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.

Our Amazon UK account showed up as deactivated for lack of a UK VAT number. We are located in Europe and do not have any products in the UK warehouses, no listings in general, no orders. Legally we are not required to have a UK VAT number, as we use OSS for distance sales.

In our FBA settings the "Enable inventory storage" is stated UK and the settings are in grey colour - we are not able to change it, as it was stated long time ago. As the account is deactivated, we cannot change the selling plan from individual to proffesional and experiencing many other issues (like cannot use "Build international listings", use more reports.

Many times we contacted the Account Health specialists via call - their solution is the same - contact VAT UK team via email: vat-number-appeals@amazon.com . However, we wrote several emails to them - no response for weeks.

Does anyone have any idea how to proceed, without having to register VAT in UK?

Hi,

So few weeks ago I got a mail that being non estb UK entity Amazon has to collect VAT on our behalf and deposit it. Which we were completely ok with. Amazon UK collected the same from our UK selling account and removed reseves from the UK account.

But the problem is in France account where amazon continues to hold sizeable amount in reserve. And its there since the VAT payment cropped up.

Is there any way to get it released since the UK VAT to amazon is fully paid.

Also how do I get updated VAT payment reports since we need to file returns with HMRC.