Amazon for North America has retired the separate re-dispute process for shortage claims (Quantity Variance) and replaced it with a reopen process that works directly on your original dispute. This article explains what changed, how reopen works, and the timing you need to know to avoid missing your window.
What This Applies To
This change applies to Shortage Claims (Quantity Variance) only.
Other deduction types are not affected at this time.
This change applies to North American vendors only at this time.
We've observed the reopen button appearing in Vendor Central for EU vendors as well however, Amazon has not confirmed a formal reopen submission path for EU at this time.
⚠️ Important: You have 4 days to submit a secondary reopen
Amazon states a 5-day window from the initial reopen's resolution to submit a secondary reopen. Because of reporting lag and time zone differences, we recommend treating this as a 4-day window in practice. Missing this window means you cannot reopen the claim again. Enabling automation in your account settings is the most reliable way to make sure a secondary reopen is submitted in time.
What changed, and When
From roughly August 2025 to August 2026, shortage claim disputes followed a two-stage process:
Initial dispute (Quantity Variance in Vendor Central): You entered the invoice number, Amazon validated eligibility, you added context and attachments, and submitted. This generated a unique dispute ID, and all updates and resolutions were tracked against that ID.
Re-dispute (PQV Redisputes in Vendor Central): If the initial dispute was denied or partially approved, you could submit a separate re-dispute using the initial dispute ID. This had its own eligibility validation, allowed attachments, and generated its own unique dispute ID. Re-disputes also went through human review by Amazon's FinOps team.
In August 2026, Amazon eliminated the separate re-dispute path.
In its place, Amazon enabled the ability to reopen the initial shortage claim dispute directly.
If you had a re-dispute already submitted before this change, it is expected to resolve under the old rules. In other words, you don't need to do anything differently with it.
How Reopen Works Now
Where to find it:
Reopen lives on the same Vendor Central screen as your original dispute. There is now a button on the right side of the dispute table. If your claim is eligible, the button is clickable. If it isn't, you can hover over it to see Amazon's reason why.
What you can submit:
Unlike the original dispute or the old re-dispute process, reopen does not allow attachments. You can only provide a written justification explaining why you're requesting the reopen.
Ways to submit a reopen:
Manually through the SPS Revenue Recovery app
Automatically, if you've enabled automation in your account settings — the app will submit the reopen on your behalf programmatically
Reminder: Eligibility isn't guaranteed. Amazon may not allow a reopen for reasons including (but not limited to) the claim already being re-disputed, already paid, or failing Amazon's own eligibility criteria for some other reason.
Timing
Initial reopen: Same expiration as your original dispute — approximately 2 years from the original invoice due date for North America.
Secondary reopen: If your initial reopen resolves denied or partially approved, you can reopen one more time. Amazon states you have 5 days from the initial reopen's resolution to do this. We recommend treating this as a 4-day window due to reporting lag and time zone differences between when Amazon resolves the claim and when that resolution is reflected to you.
If you miss the secondary reopen window, the claim cannot be reopened again.
What changes on your dispute record when you reopen
Reopening does not create a new dispute ID — it updates your original dispute record in place.
When you submit a reopen:
The dispute status reverts to pending (shown as in Amazon Action in app).
The resolution date is removed.
When the reopen resolves:
Denied: The dispute status reflects the resolution, and the resolution date updates to the most recent resolution date (if Amazon re-provides one).
Approved: The approved amount, dispute status, and resolution date all update to reflect the new outcome.
Partially approved: This usually behaves the same as approved. However, in roughly 10% of cases, the approved amount may show as $0 even when correspondence and remittance payments confirm the claim was actually approved and paid. If your records show a payment that doesn't match what's displayed, check correspondence and remittance directly rather than relying on the displayed amount alone.
Important distinction:
The original disputed (claimed) amount never changes. Only the resolution amount, or what Amazon approves or denies, is affected by a reopen.
Because there's no new dispute ID, correspondence is your only way to trace the history of a reopen (what the claim looked like before vs. after). Even then, portions of that correspondence can also be overwritten, so a full history isn't always reconstructable.
A note on using Vendor Central to check outcomes:
Vendor Central is useful for validating our work, but the resolution header alone is not a reliable way to confirm a claim's true outcome. For example, the partial approval case above, where the displayed amount can show $0 even when the claim was actually approved and paid. Use correspondence, remittance, or the SPS Revenue Recovery app to confirm outcomes rather than relying on the resolution header alone.
Review process
The initial and secondary reopening of the dispute does not have a guaranteed human reviewer, it's largely automated.
This is based on an observable change in response formatting rather than something Amazon has directly confirmed. This means this is our best read of the available evidence, not a confirmed fact from Amazon.
Submission limits
The SPS Revenue Recovery app enforces a cap of 100 reopen submissions per day, per supplier (previously 50 re-disputes per week). This is set to avoid overloading Amazon with disputes and creating friction with the retailer relationship.
Old process vs. new process at a glance
| Old: PQV Re-dispute | New: Reopen |
Dispute ID | New, unique ID generated | Same ID as original dispute (no new ID) |
Attachments | Allowed | Not supported in reopen workflow, text justification only |
Human review | Required (Amazon FinOps team) | Not guaranteed on initial reopen or secondary reopen |
Expiration window | 2 years (NA) | Initial reopen: 2 years (NA, same as original); Secondary reopen: ~4 days effective |
Number of attempts | One re-dispute per initial dispute ID | Initial reopen + one secondary reopen |
Submission limit | 50 per week, per supplier | 100 per day, per supplier |
History trail | Separate dispute ID preserved full history | Overwrites original record; correspondence is the only (and sometimes incomplete) trail |
Disputed amount | Identified per unique dispute | Never changes on reopen — only resolution amount updates |