When Amazon suspends a seller account, the inventory doesn’t disappear. It sits in warehouses, racking up fees that the seller can’t stop and often can’t escape.
Here is a number that should make anyone paying attention uncomfortable: $4,000.
That is how much one Amazon seller lost to storage fees over nine months while their account sat suspended. Not lost to refunds. Not lost to bad inventory. Lost to fees charged on products they could not sell, could not retrieve, and in many cases, could not even get Amazon to dispose of.
The seller posted their situation to the Amazon Seller Central forums, laying out the damage: “My money, which was frozen at 21,000 USD, decreased to 17,000 USD due to storage fees. In addition, they do not give me my inventory worth around 40,000 USD.”
The math there is worth sitting with. $21,000 in frozen funds, bleeding out at roughly $500 per month. Another $40,000 in physical inventory is held hostage in Amazon’s warehouses. And no clear path forward.
I have spent months reading through seller forums, and variations of this story appear again and again. Different suspension reasons, different inventory values, but the same basic trap: sellers who cannot sell, cannot retrieve their products, and cannot stop the fees from piling up.
A Pattern That Goes Beyond Individual Complaints
The storage fee trap exists within a larger context that researchers and regulators have been documenting for years. Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has tracked Amazon’s fee extraction from third-party sellers since 2014. Her research shows that Amazon’s take from sellers has grown from 19% of their revenue in 2014 to roughly 45% today.
“Amazon doesn’t have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products, because it’s found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs,” Mitchell wrote in The American Prospect. Her research estimates Amazon extracted $185 billion in fees from third-party sellers in 2023 alone.
The Federal Trade Commission has taken notice. In September 2023, the FTC and 18 state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, accusing the company of “illegally maintaining monopoly power” and “charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that rely on Amazon to stay in business.” A federal judge allowed the case to proceed in October 2024, with trial set for October 2026.
The complaint includes internal Amazon documents showing that sellers feel they “have nowhere else to go and Amazon knows it.” That captured-market dynamic is directly relevant to the storage fee trap. A suspended seller cannot simply take their inventory to another retailer. The products are physically locked in Amazon’s facilities.
How the Fees Stack Up
Amazon’s storage fee structure is not, on its face, unreasonable. Warehouses cost money to operate. Charging sellers for space makes sense. But the way these fees interact with account suspensions creates something that looks less like a cost-recovery mechanism and more like a financial trap.
The current fee schedule runs $0.78 per cubic foot during off-peak months (January through September). Come October, when the holiday rush begins, and warehouse space becomes precious, that rate jumps to $2.40 per cubic foot. Three times higher, right when most sellers have stocked up for the busiest shopping season of the year.
But the real pain comes from aged inventory surcharges. According to fee breakdowns from Nova Data, inventory sitting for more than 271 days triggers an additional surcharge of $5.45 per cubic foot. Past 365 days, that climbs to $6.90 per cubic foot. These surcharges stack on top of regular monthly storage fees.
For an active seller, these fees create pressure to move inventory quickly. Sell it, discount it, remove it. Whatever it takes to avoid the long-term storage penalty.
But for a suspended seller? That inventory is not moving anywhere. The clock keeps ticking. The surcharges keep stacking. And there is often nothing the seller can do about it.
The Removal Button That Doesn’t Work
The obvious solution would be to remove the inventory. Amazon provides a “Create Removal Order” function that lets sellers ship products back to themselves or have Amazon dispose of them. In theory, this should give suspended sellers a way out.
In practice, suspended sellers frequently report that this option simply does not work for them.
One seller with a disabled account posted to the forums describing the problem: “I need to remove my current FBA inventory, but I am unable to create removal orders for some ASINs. I have attempted to create removal orders for these inventory units multiple times, but each order was automatically canceled.”
Automatically canceled. No explanation provided. No alternative offered. Just a door that looks like an exit but leads nowhere.
Another commenter on a related thread put it starkly: “All your inventory now belongs to Amazon. They won’t even send you a thank you.”
The sarcasm masks something genuinely troubling. These are sellers whose property sits in Amazon’s warehouses, property they paid for, property that in many cases represents their entire business investment. And they cannot get it back.
When Appeals Go Nowhere
Suspended sellers are not without options, at least on paper. Amazon provides an appeal process. Submit documentation, explain what happened, and demonstrate that you have fixed whatever problem led to the suspension. Get reinstated, get back to selling, problem solved.
The appeal process can stretch for months. And during that entire time, storage fees keep accruing.
