Which third party reimbursement service for damage and lost items in Amazon warehouse do you guys use?

Hi,

In the past many years, I had used Refund Genie of Helium10. The RG was moved to the higher tier membership and I also downgraded to the basic Helium10 membership (because I don’t really use the extra features). So I lost the access to RG. I know that there are other third party companies that offer this type of service. I’m curious who do you guys use and would you recommend them? Please advise. Thanks.

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Let’s wait for others’ firsthand experiences. However, I’ve heard from more than one seller that Sellerise includes a great tool for getting reimbursements. Apparently, it’s so effective that there’s usually nothing left to claim for the service providers (those that charge a percentage of the recovered amount).
I have never tried Sellerise myself, as we use other software for analytics, but I’m very curious to test it out just for this feature alone. To be clear: I am not affiliated with any of these tools.

To close this, you can do a lot of what these services offer by yourself.
Here’s what I do for the account I manage:

Lost Warehouse:

  1. Download the Inventory Ledger Report (Detailed View > Download only the records for “Event Type: Adjustments”).
  2. Filter for Reason Codes M and 5.
  3. Filter Unreconciled Quantity greater than or equal to 1.
  4. Unfortunately, I can’t link directly to the Seller Central page with the tool for checking whether there is anything eligible. So you can search for “FBA inventory reimbursement policy: Fulfillment center operations claim” in Seller Central to find it.
  5. In the “Investigate an Item Lost in Warehouse” box, enter the FNSKU for which you’ve found unreconciled quantities and press “Continue.” It will automatically open a case for SS to investigate.
    (alternatively, I prefer to open a case directly and paste a list of Reference IDs for unreconciled quantities. Just don’t paste too many—10 to 25 should be fine).

Warehouse Damaged:

  1. Download the Inventory Ledger Report (Detailed View > Download only the records for "Event Type: Adjustments).
  2. Filter for Reason Codes D and G.
  3. Here, there won’t be any values in the Reconciled or Unreconciled Quantity columns, so nothing to filter.
  4. Filter the “Disposition” column to Warehouse Damaged, Carrier Damaged, and Sellable (yes, from time to time, Amazon disposed of units that were marked as sellable).
  5. Copy and paste batches of 25 Reference IDs into the “Check warehouse damaged reimbursement status” box. This box is found in the same page for the “Lost Warehouse” mentioned previously.

Amazon will indicate whether the IDs are eligible, ineligible, already reimbursed, or require further investigation. (while it gives the option to open a case directly from this results page, it’s never worked for me, so I open cases from scratch instead. Be concise, polite, professional, and confident—save your message for future use, and simply replace the Reference IDs as needed.)

Returns:

I can’t link it here either, but search for the page called “FBA inventory reimbursement policy: Customer return claims.” Amazon lays out the procedure clearly, and if you follow their suggestions, you should be able to find some eligible claims. There’s a field where you can paste the Order ID to check for eligibility.

Inbound:

We’re generally able to get reimbursed for inbound discrepancies by providing the required documentation to Amazon.


Careful because starting from 10/23/2024, the window to request reimbursements for lost or damaged units will be criminally reduced from 18 months to just 60 days.
Just block a recurring task on your calendar to do these checks.

Focus on checking the oldest Reference IDs only.
For example, I don’t bother filing claims for units misplaced just last week, since they’re likely to be found, resulting in a waste of time both now, and later for accounting. Same for the damaged ones as Amazon often reimburses you for them.
With the coming 60-day window, I’d do these checks in the last week of each month, filing claims only for the previous month, and not for the current one.

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I should add that when checking eligibility for Customer Returns, we often get a lot of “ineligible” responses from the automatic tool in Seller Central, even though it’s been well over 60 days since the customer was refunded.
(we sell groceries, so Amazon reimburses a lot of items without asking the customer to return them).

However, I’ve noticed that even when the system says an order isn’t eligible, if we open a case with support anyway, sometimes they’ll still approve the reimbursement.

That said, like I mentioned before, I wouldn’t recommend overdoing this, since in many cases support just confirms what the system already said, and there’s always the risk that Amazon might limit our ability to file claims in the future if too many are declined. Not sure about this.

I usually reserve this for higher-value orders where multiple units are involved.

For instance, I have just filed one claim today for 6 orders, 4 of which got reimbursed by seller support, even if they appeared ineligible in the first place when checking them using the tool in sc. We got back $ 170 from those four orders.

So there is always money to be recovered here and there

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Wow :exploding_head: your adjective “criminally” was not overstated. From 18 months to 2 months. Thank you so much for this greatly important piece of info. Getting the reimbursement is usually not my (and many sellers’) top priority. Now I learn that when the rule changes to 2 months, I should find a service that runs automatically monthly like what you plan to do (filing claim the end of every month).

Thank you for the detailed steps to get the lost and damage items. Do you (or your VA) actually do these steps manually? This is something that can be automated. Instead of being greedy like some third party by charging percentage, you could charge a flat fee. You’ll get lots of people interested (people like me :grin: ).

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Thanks for another gold nugget. I’ll keep that in mind.

You must be very discipline to get back only $170 :+1:. I usually get back thousands of dollars in reimbursement because I do in manually (using Refund Genie) once in a blue moon :expressionless:

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You are welcome.
Yes, I do this manually. I have a system where, at the beginning of each month, I download the Detailed Ledger Report for the previous month and add those rows into a “Master” Google Sheet that builds up over time.

If you’re interested in the process:
For me, it is necessary to keep all rows from previous months because I do various operations on this rows to track what we need for our business. For instance, as part of this, I color-code certain cells for future reference, so it’s important that I maintain the historical data of what I’ve already worked on.

