When disputing Amazon shortages, timeliness is an essential factor that can increase or decrease the chances of your initial dispute's success. In order to give you the best chances of recovering dollars lost to Amazon shortages, our team created the following deduction classifications:
Matching: These are shortages on invoices where Amazon is still looking for matching inventory and receiving ASINs shipped for that invoice. Amazon is no longer allowing the disputing of shortages during the matching period, which spans the first 35 days after an invoice's due date.
Optimal: These are shortages that we deem prime for disputing. We recommend disputing all shortages when tagged as such. The optimal period has now shrunk to the first 5 days after a shortage becomes disputable (days 35 to 40 after the invoice due date).
Mature (40+ days): These are shortages that we believe are "too old." Initial disputes on shortages tagged as such are more than likely going to be denied by Amazon. However, we do recommend disputing these as well, because:
There is a slight chance that some could be successful.
More importantly, you must go through the initial dispute phase before Amazon will allow you to re-dispute any shortages. The re-dispute phase generally leads to more success and greater recoveries on shortage claims.
What does this look like on the platform?
On the deductions list view page, you will find that each shortage listed on the page comes with a tag. In addition to these tags, you can also use the new 'Dispute Timeliness' filter to view any combination of tagged shortage claims.
You can also view each deduction's timeliness category on the deduction details page.
Unlike the list view page's tags, the dispute timeliness card on each shortage's deduction details page will provide additional details regarding the anticipated date when each shortage will advance to each of the last three categories (i.e., Matching, Optimal, Mature).
Do Price Claims behave the same way?
While we also recommend disputing invalid price claims as soon as possible, the timeliness factor does not seem to affect price claims as much. As long as a price discrepancy is identifiable and disputable with Amazon, the success of a dispute will likely depend more on the accuracy of Amazon's records of the product's unit price.