One particularly striking case involves a seller whose account was suspended in December 2023 for items Amazon deemed “unauthentic.” The seller did everything Amazon asked for. They submitted appeals. They hired a lawyer to obtain supply chain documentation. They resubmitted and resubmitted.
“Since my account was suspended in December 2023, I’ve been charged FBA fees every month for inventory in ‘reserved’ status,” the seller wrote. “Despite making multiple attempts to reinstate my account and contacting Amazon support several times, I was repeatedly told to resubmit my appeal with additional documents.”
Then came the revelation that turned frustrating into absurd.
“Today, an Amazon account health support representative informed me that a final decision was made by Amazon back in December 2023 not to reactivate my account. This means all the resubmissions I’ve done since then were in vain.”
In December 2023, Amazon had already decided the account was permanently closed. But for nearly a year afterward, they kept accepting appeals. They kept telling the seller to submit more documentation. And they kept charging storage fees the entire time.
The seller’s question cuts to the heart of the matter: “Given that Amazon has known since December 2023 that my account cannot be reinstated, why am I still being charged these fees?” There was no good answer. Because there is no good answer.
This Is Not Just an American Problem
In October 2024, UK law firm Rosenblatt announced it was preparing legal action against Amazon on behalf of British sellers facing the same trap. According to The Grocer, hundreds of UK sellers have had funds frozen, with individual amounts reaching up to £300,000. The combined total is “potentially tens of millions” of pounds.
One of Rosenblatt’s clients, speaking anonymously “for fear of further reprisals from Amazon,” described the experience to UK Tech News: “I’ve been pleading with Amazon for nearly 18 months to unfreeze my funds. We had been a seller on Amazon for almost 10 years, and this is the second time they’ve done this to us. I went above and beyond to provide them with invoices, supplier and buyer information, item descriptions, and quantities, yet I am still waiting to receive my money.”
Dean Nicholls, partner at Rosenblatt, compared the situation to the Post Office scandal that devastated thousands of British postmasters. “In scenes reminiscent of the Post Office scandal, they face being stuck in an automated process with Amazon’s appeal system,” he said. “Amazon’s agreement with its sellers has very clear rules for what it can and cannot do. We believe that Amazon’s treatment of so many of its sellers is a clear breach of that agreement.”
The Incentive Problem
Here is the uncomfortable reality that sits beneath all of this: Amazon has no financial incentive to resolve these situations quickly.
Every month that a suspended seller’s inventory sits in a warehouse, Amazon collects storage fees. If they dispose of the inventory, the revenue stream stops. If they drag their feet on appeals, if they keep asking for more documentation, if they simply let cases sit in limbo, the fees keep coming.
Run some rough numbers on the case from the beginning of this article. Nine months of suspension. Roughly $500 per month in storage fees. That is $4,500 in revenue Amazon collected from a seller who could not sell a single product during that time. From a suspended account. From the inventory that just sat there.
Now multiply that by the thousands of sellers who find themselves in similar situations every year. According to SmartScout, a seller analytics firm that tracks Amazon suspensions, “Amazon deactivates selling accounts each and every day.” The numbers add up.
None of this proves intentional wrongdoing. Amazon is a massive company with massive bureaucracy, and it is entirely possible that the left hand simply does not know what the right hand is doing. The team that handles suspensions may have no communication with the team that handles storage fees. The result looks like a trap, even if no one designed it that way.
But intent matters less than outcomes. And the outcome, consistently, is that suspended sellers hemorrhage money while Amazon collects.
What the Contract Says (And What It Means)
All of this is technically permitted under Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement, the contract every seller agrees to when they sign up. The agreement is dense, legalistic, and heavily tilted toward Amazon. A few provisions are particularly relevant here.
Section F-7.2 addresses what happens to inventory after account termination. Amazon may return units to sellers, but only under certain conditions. If the shipping address is outdated, if the seller has not provided a designated address, or if Amazon “cannot make arrangements for you to pay for the return shipment,” then the inventory “will be deemed abandoned and we may elect to dispose of them in our sole discretion.”
“Sole discretion” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Amazon can dispose of the inventory whenever it wants. Or they can choose not to. And as long as they choose not to, storage fees keep accumulating.
Want to Sue? That’ll Be $4,349 Upfront
Sellers who want to fight back face an immediate obstacle: Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement requires binding arbitration for most disputes. No class actions. No day in court. Just a private arbitration process run through the American Arbitration Association.
And arbitration is not cheap.
