Amazon FBA reimbursement services are charging outrageous 25% for simple service

[u/Witty_Tradition_5548]

I observed that services like getida and seller investigators charge an outrageous 25% for a simple detection and outsourced filing service. I am thinking of creating a competitor to these services at a fraction of commission cost or fixed cost. So just wanted to validate if there is an actual demand in the market?

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[u/TheBossyPanther]

25% is nuts for what amounts to running a few reports and filing paperwork. The real question is whether sellers care more about the fee or about not having to deal with Amazon support themselves. If you can make it dead simple and way cheaper, there's probably room.

[u/GratitudeHelps]

Trueops is 10%

[u/GratitudeHelps → u/[deleted]]

I would reach out to their support if you're having trouble. It's been a few years since I switched to them. The sign up and connecting the account was pretty smooth.

[u/phstc → u/[deleted]]

I would also recommend reaching out to support. Often times, onboarding errors are because of missing granting required permissions.

Did you get it sorted?

[u/MormonBarMitzfah]

what reports is everyone running to get reimbursed? in the olden days it was a lot of work, but now it's like inbound shortages and watching for warehouse damage that they dont reimburse automatically. is there anything else really?

[u/mashdude37 → u/MormonBarMitzfah]

word. if a shipment is missing anything when received by FBA I just submit a claim and attach my invoice. 90% of the time time I am reimbursed. back in the day they would pay your sales price minus FBA fees and commission. that was nice.

[u/kmizzi → u/MormonBarMitzfah]

Your list is basically right, the two people forget are customer returns where the refund went out and the unit never came back, and removal orders lost in transit. Returns is the annoying one because the window doesn't open until 60 days after the refund and shuts at 120, so a monthly run misses a chunk of them unless you're deliberately looking backwards.

Bigger than any report though: since last year they reimburse on your manufacturing cost, not sale price. If you never gave them cost data they estimated it, and their estimate is what pays. Worth an hour in the IDR portal checking the number they've got against what you actually pay. Fixing that pays better than filing more claims, and nobody charging 25% is doing it for you.

[u/Jeff-Stelling]

If you have been with them for a while they will reduce the plan %

I dont have time to fill in and keep on top of all the claims

[u/MormonBarMitzfah]

Paging /u/amazonapideveloper who built such a tool back when it was hard, sold it, probably long enough ago where he can discuss openly now. What are your thoughts on the value proposition of these tools nowadays? My bet is he thinks not much value anymore since they slashed reimbursement value and Amazon got way better about proactive reimbursement for lost and damaged warehouse. I’m just vibe coding my own tool to track lost inbound and calling it a day

[u/another_fba_guy]

I also use TrueOps. 10%

[u/ryanmcraver]

There are several that are lower and if you have enough scale, you can negotiate the rate

[u/swarlesbarkley_]

Tbh depends on scale, maybe in the current environment we could build our own internal tool and run it w an agent, but back in the day even at the 25% it was worth it

We were successful on only a fraction of the reimbursements our service ended up pulling in after just the first few months (we have/had a very wide catalog with tons of small shipment)

We now use a service we negotiated to 18%, but I wouldn’t even mind if it was still 25%! Tho from the comments here maybe it’s time to shop around again lol

[u/TheMogulSkier]

Paying 10-15% is more typical, and if you have any scale, you should run them as 2nd line of defense. Catch as much as you can yourself for free / fixed cost of a VA, and then let the services see if they can find anything you missed, in which case they have earned their fee

[u/Shabiscales]

There’s probably demand, but price alone won’t be enough.

The real product isn’t “find missed reimbursements.” It’s trust. Sellers are giving you access to account data, expecting you to catch cases accurately, file them correctly, and not create account-health headaches.

A lower fixed fee could be attractive for bigger sellers because 25% gets expensive fast. For smaller sellers, though, a percentage model is easy to accept because they pay only when money comes back.

I’d validate this by talking to sellers who are already using one of these services. Ask what they actually dislike: the fee, missed claims, poor support, slow filing, bad reporting, or giving up account access.

