Complete Guide to FBA Reimbursements - Amazon S3...COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 8 2. After clicking on the “Fulfillment” button, the screen below will open. lick on the

COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 2

Complete Guide to FBA Reimbursements:

10 Step by Step Processes to Make Sure You Are Getting the Reimbursements You Deserve

Disclaimers:

While the purpose of this guide is designed to show how I am able to obtain reimbursements

owed from Amazon, I know that each person reading this will achieve different results. This

book is based on my personal experience. There is no guarantee that you will earn any money

using the techniques described in this document or mentioned in this guide. Any information

presented here is not to be interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. The amount of

reimbursements received is entirely dependent on the person applying the techniques, and the

number of payment errors occurring in your Amazon account. Your level of success in attaining

these types of results depends on the time you devote to the business, your financial situation,

and your knowledge/skill level. Due to the fact that all of these factors vary widely between

individuals, I cannot guarantee or predict your success or income level from using the strategies

outlined in this guide.

All mention of promises to earn money either stated or implied are strictly based on my

opinion. I do not intend to render any legal, accounting, or other professional advice in the

document contained herein. I am not a representative of Amazon or any other company

mentioned in this book. Certain links included in this guide are affiliate links for which I will

receive a commission if you make a purchase through them. All links within this book are for

products I use personally and believe are worth the investment.

© Copyright 2016, Ryan Grant

Except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without

the prior written permission of the author.


Foreword by Jim Cockrum

Perhaps my greatest role as an educator in the online business arena is filtering out the noise for my students and delivering actionable, profitable advice and content right when and where my customers and students want and need it. I take that role seriously and I'm well aware that you measure my relevance by my ability to do just that. My team and I evaluate numerous projects monthly, and the default response we have to virtually all products, ideas and courses is a resounding "no". When Ryan brought us this concept I was skeptical at first as I always am, but as we dug in to the simple yet powerful concepts he shares it became evident that we'd found a winning idea (we call these ideas "right" ideas because "good" ideas simply aren't good enough for us). The bottom line is this. If you are selling on Amazon, then Amazon probably owes you money that they are mistakenly not paying you. If you are selling a LOT on Amazon, then are you probably leaving a LOT of money with Amazon that belongs to you! I assure you, Amazon wants to get it right and I'm sure you do to! Ryan's guide will get you taken care of and help you create a system that will make your payouts bigger. There's nothing sneaky or illegitimate about what you'll learn here. This is all about getting the number right - something we should all strive for! You won't get what you are due without a process. This book is that process. I'm honored to endorse this strategic, systemized approach to managing the reimbursements you are due from Amazon as a seller on the Amazon platform. - Jim Cockrum Creator of ProvenAmazonCourse.com

http://www.onlinesellingexperiment.com/provenamazoncourse


Table of Contents

Introduction

1 – Lost / Damaged / Destroyed Inventory

2 – Reconciling Customer Refunds & Reimbursements

3 – Reconciling Inbound FBA Shipments

4 – Other Customer Concessions

5 – Returns Over 30 days

6 – Verifying Customer Exchanges

7 – Customer Return Issues

8 – Warehouse Damaged Units

9 – Tips for Success


Introduction

Selling on Amazon is an amazing opportunity. The ability to tap into their world class fulfillment

network, and have access to sell products to millions of customers is unparalleled on any other

platform. I am a huge fan of being able to sell on Amazon, and overall enjoy the vast majority of

it.

Unfortunately, there are a few things about selling on Amazon that are a bit of a pain to deal

with. One of those things that is cumbersome is making sure that you are properly reimbursed

for every situation that you deserve to be. In theory, Amazon’s systems would be accurate to

the point of being able to identify all of these instances where we are owed reimbursements,

but in reality when they are processing millions of transactions per day, a few things are bound

to slip through the cracks.

That is exactly what this guide is designed for. To help you identify instances where you were

incorrectly charged for something that you shouldn’t have. We are all selling on Amazon to

make a profit, so any time we are picking up the tab for something we shouldn’t be it cuts

directly into our net profit.

Throughout this guide I will show you 10 different situations where you might not be getting

the reimbursements that you deserve. This guide will walk you step by step through each

process to see if you are owed reimbursements, as well as specific details on how to go about

opening cases with Amazon to ensure you are reimbursed.

The goal of this guide is to do two things. The first is to make sure that you go through ALL of

your eligible previous transactions from selling on Amazon to identify instances where you are

owed money. Whether you have only sold a few thousand dollars on Amazon so far, or if you

have sold millions, I am willing to bet there are some reimbursements out there waiting for

you.

In my business, I know that going through these processes recovers in the ballpark of $1,000

per month that otherwise would have slipped through the cracks. These are very material

numbers, and if you haven’t done these processes before, there’s likely a good amount of

money sitting out there waiting to be returned to you.

The second goal of this guide is to make sure that you go through these processes on a regular

basis. My recommendation would be monthly. However, weekly, quarterly, or really any other


timeline can work, it’s just important to do it consistently. It will add to your bottom line.

Hopefully after you see a few reimbursements flow in you won’t have too much trouble finding

room for these processes on your monthly to do list.

A quick note on the layout of this guide. The order in which each of these processes are

included is not random. I have gone through and put the processes in order in terms of the

priority of which I would recommend going through them. Going through every step of this

guide will be well worth your time, but if you go through in order, I am willing to bet you will

get some quick wins, and happily go through the whole thing.

The dollars are out there waiting for you, let’s get right into the process of recovering as many

of them as possible!

Wishing you much success!

-Ryan Grant


Lost/Damaged/Destroyed Reimbursement

With huge amounts of inventory moving throughout Amazon’s warehouses there are times

when items are either lost, damaged, or destroyed. In theory you should be reimbursed for a

large majority of these instances, but in practice that doesn’t always happen. This guide begins

with the process of recovering reimbursements for inventory that is lost, damaged, and

destroyed.

