Just a heads-up to other sellers, because we learned this the hard way.

We recently had 8 "sellable" units of one of our products disposed of through Amazon's automated fulfillable inventory removal settings. The stock was new and sellable, but because the automated setting was enabled and the removal option was set to Dispose for aged inventory, Amazon carried out the disposal and would not reimburse.

In our case, the inventory had aged into the long-term storage category, and the system triggered a disposal order automatically. We owned the mistake, but we're posting this because the setup can be more confusing than it looks - especially with the separate settings for:

• Automated fulfillable inventory
• Automated unfulfillable inventory

We updated settings afterwards, but by then the removal had already been completed - apparently "destroyed", that's 8 sellable products APPARENTLY destroyed???

So this is just a genuine warning to other sellers:

• Check your automated fulfillable inventory settings
• Make sure the removal option is what you actually want
• If you do not want sellable stock destroyed, set it to Return or disable the automation entirely
• Don’t assume “aged inventory” means unsellable inventory

Amazon's position was that the system followed the seller-configured setting, so there was no reimbursement.

We're sharing this because even if it seems obvious in hindsight, it's an expensive lesson when it happens to you. Hopefully this saves someone else from making the same loss even when it sounds a little silly, lol.