How to Manage Amazon Excess Inventory (2026 Guide)

How To Remove Amazon Unsellable or Excess Inventory

Now that we know what unsellable inventory and excess inventory are and what causes them, let's talk about how to deal with them. In both cases, it's important to take action to deal with these items in a timely manner to avoid incurring additional fees and to free up storage space for more sellable products. The first step is to identify which items are in fact unsellable and which ones are excess. You can do this by checking your "Excess and Unsold Inventory" report in Seller Central – this report will list all of the units that have been sitting in your fulfillment center for 180 days or more. So, what do you do with the unsellable or excess inventory? While there are some steps you can take to try and move the excess inventory, in many cases, you'll simply have to dispose of the unsellable inventory responsibly. Let's look at some of your Amazon removal service options.

Amazon FBA Removal Settings

One of the key things to understand about Amazon's FBA removal policies is that they're designed to protect the customer experience. This means that Amazon will remove any items that are deemed to be unsafe, expired, or otherwise not fit for sale. In some cases, Amazon will automatically remove unsellable items from your inventory, and in other cases, they'll give you the option to either return the items to you or dispose of them. The first step in setting up your FBA removal settings is choosing how you want your products to be removed. You can select all of the products in a certain category, or choose specific products that you want to remove. Once you've selected the products you want to remove, it's time to decide what you want to do with them.

1. FBA Repackaging and Refurbishment Services

Amazon FBA provides repackaging and refurbishment services for sellable items with damaged packaging. The major difference between repackaging and refurbishing is: Repackaging is automatic for eligible items, while refurbishment is an optional service.

Repackaging services

Amazon automatically evaluates any customer-returned units to determine whether it can be repackaged and sold as new. If they are eligible, FBA repackages your customer returns. The service applies both to retail and FBA return items.

Refurbishment services

Refurbishment is an optional service. Depending on the item, FBA can re-tape, re-glue, and re-staple boxes; remove excessive tape, non-product labels and stickers; and re-box branded and unbranded corrugated boxes. Shoes and apparel refurbishment can include steaming and removing stains and odors. You CANNOT disable repackaging in your settings, but you CAN change refurbishment settings anytime in seller central. As categories are added to repackaging services, your units will automatically be included.

2. Liquidation

Liquidation may prove to be an effective option for managing unsellable inventory. FBA Liquidations is designed to help you recover value from excess and customer-returned inventory and prevent disposal. It works for items that are still in good condition but simply aren't selling well enough on Amazon.

What is Liquidation

Instead of paying to remove or dispose of excess or customer-returned FBA inventory, you can choose to use Amazon's FBA Liquidations program to have the inventory sold to generate some cash through a liquidator.

How it works

By liquidating inventory, you recover a portion of your inventory cost (net recovery value) while avoiding monthly storage fees and aged-inventory surcharges, formerly known as long-term storage fees. Amazon determines the average selling price (ASP) of your inventory by evaluating several factors, including your sales history, the average FBA selling price on Amazon, and the sales history of the specific ASIN. Based on contracted rates, liquidators will purchase this inventory for a gross recovery value, which is about 5% to 10% of its ASP. Amazon will then deduct fees and pay you the net recovery value. You can submit inventory to be liquidated by creating a removal order or Amazon gives you the option to automate liquidation. Automated liquidations removals are available for both fulfillable and unfulfillable inventory.

Product Eligibility

Eligibility is subject to legal, safety, and regulatory guidelines. Products not eligible for liquidation include dangerous goods (hazmat) and recalled inventory. Unfulfillable items are only eligible for liquidation based on the reason for their status. Customer Damaged, Carrier Damaged, or Distributor Damaged are eligible for liquidation. Items with a reason of Expired, Defective, and Warehouse Damaged are not eligible for liquidation, they will automatically be up for disposal.

Liquidation Fees

Amazon will apply two separate liquidation fees to each item you liquidate: The liquidations processing fee is per item and based on item size and weight. The liquidations referral fee is 15% and calculated on the gross recovery value.