Methodology · Verified against Amazon Seller Central UK and US, 27 August 2026
Two caveats first, because both are things you should know when comparing
agencies — including when comparing us.
There is no industry standard for a point-based Amazon audit. Ours is a
25,000-point inspection, and that number describes our methodology rather than any recognised
benchmark. Other agencies publish 9-point, 12-point or six-category frameworks. A bigger number is not
evidence of a better audit, from us or anyone.
And no independent benchmark exists for how much an audit recovers. The commonly
quoted 1–3% of annual revenue is described by its own sources as an estimate from their audit
findings, not a measured statistic. Every figure in this space is produced by someone selling the
service. Anyone quoting you a percentage of revenue before looking at your account is guessing.
The six areas
| Area | What gets inspected |
|---|---|
| 1. Account health & compliance | AHR trend, Order Defect Rate, Late Shipment Rate, Valid Tracking Rate, open policy violations, product compliance documentation |
| 2. Listing & product quality | Titles against current policy, bullets, descriptions, image compliance, A+ Content, retail readiness |
| 3. Keyword & organic | Indexing verification, rank tracking against a baseline, backend search terms, competitor keyword gaps |
| 4. Advertising | Campaign architecture, n-gram waste analysis, negative keyword hygiene, break-even against actual ACoS |
| 5. Pricing & brand protection | Featured Offer ownership, MAP enforcement, unauthorised sellers, competitive position |
| 6. Inventory & fees | FBA fee accuracy against measured dimensions, outstanding reimbursement claims, inbound reconciliation, inventory age |
Account Health: what the number actually means
Amazon’s own answers, since most explanations of AHR are community guesswork:
- The scale is 0 to 1,000.
- “Any AHR above 200 is considered healthy.”
- “Your AHR will only improve if you successfully address the policy violations on your Account
Health page.” Deleting a listing that carries a violation does not improve the
score — a common and expensive misunderstanding. - Violations carry four severity tiers: critical, high, medium, low.
- And the one that matters most: “Regardless of your AHR score, we may deactivate your account
immediately if we suspect fraudulent, deceptive, illegal or otherwise harmful activity.”
You’ll see specific band figures quoted — every seller starts at 200, violations subtract 2–8
points, “At Risk” at 100–199. Those are community-derived, not Amazon-published.
Amazon’s own answers decline to name thresholds beyond “above 200 is healthy.”
The findings that recur
Nobody populated Manage Your Sourcing Cost
The most common recoverable finding, and now the most expensive to have missed.
Since 31 March 2025, items lost or damaged before a customer orders them
are reimbursed at your manufacturing or sourcing cost rather than sale price. Amazon’s
definition: “your cost to source a product from a manufacturer, wholesaler, reseller, or produce
the item if you are the manufacturer” — explicitly excluding shipping, handling and customs
duties.
If you don’t supply your costs, Amazon applies its own estimate, derived from comparable products
across Amazon, other sellers and wholesale channels. An account that never populated that page
is being reimbursed on Amazon’s guess. It sits in the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement
portal, and it’s the fastest fix in any audit.
Claim windows have expired — and UK windows differ from US
Most published guidance quotes US figures to UK audiences. They aren’t the same.
| Claim type | US window | UK window |
|---|---|---|
| Lost or damaged in a fulfilment centre | 60 days from report | 60 days from report |
| FBA customer returns | 60–120 days | 45–105 days |
| Removals lost in transit | 15–75 days | 15–75 days |
| Other removal claims | 60 days from delivery back | 60 days from delivery back |
| FBA fee on wrong dimensions | 90 days from charge | 90 days from charge |
US windows took effect 23 October 2024; the UK’s on 9 January 2025. Before those changes
the window was 18 months — which is why this finding recurs, since plenty of guidance still
states 18 months as current policy. An audit process built on it silently lets claims expire.
Warehouse loss and customer returns are now largely reimbursed proactively — from 1 November 2024
in the US, 15 January 2025 in the UK. Removal claims and fee errors still require manual
filing. That’s where the effort belongs.
Fee overcharges from wrong dimensions
Automated intake measurement is imperfect. A loose polybag or a raised box flap registers larger
dimensions, the product moves into a costlier band, and every subsequent unit is billed higher with no
notification. The audit compares product-size-tier, the three side measurements and
item-weight in the Fee Preview report against measured dimensions.
Refunded but never returned
Consistently the largest recoverable category, and it requires a seller-initiated
claim — proactive reimbursement doesn’t cover it.
Search suppression nobody noticed
Three states get confused and need separating: search suppressed (hidden from
results, still purchasable via direct link), inactive (out of stock or
policy-violating), and Featured Offer suppressed (visible, no buy button).
The first is the dangerous one, because the listing looks fine when you open it. Title length
triggers it above 80 characters for apparel, shoes and luggage and 130 for
other categories — different again from the 200-character policy maximum and the
75-character limit introduced in July 2026. Three thresholds, regularly conflated.
What an audit cannot do
- Recover expired claims. Past 90 days on a fee error, past 105 or 120 on a return,
the money is gone. Audit timing matters more than audit depth. - Fix broken unit economics. If landed cost plus fees leaves a 12% margin, no
campaign restructuring rescues it. That’s a pricing or sourcing decision. - Promise a number. See the top of this page.
Three things you can check today, without us
- Open Manage Your Sourcing Cost. If it’s empty, every pre-order reimbursement is
calculated on Amazon’s estimate. - Filter Manage All Inventory to Search Suppressed. Thirty seconds, and it
periodically finds a product invisible for weeks. - Pull the Fee Preview report and compare the size tier against what you measured.
You have 90 days from each charge, and the clock started without telling you.
None of that requires an agency. It requires someone to look, on a schedule — which is the actual
product any audit is selling.
The 25,000-point forensic audit
All six areas, with the evidence attached to every finding and the claim windows checked before
anything else. If we find nothing worth recovering, we’ll tell you that.
Prepared by Ecom Enable, which sells the audit described here. Policy details
and claim windows verified against Amazon Seller Central US and UK on 27 August 2026. Where a figure
is an industry estimate rather than published data, this page says so.