Hi everyone,
I’m an Irish-based seller looking for advice on what feels like an impossible situation with FBA in the UK. I have several hundred units of my product stored in Amazon’s UK fulfilment centre, but my seller account has been deactivated due to not having a UK VAT number.
I do have an Irish VAT number, but Amazon seems to require a UK VAT number just because the stock is physically stored in the UK — even though I’m not actively selling there anymore. The problem is, I can’t legally get a UK VAT number without establishing a UK entity, which I don’t have and don’t intend to set up.
Support keeps telling me to create a removal order, but because my account is deactivated, I can’t access that functionality. They also confirmed Amazon no longer facilitates cross-border inventory movements from UK to the EU due to Brexit, so the inventory can’t be transferred to an EU fulfilment centre either.
At this stage, I just want to get my stock back — ideally sent to Ireland — but Amazon is saying the only way is to ship it to a UK address and then organise my own courier from there. Of course, I can’t even create the removal order to a UK address because of the account block.
I’ve gone back and forth with support multiple times. One person said to raise a ticket to escalate it. Another said they can’t help unless I register for UK VAT. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially since I just want to recover my own property and not leave it sitting there racking up storage fees or being disposed of.
Has anyone else faced this? Is there any workaround — maybe through a courier release or third-party fulfilment service — that worked for you? Any tips on how to deal with this, or who at Amazon might actually help, would be really appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Pinned by community manager