOLD. Thank you OP tons of speed to you. I have been looking for a manual way to recover lossage from FBA. The automated stuff is sketchy at best. Plus I don't want to give them any of my reimbursements.
 
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greenGabbard

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Last week, before I made this thread, I went through all of the above steps. It took me 3-4 hours.

The last time I had completed these steps was in August 2016, so I was only looking at data for the last 6 months.


My last case was resolved today, and my total reimbursements from Amazon are $3,342.98.

If I had paid AMZRefund 8%, that would have been a $267 fee. So I saved $67 an hour doing it myself.


However, if you've NEVER done these reimbursements before, you might get back way more than 3k, so it's definitely worth doing it yourself.



Honestly, I'm surprised there hasn't been a single response to this thread.


This is gold. Literal dollars in your bank account, ya'll.


Take 2-4 hours and go through the process, and let us know how it goes.


I will go through this step by step with the Director on Monday and keep y'all posted as to what has happened. Supremely GOLD thread here Thank you very much. I hope I just found my next raise...LOL
 

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I was wondering if anyone can help me. I did request for damaged inventory by writing the following message:

I need a reimbursement for inventory that was damaged by the Amazon fulfillment center

The 5 transaction item ID's and FNSKUS that need reimbursement are:
Then I listed 5 items
Then amazon wrote back
In order to investigate, we need to know the exact date the damage occurred.

Once we receive this information, we can start our investigation.

How should I respond to this? Should I proceed with the info.?
 

amp0193

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I was wondering if anyone can help me. I did request for damaged inventory by writing the following message:

I need a reimbursement for inventory that was damaged by the Amazon fulfillment center

The 5 transaction item ID's and FNSKUS that need reimbursement are:
Then I listed 5 items
Then amazon wrote back
In order to investigate, we need to know the exact date the damage occurred.

Once we receive this information, we can start our investigation.

How should I respond to this? Should I proceed with the info.?

I've never been asked for the date before.

Just give them the date, Transaction item ID, and FNSKUs.
 
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Jane S.

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Hi I did this and they found my items and they added back to my inventory. However, by the time they found it, all the items are expired because i sell food products do you know if they will reinburse for those
 

amp0193

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Hi I did this and they found my items and they added back to my inventory. However, by the time they found it, all the items are expired because i sell food products do you know if they will reinburse for those

That's a great question.

My guess is yes, but you'll need to investigate further.

I've never dealt with expiration dates before.
 

Jane S.

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Thanks for your help.
This is what they wrote back



(-) Amazon misplaced inventory: -155
( ) Pending misplaced inventory processing: 0
(+) Found inventory: 75
(+) Reimbursed misplaced inventory:89
Needs to be reimbursed:0
Surplus units: 9

Do you know what this means? The problem is this product is no longer allowed to be sold on amazon either.
 
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amp0193

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Thanks for your help.
This is what they wrote back



(-) Amazon misplaced inventory: -155
( ) Pending misplaced inventory processing: 0
(+) Found inventory: 75
(+) Reimbursed misplaced inventory:89
Needs to be reimbursed:0
Surplus units: 9

Do you know what this means? The problem is this product is no longer allowed to be sold on amazon either.

Yeah, they're just running reconciliation reports on lost/found inventory. This is pretty much just a "default" response. Looks like they totally ignored the expiration issue.

If it were me, I'd call in, and try to get escalated to someone who had the capacity to understand your problem.
 

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