Nothing tickles FBA sellers pink like the thought of a cash injection in the run-up to Christmas, or even a small refund from Amazon to grease the wheels of their Q4 wholesale purchasing. With that in mind, we’ve put together a short list for you to check off and get your just deserts.
To find out if Amazon owes you money, please carry on reading.
The countdown to Christmas has begun, and now that the SCOE 2015 Seattle event is long gone, Amazon sellers are gearing up to apply what they’ve learned at the conference. One SCOE presentation in particular may still be fresh in your minds – featured speaker Kat Simpson’s ‘Amazon Owes You Money!’ We thought we’d share with our readers some of our insights on how FBA sellers can reclaim their money, or at least offset part of the losses.
How FBA Sellers Can Recoup Their Losses
Shipment Reconciliation
The first place to look is the Shipping Queue section in your account. If 72 hours have passed since a shipment’s status converted to ‘Receiving’, and the shipment has not been logged as ‘Closed’ yet, then you can consider opening a case. From then on, your Case Log will be the place to go whenever you need to check up on your reimbursements.
Any discrepancies listed under the Reconcile tab need to be checked regularly. Depending on the case, you should select between ‘Units not shipped’, ‘Missing- please research’, or ‘Extra units’ from the drop-down list to resolve reconcile your shipments. To qualify for a research request, keep a record of your tracking number.
Refunds & Returns
Amazon handles all FBA refunds, and may generate them before the buyer returns the product. Buyers then have 30 days to return a refunded product to the warehouse. Keep track of these returns, and if they haven’t been logged in by Amazon at the end of the 30 days, open a case.
Lost Items
If a shipment has not been logged in by Amazon within 2 weeks after dispatch, or part of it is missing, check with the carrier. Take advantage of Amazon’s 6-month window for missing item claims, or the 18-month deadline for lost shipment claims.
This will result in either a replacement with the same FNSKU as the products in question, a reimbursement based on a default replacement value, or a re-evaluation of the money owed to you based on your receipts or invoices.
Damaged Items
Damaged items are usually designated an ‘unfulfillable’ status. These tend to be vendor or customer damaged items, and they can be removed manually or automatically.
Note that in the case of warehouse or distributor (UPS) damage, Amazon will reimburse you unless you specifically asked for them to automatically return all your unfulfillable items. It’s also not unheard of for customer damaged items to be returned to their warehouse and then destroyed simply because they are unable to open them, so bear in mind that inventory ‘shrinkage’ is a natural cost of doing business.
All of the above are tried-and-tested ways to recover some of the money Amazon owes you, but don’t forget to also look a bit closer to home. Your listings could be leaking money every day just because descriptions are incomplete or inaccurate, or that the stated category or condition is incompatible with the type of product (as it’s been know to happen with collectible books, for instance).
So remember, ignoring your reimbursements can cost you dearly, and there’s only one person out there who can fix it. It takes someone as driven as you to take that first step!
Melanie takes an active interest in all things Amazon. She keeps an eye on the latest developments, and keeps Amazon sellers up to speed.