Overview

Amazon gives FBA sellers several ways to pull inventory out of fulfillment centers, whether that means shipping products back to a personal address, having Amazon dispose of them, or recovering some of their value through liquidation services. Understanding these removal options is essential for keeping storage costs under control and maintaining a healthy, profitable FBA operation.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Multiple removal methods available — Sellers can create individual removal orders on demand, set up automated removal rules for slow-moving or unsellable stock, or use spreadsheet uploads to process bulk removals across many ASINs at once.
• Return or dispose — your choice — When creating a removal order, you can have inventory shipped back to you (or a designated recipient) or request that Amazon recycle or dispose of it at the fulfillment center.
• Per-item fees apply — Every removal order carries a per-unit fee that varies by item size and weight tier. These costs should be factored into your profitability calculations before deciding whether to remove or keep aging stock.
• Value-recovery services exist — Rather than simply disposing of excess or customer-returned inventory, sellers can opt into Amazon's liquidation and value-recovery programs to recoup a portion of the product's value.
• Methods are not mutually exclusive — Sellers can combine manual one-off removals, automated rules, and bulk uploads simultaneously to manage different segments of their catalog.

How Removal Orders Work

To create a removal order, sellers navigate to the removal tool inside Seller Central and enter the FNSKU of the unit they want to remove. From there, they select whether the inventory should be returned to a specified address or disposed of at the fulfillment center. Amazon then processes the order and either ships the products or handles disposal according to the seller's instructions. If an issue arises with an existing removal order, sellers can look up the order using its removal order ID or batch ID to troubleshoot and resolve problems. Processing times can vary depending on fulfillment center workload and the volume of units being removed.