Keeping track of this manually would be a difficult and daunting task, fortunately, Amazon has

reports that we can run to find instances where inventory is lost, damaged, or destroyed. Just

about every item that will show up on these reports will be eligible for reimbursement. By

running a few reports we can quickly identify items that we should be reimbursed for. The

following steps walk you through how to pull all of the information and assemble it into cases

for Amazon to review. (Note: This method for opening cases in seller central can be applied to

all methods of reimbursement for lost, damaged, and destroyed)

1. Hover over the “Reports” tab and click on the “Fulfillment” option as shown below:


2. After clicking on the “Fulfillment” button, the screen below will open. Click on the

“Show more” link in the left hand column under the title heading, “Inventory.”

3. Once you click on “Show more” under the inventory section, you’ll want to click on

“Inventory Adjustments.” This is the report we will be running to determine items due

for reimbursement.


4. Now that the report has been selected, depending on the number of items you will be

submitting for reimbursement, you’ll want to decide if you want to view the products

online or by download. I recommend for more than 50 items in each potential reason

group (Lost/Damaged/Destroyed), you will want to do the “Download” feature. If you

have less than that you can just run the report in the “View Online” option.

a. If you’re choosing the “Download” feature skip down to step 6.

b. For the “View Online” option continue to step 5 below.

5. For the “View Online” option you will want to:

a. As shown below, select “Lost” (Red Arrow) and then select “Exact dates” (Yellow

Arrow) in the drop down for “Event Date.”

i. When running this report for the first time, make sure to go back to your

account inception to recover all of the potential reimbursements. After

running each report, open cases for the affected items. This will allow you

to go back to the inception of the account to recover every potential item

that might be eligible for reimbursement.

b. Click on “Generate Report” (Green Arrow).

c. All of the items that will display in the report should be reimbursed. Some of

these items have likely been reimbursed previously, although from my

experience less than 20% of them have been for my account. The best practice

would be to go through each item before opening a case to verify if it has been

reimbursed previously or not. However, I have found that it works to open cases


directly with Amazon for all items on this report, and they will go through and

only issue reimbursements for items that have not been reimbursed previously.

If you want things to be 100% accurate then I’d recommend reconciling each

item, but if you have literally hundreds of items in these reports it might be

better to just open a case for every 5-20 SKU’s in the report. I highly recommend

only opening cases for reconciled items, but as my goal with everything I do, I

want to share the full picture of how I do things. The recommended way to go

through this process is to reconcile each item.

d. To create a case view, “How to Create Cases” on page 19 for the step by step

instructions.

e. Repeat step 5 for both “Damaged,” “Destroyed,” and “Other” items. These will

be included options to choose from in the “Reason Group” drop down.

i. For the “Other” items, we are only interested if the “Reason” column

says “Damaged – miscellaneous.”

f. Create cases for these affected items just as you did for the “Lost” items.

g. If you choose to reconcile every item on these reports prior to opening cases,

skip to step 11 for the details of how to reconcile. Note: It is a best practice and

keeps you in line with Amazon’s policies by reconciling every item before

opening a case.

6. For the people who chose the “Download” feature here’s how to complete that process:

a. Make sure to choose “Exact dates” in the drop down for “Event Date.” You want

to set your start date as the inception of your account and the end date as of the

day you are going through the items. Enter in those dates, and then click

“Request Download.”

b. After you have selected “Request Download” the report will show up as shown

in the screenshot below as soon as it is available for download. Click “Download”

next to the appropriate report.


7. Once you click on the “Download” button you’ll be prompted to open a .txt file. Open

this file. The next step is to get this data transferred into an Excel file. To do this:

a. Click anywhere in the text file, and press the control key and A (ctrl+A) which is

the keyboard shortcut for select all.

b. Once all the data is selected, press the control key and C (ctrl+C) which is the

keyboard shortcut for copy.

c. Next, open up Excel and click in cell A1.

d. Now press the control key and V (ctrl+V) which is the keyboard shortcut for

paste.

8. Once the text has been copied over to an Excel spreadsheet you’ll then want to add

filters to the top row of the document. You can see this process in the screenshot

below.

a. Click the “Data” tab (Red Arrow)

b. Highlight the top row by clicking on the number “1” (Yellow Arrow)

c. Click the “Filter” button (Green Arrow)


9. Once the filters are in the top row, you can click the drop down on the “reason” column

(Red Arrow).

a. Note: Short hand “reason” code for the excel sort is as follows: Damaged – E,

Destroyed – D, Lost – M, Damaged (miscellaneous) – Q.

b. Select the check box next to E, D, M, and Q (Yellow Arrows). Then click OK

(Green Arrow).


10. Now you have a report showing only items that were lost damaged or destroyed. All of

the units that are displayed at this point should have been reimbursed.

a. I would recommend opening cases to ask for reimbursements for all the items on

the spreadsheet at this point. Though you can go through reconcile each item,

we’ve found 80%+ of items are being reimbursed when submitting the items in

bulk without reconciling previously. Seeing as you are using the download

method, it will likely be much more efficient to open a case for everything as

opposed to reconciling each item individually.

b. Lastly, save a different Excel spreadsheet for every 5 to 20 SKU’s (depending on

how many you are going to be submitting per case). This will make it easy to


attach a different spreadsheet for each case. See step 5c in “How to Create

Cases” on page 17 for labeling instructions on each spreadsheet. Note: 5 items

per case is the recommended amount.