However, since the Reconciled and Unreconciled quantities change constantly (as Amazon reconciles older events every day), I need to update these two columns with the latest data, even for previous months.

To do this, in addition to adding the previous month’s data to this “Master Sheet,” I also download the Detailed Ledger Report for all previous months, as far back as possible. I import this csv into a separate sheet within the same google sheet file.
In the master sheet, I use VLOOKUPs to update the Reconciled/Unreconciled columns by matching the Reference IDs with the data in the other sheet. Once everything is updated, I copy and paste the values (to remove the formulas) so I can work with the updated master sheet. Afterward, I delete the extra sheet.
This process is repeated each month.

After that, it’s pretty straightforward. You just filter by the Reason Codes as I mentioned before and color-code the cells for each step (ie. reference IDs that got reimbursed, denied, or are still pending Amazon’s action). So you know what to focus on next month and what’s already been checked.

Thank you! I’ll take it as a compliment :wink: :v:
The best thing, as you pointed out, would be to automate more of this and again, in my opinion the tool I mentioned earlier does just that, for a flat fee, which I believe quite convenient.

A word of caution about using service providers (which I’d consider only as a last resort): The fees they charge to recover reimbursements aren’t refunded to you in cases of Reimbursement Reversals , which I am sure you already know is when Amazon claws back money from reimbursements they initially granted but later reversed.
It happens, and for us, it’s about 10% of the initial reimbursements.
There is one provider that credits these reversals back to you, though I’m not sure if I can mention them here, plus I never used any of them.
(since there aren’t many providers in the market, it should be easy to check what each of them offer)

For reference, our Reimbursement Reversals for 2023 reimbursements, have been adding up to $870, out of 10k reimbursed initially.
870 and counting…

If you’re using a service that charges 25% of what they recover (let’s say they recovered that $10,000 for you), they would have charged $2,500, leaving you with $7,500. After the reversals, though, you’d be left with $6,630 ($7,500 minus $870), but their 2500 is already gone and not coming back and more clawbacks could still happen over time.

For reference, our Reimbursement Reversals from 2023 have totaled $870 so far, out of the 10k we initially got back,
$870 and counting.

If you’re using a service that charges 25% of what they recover (let’s say they helped you recover that $10,000), they would’ve charged $2,500, leaving you with $7,500. After the reversals, you’d be down to $6,630 ($7,500 minus $870), but their $2,500 fee is long gone and not coming back.
Plus, more clawbacks could still happen over time.

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Oh yes. Actually, those 170 bucks are out of 2.8k worth of returns — the rest got marked ineligible. it’s a numbers game at the end of the day

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Oh, I don’t know this. Yes I know that Amazon do claw back if they later found the missing items. I don’t know that the fee paid to third party wouldn’t be clawed back as well. Thanks for pointing this out.

@papy Can he mention it here? He’s obviously is not a tool promoter. I think it’s beneficial for sellers to share opinions about tools to other sellers. :slight_smile:

My friend, you track everything :+1: Frankly I never track how much Amazon actually claw back. Is there a way to do it?

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You are welcome.
Yes, you can download the Reimbursements report from Fulfillment Reports.

I’d recommend using pivot tables or query formulas to make it easier to read. That way, you can quickly see how many units were reimbursed, whether in cash or inventory, and how many/much were reversed.
And it makes it simple to group everything by ASIN, date range, and reimbursement reasons.

With a little initial effort, you can build a sheet that goes granular and analyzes things like percentages and so on…
Then, you’ll just need to replace the source data whenever you want to check the latest numbers.

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Completely agree! Yes @Spaghetti can mention the provider here, but you might also consider asking in :lock: Reviews & Recommendations which is private to only SellersAskSellers logged-in members (and where some members might feel more comfortable sharing information).

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I’m back! I waited a bit just in case you wanted to post your question in the private section.
The provider I was referring to starts with T R U E…
and ends with …O P S
(hint: 7 letters total)

Always read any provider’s terms carefully, but this one stands out atm. Regardless of which provider you choose, always make sure they offer delayed claims to avoid the risk of them filing claims for reimbursements Amazon would have automatically processed for you anyway. This provider does.

This also allows you to claim the low-hanging fruit yourself, either by using the Ledger Report as I outlined above, or with a software like Refund Genie — or the tool I mentioned in previous messages that outperforms it.

For maximum cost-efficiency, I recommend using a software in tandem with a service provider: firstly the software, and then use the provider to catch any scraps left.

Again, I’m not affiliated with any software/provider. Unfortunately :blush:

Thank you @papy

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Thank you. I just visited SAS and saw this today. The service that I’m testing (Eva) offers a refund for claw backs. So I’m trying them. Their initial setup is quite slow. I’ll have another meeting with them today. Hopefully we can get it done before the 22nd.

Thanks. I’ll check with them about this today.

I wish I could be as discipline as you are. My weakness is consistency. That’s why I’m trying to automate as much as possible. :slight_smile:

Do you happen to know whether the Reimbursement ID # in the light green rectangle belong to Amazon? I’m trying to figure out who initiated the non-Amazon reimbursement transactions. If the Reimbursement ID # is the ID of Amazon, I should be able to use it to get more info from Seller Central.

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Correct. That “ID-style” belongs to Amazon, so you can enter it into your Reimbursement Reports in Seller Central.

You can check your Case Log and look at the “Primary E-mail” for each Case ID # related to those reimbursements.
I guess the service provider is listed as a secondary user, so their email address should appear for any cases they’ve opened.

Let me know if this is what you’re trying to achieve.

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Found it. Thank you :slight_smile:

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