The reality is Amazon rarely pays for anything on the merchant side. FBA gives up an enormous amount of control, and in our experience results in Amazon Custome

The reality is Amazon rarely pays for anything on the merchant side. FBA gives up an enormous amount of control, and in our experience results in Amazon Customer Service Reps issuing returnless-refunds for nearly every single contact, regardless of the cause. But, it's a numbers game. Do enough volume and anomalies, including blatantly obvious fraud, don't matter. For smaller merchants though, it can be brutal. It's to the point where FBA wouldn't be worth it at all for anyone operating their own warehouse and what-not... except for the fact that Amazon "boosts" FBA offers in search results and gives FBA merchant offers a larger share of the "Buy Box"... so you miss out on a considerable amount of sales if you do not FBA. Most of the "real" operations (ones that exist off of Amazon as well) do both FBM and FBA just to cover all the bases, but not be dependent on Amazon. But... I digress...