11. If you choose to reconcile each item before submitting for reimbursements, here’s the

process:

a. Hover over “Reports” and select “Fulfillment” as shown below.

b. Then, under the “Payments” heading in the left hand column, click on

“Reimbursements”.


c. That will open the screen below. From here you can look up your reimbursements via

the “View Online” option. (If you want, you can choose the “Download” option and

compare the lost, damaged, and destroyed items in Excel as well)

i. Use either the “Merchant SKU” (MSKU / Red Arrow) or the “Fulfillment Network

SKU” (FNSKU / Green Arrow) fields.

ii. Make sure your “Event Date” field is going back to the account inception (Yellow

Arrow)

iii. Click “Generate Report” (Blue Arrow)


d. If you see the following screen, then you know you have been reimbursed for the

lost/damaged/destroyed item:

i. Important: Even if you see you have been reimbursed, make sure to check if you

should’ve been reimbursed for multiple of the same units as they will often

share the same SKU.

ii. Using the search function in the lost/damaged/destroyed spreadsheet should

make it easy to see if there were multiple items that had the same SKU. Hold

control and press the “F” key (ctrl+F) and then search for the SKU to see if more

than one exists.

iii. If you’re using the “Download” feature this should be easy enough if you are

using formulas to compare matching SKU’s.


e. If you see the message, “No results found” message, then you know this is an item that

still has to be reimbursed and this item should be included when creating cases:


How to Create Cases for Lost/Damaged/Destroyed Inventory:

Creating cases is a fairly simple process. The only issue with submitting cases is that Amazon

only wants to see 5 SKUs per case. This may present a problem as it is possible that you are

looking at a report with hundreds of items you need to open cases for. You will see a potential

workaround for this issue in step 5 below.

1. When in seller central, click on the “Help” button in the top right hand corner as shown

below.

2. After you click on the “Help” button the window below will slide out from the right hand

side of the screen. Click on the, “Contact Us” button as shown below.


3. This will open a new screen where you will have to tell Amazon what your issue relates

to.

a. First click on “Selling on Amazon”


4. Then you’ll want to click on the “Fulfillment by Amazon” button and then the, “FBA

Issue” button, and then click “Something else.”

5. Lastly, this will open the contact form where you can select to contact Amazon via

Email. We will select to contact Amazon via “Email.” I’ve included text below of what I

say when I am opening a case with Amazon for this issue.

a. Here is the text if you wish to copy/paste it as you are creating your cases:

Hello,

Please review the following items and reimburse for the

lost/damaged/destroyed units. Due to being a small business and

having time constraints, I've attached 20 items because opening

cases in smaller amounts isn't feasible. Thanks in advance.

I appreciate your help in this matter.

Sincerely,

INSERT NAME HERE

b. Feel free to add anything to this message as it relates to your products. Just an

FYI, Amazon reps don’t want more than 5 units to be included in each case as

noted above. We’ve had success with 10-20 units per case by using the exact

message above. It is recommended to just go with 5 items per case.

c. Notice on the screenshot on the next page that I also numbered the “Contact

Reason” (Yellow Arrow) subtitle to keep track of the number of submissions. This

will help you especially those who are using the “Download” method.


i. If you are saving separate Excel documents with 5-20 items each, then I

recommend you name each spreadsheet with the same title as the

“Contact Reason” field to make for an easy process to attach the correct

file to each case without accidentally uploading the same thing more than

once.

d. If you choose to use the “View Online” method then I would proceed as follows:

i. I would use the exact message above, but add in that the items you want to

be reviewed are pasted below the text of your message. Then paste 20

SKU’s and their corresponding FNSKU’s in the body of the case message.

e. If you choose the “Download” method follow this process:

i. Select the “Add attachment” (Green Arrow) button and upload a

spreadsheet.

ii. Upload a spreadsheet that has 5-20 rows/items from the spreadsheet we

finalized in step 10 above. Note: you will likely have to copy/paste from the

initial file into a new file with only 5-20 items to open the case.

f. Opening cases takes time, but there is most likely significant amounts of money

that will be recovered by going through this process, so even if you have to open

cases of 5 units per case, it will be worth your time!

That’s the process! Repeat as many times as necessary to go through all of your items.


Reconciling Customer Refunds &

Reimbursements

This process will help you recover reimbursements for items that customers were issued

refunds for, but ultimately they never returned the item. This happens a lot more often than

you might initially think. In theory when a customer is refunded but never returns the item, you

will be issued a reimbursement 45 days from the date of the refund.

In practice, these reimbursements are only issued some of the time. Using this method

consistently brings in reimbursements month after month.

Let’s get into how to recover these missing reimbursements:

1. First to find the items that were refunded, we need to pull a report. Hover over

“Reports” and select “Payments” as shown below.

2. The following “Payments” screen will open and you want to fill it out as follows:

a. Click on “Transaction View.” (Red Arrow)

b. If you haven’t done this before and need to reconcile refunds back to the

inception of the account, choose “Custom Date Range” and enter the

appropriate dates. If you have done this before, enter the dates that correspond

to the last time you completed this process through 45 days prior to the date

you are going through the process. The reason for going 45 days prior is the fact

that those are the ones that will be eligible for reimbursement. (Yellow Arrow)


c. Choose to filter the view by “Refunds.” (Green Arrow)

3. Once you have selected the “Filter view by” section as “Refund” and the date range that

you want to examine, click on the update button.

4. You should see a screen similar to this after you complete the process:


5. Now that we have easy access to all the Order ID’s (note they are blurred out in the

screenshot above, but should be easy to see on your screen), we can start to see if we

have received a reimbursement for each these transactions.

a. We want to take each Order ID separately and paste it into the “Find a

transaction” field (Yellow Arrow) under the “Transaction view” page (Red Arrow)

in seller central. Note I recommend doing this in a new tab so that you can leave

the report in step 4 open.

b. Hit the “GO!” button to examine this order (Green Arrow). See below for detail:

6. This will open the following page seen in the screenshot below. In this screen you are

looking to determine if you have been reimbursed for the item or not. Reimbursements

are easy to spot as the product details will say “FBA Inventory Reimbursement,” the

number will be positive, and it will also be the color blue. So below is an example of

what you will see once you’ve entered in an order ID that does not have a

reimbursement. Since we don’t see a reimbursement under the “Transaction type” in

this example, we have to look further into this order to see if it indeed was returned to

our inventory.