One seller broke down the numbers on the forum: “Arbitration costs $4,349 USD up front for claims involving non-monetary relief. Many sellers are individuals with no access to savings because Amazon is holding it all. Fee waiver requests are often denied, even for those with $0 in their bank accounts.”
The circularity of this is almost impressive. Amazon holds the seller’s money. To get the money back, the seller needs to pursue arbitration. To pursue arbitration, the seller needs $4,349, which they do not have. Because Amazon is holding its money.
CJ Rosenbaum, a lawyer who represents Amazon sellers, has written about this dynamic. On his firm’s website, he notes that “Amazon sellers often face withheld funds or frozen accounts, leaving them without access to their hard-earned revenue.” His practice includes filing for Temporary Restraining Orders to prevent Amazon from disposing of inventory while disputes work through arbitration.
What Suspended Sellers Can Actually Try
Given all of this, what options do suspended sellers actually have? The honest answer is: limited ones. But some paths have worked for some people, and they are worth documenting.
The Funds Path
After 90 days of suspension, sellers can email disbursement-appeals@amazon.com to request release of frozen funds. This is separate from appealing the account suspension itself. As one forum response noted: “If your account is not reinstated following an appeal or you choose not to appeal the deactivation, after 90 days from when your account was deactivated, you may separately request funds disbursement.”
Success is not guaranteed. Amazon will investigate the account before releasing anything. But it is a path that exists, and some sellers have reported getting their funds through it.
The Prevention Path
For sellers who have not yet been suspended, the single most important thing may be configuring automatic removal settings before any problems arise. The “Fix stranded inventory” section of Seller Central allows sellers to specify what should happen to inventory that gets stranded. Setting this to automatic return rather than disposal or indefinite hold could make a significant difference if suspension ever occurs.
As one seller in the forums advised: “Just in case, set up your auto removal to be shipped back to you. That way, if you do get the compliance resolved before the deadline, any remaining inventory will go to you.”
The Nuclear Option
Some sellers have resorted to simply canceling the credit card on file with Amazon. This stops the ongoing charges but comes with real risks. It may constitute a breach of the Business Solutions Agreement. It could complicate any future resolution. It might make recovering funds or inventory even harder.
One forum commenter offered this perspective: “I do not agree that cancelling your credit card is considered ‘the wrong way’. You have made your intention clear and wish to close your account. And yet, due to Amazon’s poor customer support, this is preventing you from closing the account. I would argue that this is a valid enough reason to recoup your losses in a lawsuit battle in the United States, as Amazon is literally preventing you from losing more money to it.”
This is not legal advice, and it is not a recommendation. It is simply documentation of what some desperate sellers have done when every other path closed.
The Documentation Path
Whatever path a suspended seller takes, documentation is essential. Screenshots of error messages. Copies of all communications with Amazon. Records of every appeal submitted and every response received. Tracking of storage fees charged month by month. If the situation ever does reach arbitration or some other resolution process, this documentation will matter enormously.
The Trap That Keeps Trapping
Some of these sellers broke the rules. Some of them sold products they should not have sold or cut corners on documentation. Amazon’s marketplace does have real problems with counterfeit goods and bad actors, and suspensions are sometimes entirely justified.
But the mechanism matters. There is a meaningful difference between “you broke the rules, so you can no longer sell here” and “you broke the rules, so we will hold your property hostage while charging you rent.” The first is a reasonable business consequence. The second is something harder to justify.
And what about the sellers who did not break any rules?
The ones who got caught in automated enforcement systems, who provided all the documentation Amazon asked for, who did everything right, and still found themselves trapped? For them, this is not just an inconvenience. It is a business-ending catastrophe playing out in slow motion, month by month, fee by fee.
At the Seattle Times coverage of Amazon’s 2024 seller conference, multiple vendors described Amazon as a “necessary evil,” acknowledging that they needed the platform to reach customers but begrudging some of its power. Martha Stewart, speaking at the conference, “gently jabbed at the high cost of fees Amazon charges sellers.” Her remark was met with applause from the crowd.
The seller from the beginning of this article, the one who watched $4,000 bleed away while $40,000 in inventory sat untouchable, put it plainly: “I strictly followed Amazon policies, and there are no brand or customer complaints. Despite this, this is what happened to me, and I am a victim. Now I have no choice but to sue Amazon.”
Suing Amazon, through binding arbitration, which costs $4,349 upfront, with frozen funds. The trap, as it turns out, has layers. And Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
Sources
Research and Expert Analysis
1. Institute for Local Self-Reliance: “Amazon’s Toll Road” – Stacy Mitchell
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