Lesson 7 of 10
Money you're owed
Returns, reimbursements, recovered fees and Amazon's own fee changes all move money back to you after the sale, and most sellers never go looking for it.
Every lesson so far has walked money one way: forward, from a sale to what it left behind. Money moves the other way too — back to the seller, after the fact, for reasons a trading row never shows on its own. Four kinds of it are worth knowing apart, because each is found on a different page, for a different reason, and most sellers never go looking for any of them.
Returns: money going out before some of it comes back
The Refunds step in lesson 4’s walk is already inside Contribution — every trading row above already carries its share of it. That step alone is only the refund itself. The Returns page carries the fuller cost per product and per reason: the fees Amazon keeps on net, any stock that comes back unsellable and has to be written off, and reimbursements Amazon pays for stock lost or damaged that never even reaches a buyer’s hands.
Reimbursements: not a refund, and not in this guide’s own numbers
A reimbursement is Amazon paying the seller back, for stock it lost or damaged in its own warehouse — the opposite direction from a refund, which pays the buyer. This course’s own snapshot does not carry a reimbursement figure for Marleigh & Rowe at all. That is not the same as the figure being zero: it means this guide’s own data does not reach that table, and the real number lives on the Returns page, on its own tile, for whichever window is selected there.
Recovery: findings, not yet paid, on a clock
Recovery goes a step further than reimbursements already received — it looks for stock lost or damaged, refunds nothing came back for, and fees charged above what the same product paid the same day, that Amazon has not yet paid back at all. Every finding carries a confidence — Certain, where this account’s own records close the arithmetic with nothing assumed, or Probable, where they don’t but Amazon’s own records could. The two are never added into one figure, because a seller told one combined number and given less than it implies stops trusting the page.
Every finding is also on a clock. Amazon closes the window to claim a loss a fixed number of days after it happened, and a finding that misses that window moves out of Certain and Probable altogether into a list of what expired — kept visible rather than deleted, so the cost of not having looked sooner is seen rather than hidden. A finding Recovery cannot price — most often because the product sold nothing in the months before the loss — is shown as not valued rather than as zero, the same discipline Contribution held to in lesson 4 for a row missing a cost: an unpriceable finding is still a real finding, not a free one.
Fee changes: when Amazon corrects itself
Amazon revises what it charges on its own schedule, and a fee charged above what the same product paid on the same day is one of the checks Recovery runs for every account — its own line in the Kind column alongside lost stock, damaged stock and unmatched refunds. It is not a seller error to catch; it is Amazon’s own rate disagreeing with itself, and it is worth exactly as much as any other Recovery finding, priced and clocked the same way.
Why this lesson has no table of its own
Every other lesson in this course showed a table because the figure in it came from Marleigh & Rowe’s own trading rows, which this snapshot carries in full. Reimbursements, recovery findings and fee changes do not live in a trading row at all — they live on their own pages, queried fresh each time, because a finding that is worth a claim today can expire before this guide’s own snapshot is ever rebuilt. Go look at the real pages for the real numbers; this lesson's job was only to tell the four ideas apart.