7. The process to check if the item has actually been returned to your inventory will be


detailed in steps 8-11.

a. If you do see a reimbursement, that means things have been accounted for

properly, and you have the reimbursement you are entitled to. Start over at step

6 with the next order id. Here’s an example of what it will look like when a

reimbursement has already been processed (note it may only be one line item,

just make sure the amounts match the amount initially refunded to the

customer):

b. Be careful when looking for reimbursements. Don’t just assume the

reimbursement is there because there are 3-4 lines. Look closely!

c. IMPORTANT: If you see a reimbursement that is less than the amount that was

initially refunded to the customer I recommend opening a case. It can be more

difficult to get these differences refunded, but if you are persistent and use the

strategies outlined in the “Tips for Success” section at the end of this guide you

should be able to get reimbursed the vast majority of the time. Here are the

steps to open those cases:

i. Click “Help” in the top right corner of your seller central account.

ii. Click “Contact us” in the bottom left corner of your screen.

iii. Click “Selling on Amazon”

iv. Select “Customers and orders”

v. Paste in the applicable order ID

vi. Select “Return and refund issues”

vii. Select “Other customer and order issues”

viii. Send the following text:

Hello,

Upon reviewing the reimbursement amount issued for this

order, it does not match the amount that was refunded to

the customer. Please reimburse the difference.

Thanks,

INSERT YOUR NAME


ix. That’s it for these, but as I mentioned be prepared to use the strategies

mentioned in the “Tips for Success” section at the end of this guide to

make sure you get these reimbursements.

8. If you’re missing the reimbursement line item entirely from the refund spreadsheet data

as shown in step 6 then we need to compare this info against the customer return

report. We can find this by going to “Reports” and clicking on “Fulfillment” as shown

below.

9. That will bring you to the following screen, and you’ll want to choose the “Returns” link

under the “Customer Concessions” subtitle on the left hand column.

10. Now that we have the “Returns” report open:

a. We’ll want to paste the order number for the item that we want to check to see

if it has been reimbursed.


b. Change the event date to “Exact dates” and input the desired timeline. You will

want to use a start date that is prior to the date of the initial order and through

the current day. I generally just use something like 1/1/2010 through the current

day so that I know I for sure have my bases covered, and then I don’t have to

change the date when I am checking other order IDs as I leave this report open in

a new tab as I am going through this process.

c. After you’ve pasted in the order ID, click “Generate Report”.

11. If the far right column displays “unit returned to inventory” then you know the item has

been returned to your inventory.

a. That means that things were handled properly and you are not owed a

reimbursement.


Here’s the same message, but zoomed in on the far right column.

When you see this, things went as they should, and you aren’t

owed a reimbursement.

b. If you don’t see “unit returned to inventory” then

it’s time to open a case.

i. Make sure to double check your date range and verify that the report still

doesn’t display any results, and if there are no results then it’s time to open

a case.

ii. Here’s what it looks like when you don’t see a confirmation message and

you need to open a case.


12. To open a case select the following options after clicking on “Help” in the top right hand

corner of seller central, and then “Contact Us”.

a. Select “Selling on Amazon” (Red Arrow)

b. Select “Customers and orders” (Yellow Arrow)

c. Enter the order number (Green Arrow).

d. Then click “Next” (Blue Arrow)

13. Then you’ll want to click on “Return and refund issues” and then “Next” again.


14. Then you’ll be routed to this screen and you’ll want to select “Other customer and order

issues” as shown below. Then click, “Next.”

15. That will bring you to the following screen and you’ll want to type a similar message to

the one I’ve included below. Make sure to include anything else you may want to have

reviewed.

a. Here’s text of the generic message we include in our cases below. Feel free to

use as a starting point for your own cases:

Hello,

Looking through the details of this item it appears this customer

was refunded but never actually returned the item. Please review

this order and issue a reimbursement for INSERT AMOUNT OF THE

REFUND. I appreciate your help with this matter.

Thanks,

INSERT YOUR NAME


Now repeat this step of opening cases for every item that was not properly reimbursed.

A couple notes on this section:

1. In this process in particular, it’s very important to follow up and make sure you get

reimbursed the correct amount. If you don’t get reimbursed for the full amount that

was initially refunded to the customer, I recommend reopening the case and using the

text similar to step 7 above.

2. If you are an InventoryLab user, it’s very easy to combine doing this process with

marking your returns as “sellable or defective.” Basically you have to copy/paste the

order IDs either way to check on the status in the return disposition post above, so

depending on how often you go through and set the status of your returns in

InventoryLab, it might be worth doing this process at the same time.


Reconciling Inbound Shipments

In this part, I’ll show you how to reconcile all of your inbound FBA shipments to make sure all

your items have been correctly received at Amazon FBA warehouses. If there is a discrepancy

between what you sent and what was received, you can open cases and get reimbursed for

missing items/products. Let’s get started.

1. Go to “Manage FBA Shipments” in seller central.

2. You will see all of your inbound shipments here.

a. You will want to go through every shipment since the last time you completed

this reimbursement method. If you have never done this before, go back as far

as Amazon will let you. I recommend opening every shipment in a new tab by

clicking on the shipment link as shown below. (Note: you can open them in a

new tab by either right clicking and selecting to open in a new tab, or holding the

control key and then clicking on the name of the shipment)


3. When you click on the shipment names, each one will bring you to the following screen.

a. From here, you’ll want to click on the tab that says, “Reconcile.”

b. Here’s a close up relating to the above screenshot. These

are the links that you will want to open each tab for.


