At a glance
Live count of carrier-side claims (UPS, USPS, OnTrac, Lasership, Amazon Logistics) that the seller has filed and the carrier has not resolved. Different from Amazon’s A-to-Z claim system: those are customer-vs-seller disputes Amazon adjudicates; these are seller-vs-carrier service-failure claims for late, lost, or damaged Prime-promised consignments.
| What it counts | COUNT(claims WHERE status IN ('OPEN','UNDER_REVIEW','PENDING_DOCUMENTATION')) at moment of read across all connected carriers used for SFP. |
| Claim categories | Service-failure refund (carriage charge back), damage in transit (contents value), lost in transit (contents value), delivery-attempted-not-honored claims. |
| Filing window | Carrier-specific: UPS 9 months for damage, 60 days for service-failure; USPS 60 days for Priority claims; OnTrac 90 days; Amazon Logistics 30 days for SFP-eligible. The card pools all carriers; merchants typically file claims via each carrier’s own portal. |
| Resolution SLA | UPS 5 to 10 business days for service-failure, 14 to 30 for damage; USPS 14 to 30 days; OnTrac 7 to 14 days. |
| Currency | USD primarily (Amazon Prime Shipping is a US program). |
| Money-back-on-late mechanic | Carrier-side service-failure refund returns the carriage charge to the seller. Amazon Concession (when Amazon credits the customer) is separate; carriers do not refund Amazon-side concessions. |
| B2B vs B2C | Amazon Prime Shipping is overwhelmingly B2C consumer; B2B exists via Amazon Business Prime but is a small share of typical SFP volume. |
| Time window | RT |
| Alert trigger | >0 unresolved >7d. |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Amazon Prime Shipping (SFP) data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US small-electronics merchant on SFP. Multi-carrier mix (UPS Ground 2-Day, OnTrac West, Amazon Logistics where available). Reading taken at 14:00 ET on 22 Mar 26.| Carrier | Open claims | Avg open age | Total claim value |
|---|---|---|---|
| UPS service-failure | 24 | 5 days | $360 (carriage refund) |
| UPS damage | 8 | 11 days | $1,640 (contents) |
| OnTrac service-failure | 6 | 4 days | $90 (carriage refund) |
| USPS Priority lost | 4 | 18 days | $480 (contents) |
| Amazon Logistics service-failure | 2 | 3 days | $30 (carriage refund) |
| Total open | 44 | $2,600 |
- The 7-day threshold has 12 hits, all UPS damage and USPS lost. Service-failure claims (smaller, faster) clear quickly; damage and lost claims stretch. The 4 USPS-lost claims at 18-day age are at the SLA boundary; chase via USPS claim portal.
- $2,600 of working capital parked. For a mid-size SFP merchant, this is meaningful. Carrier-claim recovery is a working-capital lever many merchants underutilise.
- Amazon Concession costs are NOT in this card. When a Prime customer is impacted by a missed delivery, Amazon often credits them with a goodwill concession (Prime credit, refund-on-shipping); the carrier-side claim refunds the seller’s carriage cost but does not offset the Concession Amazon billed. Both costs are real.
- UPS damage claims dominate at $1,640. Small-electronics shipping has structural damage exposure (drop, crush). Pair with
ama_exception_rateto see if damage exceptions are rising; if yes, packaging review is overdue. - Filing rate vs eligible-rate matters. If the merchant had 60 service-failure-eligible misses this period and only 32 are filed (24 UPS + 6 OnTrac + 2 Amazon = 32), filing rate is 53%. Industry benchmark is 50 to 70% on Prime Shipping; UPS’s longer 60-day filing window is forgiving but still rewards weekly cadence.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Open claims is real-time financial-recovery KPI. Pair with these:| Card | Why pair it with Open Claims | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Late Shipments | Eligibility-source for service-failure claims. | Filing rate gap = unrecovered carriage. |
| Exception Rate | Damage / loss exceptions feed claim filings. | Predictive of next week’s filing volume. |
| Claim Value | Financial twin. | Count vs value diverges with high-value damage. |
| Prime 1-Day / 2-Day Promise Miss Rate | Each carrier-fault Prime miss is a claim candidate. | Filing rate on Prime cohort. |
Cross-connector: amazon.az_claims | Amazon’s customer-vs-seller A-to-Z disputes. Different system; both costs are real. | Combined view: A-to-Z costs + carrier claims. |
Cross-connector: shipbob.sb_open_claims | Peer 3PL claims. | Different orders. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look: Carrier-specific portals: UPS Claims (ups.com/upsclaims), USPS Claim portal (usps.com/help/claims), OnTrac claims (ontrac.com/claims), Amazon Logistics claims (Seller Central → Logistics → Claims). Each carrier maintains its own open-claims dashboard. Why our number may legitimately differ from carrier portals:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Status mapping | Either | Each carrier uses different status labels; the card pools all non-final into “open”. |
| Sync lag | Ours <2 min behind | Card polls each carrier API every 30 to 90 seconds. |
| Multi-account merchants | Either | If a merchant has multiple UPS account numbers, card reads connected credentials only. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon.az_claims | A-to-Z is customer-vs-seller; this is seller-vs-carrier. | Two different cost streams. |