Amazon Disposal Orders & Reimbursements (UK): What to Track and When to Claim

Amazon FBA offers two types of removal order. A return removal ships your inventory back to you. A disposal order instructs Amazon to destroy the stock at their fulfilment centre. Both are created through the same Seller Central interface, but the downstream workflows are completely different.

With a return removal, you get physical boxes back. You can count items, inspect condition, photograph damage, and compare what arrived against what Amazon said they shipped. The entire reconciliation process centres on that goods-in check. If something is missing or damaged, you have tangible evidence.

Disposal orders give you none of that. The stock never leaves Amazon’s warehouse in your direction. There is no carrier, no tracking number, no delivery, and no proof of delivery. Amazon processes the destruction internally, updates their records, and that is the end of it. Your only evidence is the data in Seller Central reports.

This is precisely why disposal claims are harder to investigate and easier to overlook. Most sellers request a disposal, see the order marked as complete, and move on. They never check whether the quantities match, whether the grading was correct, or whether Amazon even had the right to destroy that stock in the first place.

The fundamental challenge with disposal orders is that you will never receive the units back. With return removals, you can open the box and immediately see whether something is wrong. With disposals, problems are invisible unless you actively look for them in the data.

The most costly issue is sellable stock being destroyed. Amazon assigns a disposition grading to every item in a removal order. Items graded as “Sellable” are perfectly healthy stock that could be sold again. If those items end up in a DESTROY order, Amazon has destroyed inventory that still had commercial value. This happens more often than you would expect, particularly during bulk removals or when long-term storage fee policies trigger automatic disposals.

Quantity mismatches are the second issue. Amazon says they disposed of 50 units, but only 45 were in the fulfilment centre according to the Inventory Ledger. The remaining 5 units are unaccounted for. They were not disposed of, not returned to you, and not in FBA inventory. They have simply vanished from the system.

The third issue is unauthorised disposals. Amazon can trigger automatic removals when stock hits long-term storage thresholds or when certain compliance policies are flagged. If you did not explicitly create the removal order, you should verify whether the destruction was justified. Sellable stock destroyed through an automated policy trigger is still a valid claim.

The critical field to check is the disposition column in the Removal Order Detail report. This tells you whether Amazon classified each item as Sellable or Unsellable at the time of disposal. If the disposition says Sellable on a DESTROY order, you have the foundation for a reimbursement claim. Amazon destroyed stock that, by their own grading, was fit for sale.

For quantity disputes, the Inventory Ledger is your best tool. It shows every unit entering and leaving FBA inventory, including disposal events. If the ledger shows fewer units removed via disposal than the Removal Order Detail claims were destroyed, you have a discrepancy. Either units were lost before disposal, or the disposal count itself is wrong.

Purchase invoices are not always required upfront, but they strengthen your position. They establish the commercial value of what was destroyed and make it harder for Amazon to undervalue a reimbursement. Keep invoices for any stock you send into FBA, particularly higher-value items where disposal losses are significant.

If your claim is denied after two attempts with the same agent, open a new case referencing the original case ID. A different agent reviewing the same evidence with fresh eyes often reaches a different conclusion. Persistence is not aggressive. It is methodical.

For detailed escalation strategies including supervisor requests, SAFE-T claims, and the Managing Director email route, see the filing claims guide and the deadline rules page.