4. If it brings you to the following page with the message about your inventory being

received in full, then you’re good to go for this shipment and you can move on to the

next shipment to review by going back to step 2. (Or if you have the tabs open, just go

to the next tab).

a. Here’s a close up to show

the reconcile tab in more

detail


a. Here’s a close up of the above message so it is clearer.

5. If you see a screen like the one below, then that means you have some discrepancies

and possible reimbursements coming your way. To get started, you’ll want to select

an option for each drop down on each item listed. In this case, there are two potential

discrepancies with this shipment (the 2 Red Arrows).

Again, here is a more zoomed in version to view what it looks like:

6. For each discrepancy you can see how many items have been located vs. how many

items you originally shipped.


a. The +1 items are units that they received in excess of what you shipped

i. For most discrepancies that are a +1 you’ll want to choose “Extra units

shipped.” This signifies that you had sent additional units than you

otherwise indicated according to your inbound shipments. This is an

acknowledgement that you sent items that weren’t supposed to be part of

the shipment. No other action will be needed and these items will be

added to your inventory if they haven’t been already. If you didn’t send

these additional units then you can select “Unexpected – Please Research.”

This option will have them look into the units and determine if they are

yours or if they should be attributed elsewhere. If you know you didn’t ship

extra units, then select “Unexpected – Please Research.”

b. The -1 items are shortfalls of items that you’re missing and that haven’t been

received into your inventory

i. For the -1 discrepancy items, most of the time you’ll want to choose

“Missing – Please Research” unless you know that you didn’t send the

items. This signifies that you sent the item and Amazon has misplaced the

unit/never received the item. This triggers an investigation into the units

once you submit your request and a reimbursement will be made if they

can’t locate the units. Alternatively, you can choose “Units not shipped,” if

you never shipped the items. This is an acknowledgement that you didn’t

send the units into the FBA warehouses and no action will be taken by

Amazon to further investigate these items.


7. It is possible that Amazon will require you to provide additional documentation in order

to be reimbursed. If applicable, you’ll see this portion become required in the “Upload

documents” section.

a. 99% of the time they won’t ask for any additional information, but if you’re

shipment has a lot of discrepancies and you say the units are missing (5+) then

they could require invoices. Also, if the shipment is more than 6 months old, it’s

highly likely you will be required to upload documents.

b. If it’s required to upload documents, then we will provide the invoices for the

affected units. You’ll know if you have to add this in when it’s required, since you

can’t submit the reconciliation without providing invoices. This doesn’t happen

overly often, but when it does, I simply find the applicable item receipts/invoices

from my Shoeboxed account. This service makes it very easy to find receipts, and

I can save them as PDFs to immediately upload to Amazon.


8. More often than not the “Upload documents” section will have a message stating, “No

additional documents required.” In this case you will proceed to step 3, stating “Provide

additional information.”

a. I’ve never used this field. Of course, if you feel there is something you should

note here, feel free.

9. Once these are complete, then you’ll want to select the “Preview your request” button.

10. This will then pop-open this box as shown below. Confirm your selections and hit the

“Submit Request” button.

11. You’ll then get this confirmation message and you have completed the process of having

your products submitted for review!


Other items to note regarding reconciling inbound shipments:

If you see this message at the reconcile tab, then you simply have to wait for them to complete

the check in process at the fulfillment centers before reconciling the units.

If you see the word, “Submitted” in the discrepancy part where the drop down used to be, that

means you have already gone through the shipment reconciliation process.


When in doubt about a shipment, feel free to open a case the old fashioned way and supplying

the shipment ID so they can review the issue.

Here’s a close up to illustrate the above point.

This is what it looks like when items have been

reconciled already. If you want more detail,

you can always click the “Case ID” link that’s

associated with this item.


Other Customer Concessions

Other concessions are amounts that Amazon will charge to your Amazon seller account for an

amount that is refunded for a reason outside of your control. This could be due to the customer

receiving the item late, or Amazon issuing the customer a refund as a goodwill gesture if

anything went wrong with the fulfillment end of the transaction. Basically it is amounts that

Amazon gives out at their discretion that you are initially charged for. In theory, you will be

reimbursed after 45 days for all of these instances, but in practice it only happens some of the

time.

Let’s get into the details of how to check and see if you are owed reimbursements for “other

concessions.” To begin, you will need to run a report to identify all of your refunds. Here are the

details on how to run that report once you are logged into your Amazon seller account:

1. Hover over reports at the top of your Amazon Seller account and then click “Payments.”

2. Then click on “Transaction View” towards the top of the screen.

3. Then select “Custom date range” and enter in the dates that you want to check through.

Note: I’d recommend going pretty much back to the beginning of your account if you

haven’t done this type of check before. Also noteworthy is this report will only display

600 transactions at a time, so if you have more refunds than this, you will have to either

run this report multiple times, or use date range reports.

4. After you’ve selected the dates, then filter the view by “Refund” using the drop down

menu.

5. Then click update to have your search populated.

6. Then click download to obtain a text file with all of the transactions included.

7. Open up the text file, then click anywhere in the text file, hold the control key, and press

“A” (ctrl + A) and this will highlight the entire document.

8. Then copy all of the info in the text file by holding control and pressing “C” (ctrl + C) or

right clicking and selecting copy.

9. Then open up excel or a google spreadsheet and paste the information into the

spreadsheet.


10. Click on the far left row that has the titles in them, for me row 4, to highlight the row

(see the arrow in the screenshot below)

11. Then go to the data tab and click filter. This will create drop down arrows by each

column heading.

