Sharing this because it may save someone thousands of dollars.
A seller recently created an FBA shipping plan and later decided not to send the inventory. Nothing was tendered to a carrier. Nothing shipped. Nothing was received. But because the shipments were left open and eventually auto-closed, Amazon later assessed inbound defect fees totaling thousands of dollars.
The seller disputed the charges and explained the obvious issue: there was no actual shipment. The units were never sent in. Seller Support first told the seller to dispute each shipment through the Problems tab. They did that for all five shipments. Each dispute was denied with the same basic response: the shipment auto-closed after 45 days.
The seller replied again, explaining that none of the shipments were ever tendered, shipped, or received. The next response said that team only educates sellers on FBA policy and that the seller needed to contact Seller Support again.
The seller then opened another case asking Amazon to review the entire shipping plan instead of treating each shipment separately.
Amazon told the seller to go back and submit individual disputes - - which had already been done.
Bottom Line: if you create an FBA shipping plan and decide not to use it, cancel every shipment. Do not assume “not shipping it” is enough.
Has anyone else been hit with inbound defect fees on shipments that were never tendered to a carrier or received by Amazon?]