Not every product you send to Amazon will sell. Sometimes you need to get stock back, whether it is slow-moving inventory accumulating storage fees, unfulfillable returns, or products you no longer want to sell. Amazon's removal and disposal process handles this.
When to Consider Removal
Remove inventory when it has been sitting for 180+ days and is approaching long-term storage fees, when returned items are classified as unfulfillable but may still be sellable elsewhere, when a product is not performing and tying up capital, or when a listing has been suspended and the stock cannot be sold.
The decision is financial. Compare the cost of continued storage (monthly fees plus potential long-term storage surcharges) against the cost of removal and the potential recovery value of the product.
Creating a Removal Order
In Seller Central, go to Inventory > Manage FBA Inventory. Select the products you want to remove and choose "Create Removal Order" from the Actions menu. You can choose to have items shipped back to you or disposed of (destroyed by Amazon).
For removal (return to you), you provide a ship-to address and Amazon sends the items via a standard carrier. There is a per-unit removal fee — typically £0.25–£0.60 depending on the size tier. For disposal, the fee is slightly lower since Amazon does not need to ship anything — they simply discard the items.
Removal vs Disposal
Choose removal if the products have resale value — you can sell them on eBay, at a car boot sale, or through local channels. Returns that are in good condition can be re-prepped and sent back to FBA. Even products with damaged packaging might be sellable on other platforms where condition standards are less strict.
Choose disposal if the products have no resale value, are expired, or the cost of shipping them back exceeds their worth. Disposal is cheaper per unit than removal and saves you the hassle of dealing with unwanted stock.
Automatic Removal Settings
Amazon offers automatic removal settings that create removal orders on your behalf based on criteria you set. You can configure automatic removal for unfulfillable inventory (items marked as unsellable after returns), and you can set up automated disposal based on inventory age.
These automated settings prevent unfulfillable inventory from silently accumulating storage fees. Set them up once and they work in the background — one less thing to manually manage.
Liquidation Programme
Amazon also offers an FBA Liquidations programme where Amazon sells your excess inventory through liquidation channels. You receive a portion of the recovery value — typically 5–10% of the selling price. This is less than you would get selling the items yourself, but it requires zero effort and avoids removal and disposal fees.
Liquidation makes sense for products with some remaining value that you cannot be bothered to sell through other channels. It is not going to make you money, but it recovers something rather than nothing.
Tax Implications
Disposing of inventory has tax implications — you can typically write off disposed or liquidated stock as a business expense, which reduces your taxable income. Keep records of disposal orders for your accountant.
The Broader Lesson
Needing to remove or dispose of inventory is not a failure — it is a normal part of managing an FBA business. The important thing is to act decisively. Holding on to dead stock in the hope that it might sell someday is almost always more expensive than cutting your losses and moving on. Free up your capital and warehouse space for products that actually generate profit.