12. On the “Payment Detail” heading use the filter option to show only “Other concession”

which should look something like this:

You now have the report you need to be able to verify that you have been properly reimbursed

for any other concessions. In order to verify these, copy the order number from each order and

paste into the payment details section of your account. This can be accessed by hovering over

“Reports” at the top of the screen and then clicking “Payments”. You can see that screen here:


Then if things are reimbursed properly you should see something like this:

If you see something like the above where you were reimbursed for the other concession

amount (in this case $20), then no further action is needed.

However, if you see something like this further action will be needed:

In this case I can see that the customer was initially refunded $32.54, and then another $36.98

was refunded to them. These will almost always be other concessions, but you can verify the

reason by clicking on the hyperlink of the dollar amount in question (in this case the $36.98)

and you will see this:

This indicates that a customer was indeed issued a refund for an “other concession” and you

were not reimbursed for it, so it’s time to open a case to request a reimbursement from

Amazon.


To open the case:

1. Click “Help” in the upper right hand corner of your Amazon seller account

2. Click “Contact Us” in the bottom right corner of the screen

3. Click “Selling on Amazon”

4. Select “Customers and orders”

5. Enter the order number and click next

6. Select “Return and refund issues”

7. Select “Other customer and order issues”

8. Enter details and submit case, here’s the text I am using:

Hello,

On this order, the customer was issued a $INSERT AMOUNT refund for

“other concession.” Please issue a reimbursement for this amount.

Best Regards,

Ryan

That’s it for this process. You shouldn’t get much push back on these, but if you do, definitely

reopen the cases as you should be reimbursed for the other concession portion of the refund

every time they are issued from your account.


Returns Over 30 Days

Amazon in their quest to provide excellent customer service will occasionally refund customers

beyond the normal return period of 30 days. This will hold true for all orders unless they are in

the baby category which has a return period of 90 days. Or if it falls under the holiday return

policy. The holiday return policy allows any item purchased by customers from November 1st

through December 31st to be returned until January 31st.

From my experience, Amazon will not reimburse all of the situations where refunds have been

accepted greater than 30 days from when the customer receives the item, but they will a large

percentage of the time. I find that reopening the case a second time can go a long way in

getting these types of reimbursements issued. We’ll walk through the process I follow to

identify and get reimbursed in these scenarios.

This method works best for InventoryLab users as the reports they provide include both the

order date as well as the date of the return. Here are the steps if you are logged into

InventoryLab:

1. Click the “Accounting” tab in the top center of the screen

2. Select “Refunds”

3. Click “Advanced” in the top right corner of the screen

4. Change the far left box to “From” and then select the date range that you want to go

through and click search.

5. Click “Export” in the top right corner of the screen

6. Click “OK” (You can change the name if you like, but it’s not necessary)

7. Open the Excel file that downloads

Note: If you don’t use InventoryLab, then you will want to create a file using your systems to

get the order date and refund date in the same file. You should then be able to follow the steps

below with minimal editing.

We now have the file with all of the info that we need to identify returns that were accepted

over 30 days from the initial order date. Here are the steps within Excel:


1. Title the far right column that is blank “# of Days” (this will be column L if you are using

InventoryLab).

2. Create a formula in this cell that subtracts the return date from the order date. This

formula will be =A2-I2.

3. Then double click in the bottom right corner of this cell (L2) to copy this formula to all cells.

4. Then select row 1 by clicking on the 1 on the far left of row 1 (Red Arrow), select the

“Data” tab (Green Arrow), and click “Filter” (Yellow Arrow):


5. After it is filtered, click the arrow on the “# of Days column” (Red Arrow) and then select

largest to smallest (Yellow Arrow). (Note: in this step you can also do a number filter,

select greater than, and then enter 30 to get the needed info. I prefer the method

sorted largest to smallest as the ones that have very large numbers have a very high

probability of being reimbursed.)

6. Now, you have a file with the instances isolated where customers were refunded

greater than 30 days from the order date.


It’s time to open cases. I recommend opening cases for every order that is at least 30 days old.

Just know that you will have a much better chance of getting refunded on the items that were

refunded significantly beyond 30 days. Once you start getting into the 30-45 day range the

percentage that get reimbursed goes down. Here’s the process for opening cases:

7. Copy the order number from the excel file

8. Paste the order number into the payment reports to see if it has been reimbursed

previously. Process for that is below:

a. Login to your Amazon Seller Account

b. Hover over “Reports” at the top of the screen and then click “Payments”

c. Paste the order number into the “Find a transaction” search bar and hit “GO!”:

d. Then if there’s a reimbursement already showing then there’s nothing further to

do. The reconciling reimbursement section above has screenshots showing what

it looks like when you have already been reimbursed.

e. If there is not a reimbursement, then it’s time to open a case.

9. To open the case, begin by clicking the “Help” button in the top right corner of the

screen:

10. Then right click on “Contact Us” (Red Arrow) and select “Open link in a new tab” (Yellow

Arrow) so that you will have the payments report open when you go through your next

item.



12. Click “Customers and orders”


13. Paste in the Order ID from the excel file and click “Next”.

14. Select the “Return and refund” radio button and click “Next”:

15. Select “Other customer and order issues” and click “Next”:


16. Describe the issue, and the submit the details:

Here is the standard template that I use to open the case with Amazon for this issue:

Hello,

This customer returned this item over 30 days from the initial order. As the

return window was supposed to be closed when the return was allowed, please

issue a reimbursement for INSERT AMOUNT REFUNDED TO CUSTOMER.

Thanks,

INSERT YOUR NAME

That’s about it. Note that I prefer to insert the exact amount of the refund I am expecting for


the order. This makes it very clear to the Amazon rep, and also makes it clear when going back

through the details of the case to make sure you are refunded the right amount.

On all of these refunds Amazon should be at a minimum reimbursing you for 20% of the

amount of the order. You can find the details on their return policy which states these

percentages HERE. That policy states that if an item is returned when the return window is

supposed to be closed a refund of only 80% will be issued.

