Amazon Compliance Chargeback Codes, Mapped

Amazon's compliance chargebacks are penalty deductions for supply-chain process defects. Amazon is not alone in this: a peer-reviewed study of supplier compliance manuals from 111 US retailers, mostly department-store and apparel chains, found that "fixed charges are the most common type of penalty," and 46 of those retailers penalize missing or incorrect carton labels, at a mean fixed charge of $152.50. Those are other retailers' published schedules, not Amazon fees. Amazon publishes no count of its own chargeback types, which are grouped into a handful of categories that follow the fulfillment lifecycle: Purchase Order, ASN, Preparation, Packaging (SIPP), Transportation, and Receive Process. Every code on your remittance belongs to one of these families, and each family has its own trigger logic, fee basis, and the dispute evidence practitioners point to.

This is the taxonomy reference. If you want the business case for working these deductions, start with Amazon deductions explained; this article is for the finance or ops person staring at a remittance line and asking what the code actually means.

How are Amazon chargeback codes organized?

A handful of categories, mapped to where in the fulfillment lifecycle the defect occurred. One structural fact worth knowing before the table: ASN errors are often cited as a leading root cause across categories, because most codes ultimately compare what you shipped against what your Advance Ship Notice said you shipped. Amazon's own vendor documentation states the link plainly: "Missing or delayed shipment confirmations result in chargebacks."

Treat every fee above as indicative, not gospel: Amazon revised several of these in 2025 and 2026, most figures circulating publicly come from recovery-vendor content, and the authoritative schedule is login-gated. The source of record is your own Vendor Central, under Reports and Operational Performance.

What changed in 2025 and 2026?

Two restructures matter for reading current remittances:

In Full Delivery (enforced July 21, 2025) consolidated the quantity defects into one chargeback with three subtypes: Not Filled (invoicing fewer units than confirmed: 5% of COGS on the shortfall, cut from 10%, and waived entirely when your trailing 12-week fill rate stays above 95%), Down Confirmed (reducing confirmed quantities later than 5 business days after ship-window start: 3%, no waiver), and Overage (invoicing more than ordered: 100% on the excess, no waiver). Not on Time remains a separate chargeback. KhooCommerce's In Full Delivery reference, dated July 2025, words the Not Filled charge as "5% of cost of goods sold (COGS) for the quantity difference," and the waiver as "Waived if the previous trailing 12-week average fill rate is above 95%."

Receive Accuracy (reported for January 19, 2026): secondary sources report a new chargeback that consolidates the former label and ASN receive-side codes and speeds up processing. We could not confirm it against Amazon's own announcement, so check whether the code appears in your Operational Performance report before planning around it. If it holds, a shorter gap between defect and deduction makes upstream evidence capture more important, not less.

How does the dispute process work now?

The mechanics are unforgiving but symmetrical: you have roughly 30 days from the date on the chargeback record to file, a refusal opens a second 30-day window, and the same chargeback can be disputed twice. Plan as if the second round is your last.

Those rounds may now have a machine in front of them. SPS Commerce, a supplier-side software firm, describes DisputeGPT, an AI review layer inside Vendor Central. We could not confirm its launch date or rollout schedule against an Amazon source, so check whether it appears on your own chargebacks. Instead of writing a dispute justification, you attach your proof documents, and DisputeGPT checks them against Amazon's document requirements for that chargeback, recommending either proceeding or attaching more or different documentation. It is a check you see before you submit, not a decision on the dispute. SPS reported that every dispute was still processed and evaluated during the soft launch, and that from the hard launch, planned for late 2025, a submission would need to meet the tool's evidence requirements to be processed at all. Treat its feedback as a gate, not a suggestion.

If DisputeGPT is live on your account, the first reader of your dispute checks alignment, not persuasion. SPS describes the attachments, not a written justification, as what carries the dispute, so a well-written explanation cannot rescue a package with a missing document. First-submission completeness matters most, and the analysis feedback tells you what is missing before it costs you anything: if the tool says gather more documentation, fix the package before spending one of your two rounds on it.

What evidence helps dispute each code?

The burden of proof sits with the supplier; Amazon's system is presumed correct until your documents say otherwise. Disputes need attachments and the window is short (about 30 days, counted from the date on the chargeback record). Which documents win for each code is not confirmed, but recovery specialists report that stamped proof of delivery and documents that match each other hold up, while thin or mismatched attachments get denied.

The evidence practitioners commonly point to, by family:

1. PO on-time codes: the Carrier Central appointment screenshot or POD showing delivery requested or made inside the window.
2. In Full Delivery codes: EDI confirmation logs plus proof of delivery showing units and timing.
3. ASN and carton content codes: the actual EDI 856 file, SSCC-18 scan logs, and timestamped carton photos proving physical matched the notice. Amazon's vendor documentation states that "the barcode on the physical label has to match 100% with the SSCC in shipment confirmation," and the scan log is the record that it did.
4. Prep, packaging, and labeling codes: photos of open and closed cartons at ship time showing compliant prep and scannable labels.
5. Transportation codes: carrier booking confirmations, gate logs, and the signed BOL.

The operational rule underneath all five: evidence must be captured at ship time as a by-product of the outbound process. A carton photo or routing screenshot cannot be recreated a month later when the deduction posts, and practitioners report that a dispute without ship-time evidence is rarely won. Supplier-side guides report that Vendor Central shows a recommended-proof hint on each chargeback; if yours does, read it before you file.

Which codes deserve prevention versus recovery effort?

A practical split: SIPP and packaging codes are mostly prevention work (certify the SKU and the charges stop, though certification is per vendor code and Amazon can decertify an item), so prevention dominates. Transportation flat fees are large per incident, so even modest dispute rates pay for the effort. ASN-family codes reward process investment: one software vendor reports the fee is tiered by trailing compliance, from 6% of COGS below 70% to 2% above 95%, so if your Operational Performance report shows those tiers, better ASN accuracy cuts the fee before you dispute anything. And In Full Delivery has only been enforced since July 2025, so how its disputes are judged may still be settling, which makes documentation discipline worth the effort.

If your remittances carry codes you can't map, or mapped codes nobody has disputed inside their windows, that's the gap the Margin Recovery Audit quantifies: which categories are hitting you, what's recoverable, and which prevention fix stops the biggest line. It starts with a free scan, and the process side is what our chargeback prevention service implements.