Amazon loses and damages inventory. It always has. What changed is the clock. Since January 2025 most reimbursement claims must be filed within roughly 60 days of the discrepancy, and since March 2025 reimbursements are based on the manufacturing cost of the affected inventory rather than its selling price. Both changes reward one thing: reading the reports every week and filing on time.
What the 60-day window means
The old lookback was long enough that a quarterly audit caught most of what Amazon owed. It is not anymore. A discrepancy that surfaces on a Monday and is not filed within about two months is gone for good. Amazon's automatic reimbursements cover part of it; the rest depends on someone noticing, documenting and filing.
Documentation got heavier too: invoices, proof of purchase and shipment records are asked for more often. A claim without its paperwork is a claim you will file twice.
Manufacturing cost is the new basis
Reimbursements now rest on the manufacturing cost of the unit. If you have not supplied accurate cost data per product, Amazon estimates it, and estimates rarely favour the seller. Keeping costs current in the account is now part of operations, not a task for the accountant at year end.
It also changes what is worth chasing. A reimbursement at cost is still money; it is just less of it, which makes catching every eligible case matter more.
The weekly reconciliation
The routine is mechanical: inventory adjustments against reimbursements, inbound shipments received short, units damaged in the warehouse, returns refunded but never returned, returns returned but never restocked. Each is a report, each has a window, and each is easy to skip when the week is busy.
The accounts that recover the most are not the ones with the best arguments. They are the ones that never miss the deadline.
Where AI helps, and where it does not
Matching adjustments to reimbursements across thousands of units and flagging what is still open before its window closes is exactly the kind of reading software does without getting tired. In the accounts we run, every open case is surfaced with its deadline, the claim is drafted with the documentation attached, and an operator files it and follows up. The follow-up is human because Amazon's answer sometimes needs a second letter.
None of this is exciting. It is money that was already yours, collected before the clock ran out.