So on all of these orders you should receive at least 20% back, but a decent percentage of the

time you will likely get a full reimbursement.

http://amzn.to/1V6O4HB


Verifying Customer Exchanges

Occasionally on some orders, a customer will request to have a replacement of an item sent as

opposed to having a refund issued. I have found a few instances where Amazon has issued both

the replacement item, as well as the refund in cash. Obviously, this is not the way things are

supposed to work. In this section, we’ll walk through the steps you need to take to identify

orders this will apply to, and the process for obtaining reimbursements if there was an error.

The easiest way to view this report is if you are user of InventoryLab is to download a report of

all of your FBA orders. To do this, you need to:

1. Login to InventoryLab

2. Click on the tab “Accounting” at the top of the screen and click “FBA Sales”

3. Click “Advanced”

4. Input the date range you would like to go through

5. Click “Search”

6. Then click “Export” in the top right corner

7. Open the Excel file that downloads

8. Select the top row of the file, select the “Data” tab, and click “Filter” This is outlined

with screenshots in step 11 of the “Other Customer Concessions” section.

9. Then sort the sales value from low to high

10. The zero dollar orders are the ones that you want to go through to see if they have been

handled properly.

If you don’t use InventoryLab, then all you will need to do is view your order report in the

format that you usually do and sort the order price from low to high, and then follow steps 7

through 10 to manipulate the data in Excel.

Once you have identified the orders that this applies to, then here are your steps:

1. Copy the order ID from the Excel file

2. Login to your Amazon Seller account, hover over “Reports” in the top center of your

screen, and then click on “Payments.”


3. Paste the order ID into the search bar of the “Payments” report.

4. You will end up with something like this:

Based on this it shows that the customer had returned this item, and received a refund, but it

still didn’t explain the zero dollar sale I was seeing from the InventoryLab export. I then clicked

on the $70.85 link from the above screenshot so that I could view the details of the order. This

led me to this screen:

I see that the customer was refunded, so nothing looks off immediately. What does catch my

eye is that there are 2 orders from this customer, so I then click on the link circled in red in the

above screenshot. I then find the other order which is for this exact same item:

This was a replacement item for the first order. Essentially the customer chose to exchange this

item for the exact same item as they weren’t completely satisfied with the item from the first

order. The interesting part of this order was that they were not charged despite the fact that


they had already received a refund for the order. This didn’t look right, so I searched this order

ID in my payments account to see if this was indeed correct:

It turns out that things were as they appeared, the customer returned the item, received a

refund, AND received a replacement item without being charged. Clearly this isn’t how this was

supposed to go, so I submitted a case to seller support letting them know that the customer

received a refund and the replacement item, and asked to be reimbursed for one of the two

transactions.

Here is the process for opening the case:

1. Click “Help” in the top right corner of your Amazon Seller Account

2. Click “Contact Us”


4. Click “Customers and orders”

5. Paste in the order ID and click “Next”

6. Select “Other customer and order issues”

7. Enter in the details of your issue, here’s the text I used:

Hello,

It appears this customer was sent a replacement item for this order at no cost,

but already had ordered this item with this order number: INSERT ORDER ID OF

ASSOCIATED ORDER and was refunded.

Essentially the buyer was refunded and sent a free item. Can you please issue a

reimbursement for one of these?

Thanks,

INSERT YOUR NAME


Assuming things go as planned, you will get something like this:

You will notice that I was reimbursed separately for the customer return fees (I had to reopen

the case in this instance), so make sure that you get reimbursed for every amount that you are

entitled to.

That’s it. Repeat this process of looking through in detail all of your orders where you had a $0

sale.


Customer Return Issues

Unfortunately, sometimes in this business you get returns. This is just a product of doing

business, however, receiving fraudulent returns, or returns that don’t fit Amazon’s return

policy, is another story and these are eligible for reimbursement. I’m referring to selling a

product to a customer and receiving a return for that item that is either an entirely different

item, or is not in a condition fit for return.

Please see this example as a more clear depiction of the problem at hand for an instance where

a customer returned an entirely different item back:

We sold some pants to a customer and they returned 10 year old jeans in the place of the

original item that we sold. These were obviously worn and ripped to pieces. They still received a

full refund and kept the brand new item.

You will want to go through the process outlined below anytime you receive a return on a

product that is not in brand new condition or when it is different from the product you initially

sold. Amazon’s return policy clearly states that items must remain in the initial condition to be

refunded/returned.

To request a reimbursement when these instances occur, you will need to open a case and

supply the following information. Let’s get started:

1. We’ll start by creating a case.

a. Click on the “Help” link in the top right hand corner of seller central

b. Click on the “Contact Us” link in the slide out window on the right hand side of

the screen

c. Select “Selling on Amazon”

d. Select “Other issues”

i. Select “All other issues”

e. Choose the “Email” tab to contact Amazon

f. Input all the following information in the case from steps 2-6 and click “Send” for

review


i. See the lost/damaged/destroyed guide to view “How to Create Cases” for

screenshots if you need more detail on this process.

2. First, take a picture of the return label on the product return itself and add as an

attachment to the case:

3. Then, take a picture of the return label that comes in the box that you receive when you

request a removal order to your address.

4. Attach a picture of the product that you received back in place of the actual product

that you had originally sent.

5. Submit these photos into a case and they should be able to look up the item and issue a

reimbursement!

6. Here’s an example for some text, if you want to copy a generic message for instances

when a customer pulls a switcheroo on you:

a. Hello,


Please review the attached photos and documentation. We have received a

return of INSERT PRODUCT NAME that was sold on INSERT DATE. The return

wasn't the original item that we sold and appears to be in violation of Amazon’s

return policy. They returned INSERT ITEM RETURNED which was not even the

item I sold, and based on this does not adhere to Amazon’s return policy. As this

return should not have been accepted, please reimburse my account for the

amount refunded to the customer. I appreciate your help in this matter.