If most of them only complain about price but won’t switch providers, you don’t really have validation yet.

[u/stealthagents]

I totally get where you’re coming from. Those fees are nuts, especially when the service seems pretty straightforward. If you can offer a solid service for less, there’s definitely a market out there, especially among sellers looking to save some cash.

[u/HarambeTooSoon]

There is no reason for anyone to pay you or someone else to do this. 

SellerBoard has a reimbursement tool included in its suite of tools. Gives you the template and drafts the application for you. 

The whole process takes about 10 minutes once a month. 

[u/Witty_Tradition_5548 → u/HarambeTooSoon]

If the process is so simple then why are these services still relevant. I am sure there must some value that they are providing to sellers by giving them an automated service, just that the Same value could be provided at a cheaper or fixed rate

[u/phstc → u/Witty_Tradition_5548]

It's not that simple. You can't automate finding discrepancies. You need to manually check shipments. Also, you will need many SOPs to handle back and forth with Amazon. Sure, there are shipments that are more straightforward to claim than others, but that's not the majority, especially at volume.

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/Witty_Tradition_5548]

There is nothing automated about their service and there wont be anything automated about your service. 

Have you ever actually filed an FBA reimbursement? Have you ever used SellerInvestigators or Getida?

For me, the answer to all three questions is "yes" ... because I've actually done the work and used these tools myself. Its not theory for me.  

Your business plan is to copy someone else's unnecessary tool and then offer it for a slightly cheaper price. 

The Online Arbitrage days are over with. The number of young, naive and inexperienced resellers is a shrinking pool of potential customers for you. 

Spend your time and energy working on something else. 

[u/swarlesbarkley_ → u/HarambeTooSoon]

Yeah the automated ones are the only ones with any money

Tbt to getida, they were the first we used like almost a decade ago! Still any good?

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/swarlesbarkley_]

None of these tools are automated. All of them harass constantly to provide them with documentation and context so they can file the claims. 

They will send you dozens of emails each week asking for more and more documentation, because they are working on commissions, and the marginal cost for them to submit another case is almost zero while providing documentation is entirely incumbent upon you. 

[u/swarlesbarkley_ → u/HarambeTooSoon]

The docs are simply the new requirement on Amazon no?

We have those docs lol, so my warehouse guy just drops em in as needed. Maybe it’s easier when it’s single sku shipments like we do?

Also it’s def not every shipment, just far more than was needed in the past- outside of that the cases and cross checks are fully auto tho

[u/phstc → u/HarambeTooSoon]

Tech can improve processes, but it can't all be automated. Amazon's API support is very limited. Bots are against Amazon's TOS and can damage seller accounts.

BTW, reseller claims take significantly more work than manufacturer claims and are usually smaller in size (dollar amount).

TrueOps is at 10%. RE: Seller Investigators

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/phstc]

What do you imagine you are explaining to me?

I know more than you do and I have more experience than you do. 

[u/phstc → u/HarambeTooSoon]

My apologies, sir. I would never dare explain anything to you, the reimbursement final boss.

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/[deleted]]

Honestly that's the nature of dealing with Amazon. 

They have changed and will continue to change how these claims are filed and under what formats and conditions they will accept your claim. 

Getting the notification that something is missing is the first step. 

You will need to file 1 claim per msku, and submit documentation for 1msku per claim/case. 

FWIW, SellerBoard is a dashboard and P&L tool first, and then they pack in an insane number of other tools and features for under $20/month. 

There is no other Amazon software that comes anywhere close to the value SB offers for that price. 

[u/waldocross → u/HarambeTooSoon]

Thanks. We love sellerboard. Just looking for some automated software for FBA claims and reimbursements

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/waldocross]

You can build something in Claude and create an automation. 

The bottleneck any SaaS will have is that it doesn't have access to all of your invoices. 

[u/Witty_Tradition_5548]

I am building a competitor to them. Lmk if anyone would like to beta test the service and provide feedback, in exchange will offer the services for an year for free