Amazon loses inventory. Amazon damages inventory. Amazon receives customer retur
By Anthony Nguyen 🟢 · July 16, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Amazon loses inventory. Amazon damages inventory. Amazon receives customer returns and doesn't restock sellable units correctly. In each case, Amazon owes you money. They're not going to remind you.
The main categories:
Lost inventory, units that were in FBA but disappeared. Amazon's own reconciliation should catch these within 30 days. It often doesn't.
Damaged inventory, units damaged by Amazon's warehouse operations. Not customer returns. Amazon-caused damage means Amazon pays.
Customer return discrepancies, a customer gets a refund but never returns the product. Or returns a different item. Or returns the item and Amazon doesn't add it back to your inventory.
Inbound shipment discrepancies, you shipped 100 units, Amazon received 94. Where are the other 6?
The process: pull your Inventory Adjustments report, Reimbursements report, and Returns report. Cross-reference them. Units that left your inventory without a corresponding sale, return, or reimbursement are owed.
Amazon's policy gives you 18 months to claim most reimbursements. But the further back you go, the harder it is to build the case.
Audit monthly. Not quarterly. Not yearly. Monthly. Small discrepancies each month compound into significant money over time. Most sellers doing their first reimbursement audit recover 1-3% of their annual revenue. That's money that was always yours.
AdsCrafted runs these audits in one command, P&L, reimbursements, catalog health, AMC queries, all conversational → adscrafted.com