Thanks,

INSERT YOUR NAME

b. If the above doesn’t work the first time, it can be helpful to cite Amazon’s return

policy and indicate that the items should not have actually been allowed to be

returned. The link’s that are likely helpful are HERE and HERE.

http://amzn.to/23Zzs2X

http://amzn.to/1V6O4HB


Warehouse Damaged Units

All units that have been marked in your inventory as “Warehouse Damaged” are eligible for

reimbursement. There are a couple different ways to do this process. The first would be to pull

the damaged report as we have detailed in an earlier section in this guide

(Lost/Damaged/Destroyed), and the other way is to view your unfulfillable inventory. The latter

will be discussed in this example.

The point of breaking this out separately is that you will likely be creating removal orders for

unfulfillable items on a regular basis. By requesting the reimbursement for these items upfront

you will ensure you are reimbursed, as the reimbursement can be harder to obtain if you get

the item shipped back to you.

1. To get started going through this process click on the “Inventory” link or the “Manage

Inventory” link in seller central as shown below. (They both take you to the same place)

2. Next click on the “Remove Unfulfillable Inventory” link as shown below.


3. That will open this page and you can see all of your inventories that are unfulfillable.

a. We are interested in the ones that are marked, “Warehouse Damaged.”

b. To find that we have to click on the links in the “Unfulfillable” column that

display how many units we have in unfulfillable status. See below:

4. Once you click on the number of unfulfillable items, it will pop-open this window. When it

displays that the reason is “Warehouse Damaged” that is exactly what you’re looking for.

a. Now that we have located an item, we can open a case and paste the FNSKU and

SKU for each warehouse damaged item in a case and ask for reimbursement.

b. Seller central wants no more than 5 SKU’s in each case. (See the bottom of

Lost/Damaged/Destroyed section called “How to Create Cases” on page 19

about the wording to submit cases of up to 20 SKU’s)

i. You’ll see other unfulfillable reasons, such as customer damaged, defective,

etc., but we are only interested in opening cases for warehouse damaged

items.

c. On the left is a close up picture for the referenced

“Unfulfillable” column in the step above.


5. Submit a case with the affected units. Again, see the bottom of

Lost/Damaged/Destroyed section called “How to Create Cases” on page 19 about the

wording to submit cases of up to 20 SKU’s.

a. In that section it details exact wording to use to get your cases accepted and

reimbursed!


Tips for Success

Tip #1 – Don’t be afraid to reopen cases. You are likely to find out that there is a lot of

inconsistency between Amazon reps and how they enforce policies. If you know that you are

entitled to a reimbursement or something wasn’t handled properly, I highly recommend

reopening the case to have it reviewed again. My general practice is to re-open a case up to

two times, and if that still doesn’t solve my issue then I will call in.

Tip #2 – Related to tip #1, call in when necessary. If you are not getting the response you believe

you should on a case then call in and talk to an Amazon rep. I recommend at a minimum

requesting to speak with an “FBA Specialist” and preferably an FBA Specialist based in the US. I

have found that the Amazon phone reps are very helpful and most of the time can solve your

issue. Also, if you are not getting the answers you believe you should be, don’t be afraid to ask

to be transferred to someone else. Unfortunately, different reps have different interpretations

of the Amazon policies and sometimes you have to be transferred around a couple of times to

get to someone who can really help you. One other thing I like to do when calling in, is to have

the same rep help me with multiple cases. If you have similar issues on multiple cases then

going through them with one support rep can be very effective. I have gone through as many as

about 15 cases on a single phone call.

Tip #3 – Track all the order IDs or case IDs for all of the orders/items you believe you should be

receiving reimbursement for. When going through a large number of items at once that you

may need to be reimbursed for, it’s not very hard to have a few slip through the cracks.

Tip #4 – Follow up to make sure you are reimbursed! Assuming you are following tip #3, then

this part is easy. All you have to do is paste the order ID into the payments report and verify

that you have been reimbursed. Believe it or not, sometimes when a rep says you will be

reimbursed, it doesn’t actually happen. So make sure you double check that when you are

owed a reimbursement it actually processes.

Tip #5 – Make sure you are reimbursed the correct amount! Especially when going through

items that have been refunded but not actually returned. In these instances it is very common

to be issued a reimbursement for less than the amount that was taken from your account when

the refund was issued to the buyer. I always reopen these cases to request the difference, and

will call in if necessary to follow up on batches of these types of items.


Tip #6 – Go through this process on a regular basis. I know I mentioned this in the introduction,

but every reimbursement you get directly impacts the bottom line. I recommend going through

all of these processes monthly.

Tip #7 – As you are going through these processes ask yourself, “Is there any other reason I

should be reimbursed for this transaction?” It is especially important when you are going

through the “Reconciling Customer Refunds & Returns” section, as you will be going through

literally all of the returns in your account. One easy thing to check for is if there were any

grocery items that were refunded, but not reimbursed. In theory you will be reimbursed

anytime the customer is refunded for a grocery item you sell. Unless you list your grocery items

with a separate SKU, it’s difficult to get a report showing just grocery items, but if you are

checking while going through other steps of the process your bases will be covered. If you are

ever in doubt as to whether or not you should be reimbursed, I recommend opening a case.


Recommended Resources

Proven Amazon Course - This is a complete course for learning how to sell on amazon. It

covers the absolute basics of getting started as well as many advanced techniques. There is a

ton of information included in this course, and I have yet to make it through all of it, but the

information that I have been through has been very beneficial. You can find out more

information and testimonials on the sales HERE.

http://www.onlinesellingexperiment.com/provenamazoncourse

Documents

Complete Guide to FBA Reimbursements - Amazon S3...COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 8 2. After clicking on the “Fulfillment” button, the screen below will open. lick on the