A recovery vendor files claims on your fulfillment account and takes a share of what it collects. The real decision is not whether to file. It is whether that work sits inside a managed account you already pay a flat fee for, or beside it as a second contract with a second owner.
The short version
- A recovered dollar is not a sales dollar. It arrives with no cost of goods behind it, so it beats a sales dollar by the size of your margin.
- The share is the price. A vendor on a percentage keeps that percentage of every dollar it hands back. Get the number in writing and ask what it applies to.
- Prevention pays the same as recovery. A dollar that never leaves is worth what a recovered dollar is worth, and nobody takes a cut of it.
- A flat fee decides who keeps the saving. Our pricing runs $800 a month for one product to $2,400 for five, all 50+ services included, with no commission.
- The rules live in your account. What qualifies and what window applies sit inside your own Seller Central account. Confirm them there before a vendor quotes you.
What a recovered dollar is worth against your margin
Sellers arrive at this question saying "I don't have the profitability I expected", and a recovery quote reads like found money. The arithmetic below says how much of it is.
Run it on a seller like the one reading this, one to three products at $5K to $30K a month. Say each unit keeps 20 cents of every dollar once landed cost, fees, and returns come out. That 20 cents is your number and not mine, so pull it for your best selling product before you go further.
Now set a recovered dollar beside a sales dollar. The sales dollar arrives with a unit of inventory behind it, so it leaves you 20 cents. The recovered dollar already paid for its inventory, so it leaves you the whole dollar.
So one recovered dollar replaces five dollars of new sales at a 20% margin. That ratio is the entire case for doing this work. It is also the case for prevention, because a dollar that never leaves is a whole dollar too.
Then take the vendor's cut out of it, using your own quoted share where I use one quarter. On $1,000 collected, a one quarter share returns $750, which stands in for $3,750 of new sales.
| Line | The figure to write down | Who keeps a dollar saved |
|---|---|---|
| Managed account, all 50+ services | $800 a month at one product, $2,400 at five | you, the fee does not move |
| Commission on sales or ad spend | none at these tiers | you |
| Recovery share | your quoted percentage, one quarter here | split with the vendor |
| Margin on a sales dollar | your own number, 20 cents here | you |
| A dollar recovered | the whole dollar, less the share | you, less the share |
| A dollar never lost | the whole dollar, no claim to file | you |
Flapen figures as of September 2026. The margin row and the share row are yours to fill in.
Inside the managed account or beside it
Two structures hold this work and they price it differently. Beside the account, a second contract pays a firm to read, file, and keep its share of what comes back. Nobody in that arrangement is paid to make the next claim unnecessary.
Inside the account, the work belongs to whoever already owns the week. Our fee covers all 50+ services at every tier, so filing and prevention land without a second invoice. That invoice reads the same whether the claims are large or zero.
Included is not the same as free. A flat fee buys a fixed share of an operator's week, so an hour spent filing is an hour off the listing. Ask any managed provider what it puts down to pick this up.
Ownership is the question under both structures. Ask who reads the account week to week and what they did last month with what they found. Here that read is a written update in Slack every week, a live review every two weeks, and Slack open in between.
We run about 70 brands by hand with 50 operators, and the majority reach profitability inside their first year. That outcome is built out of margin, pricing, and traffic. No recovery line has ever turned an unprofitable brand into a profitable one.
So the placement rule is short. If one owner already runs the account on a flat fee, put the claims there and price the trade in hours. If nobody does, a share-based vendor buys attention you are not otherwise paying for.
What a recovery vendor will not tell you about the arithmetic
The same $1,000 carries three prices, and only one appears on a vendor's page.
| The same $1,000 | What reaches you | Sales it stands in for at a 20% margin | Who gets paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recovered under a one quarter share | $750 | $3,750 | the vendor, on every dollar |
| Recovered by an operator inside a flat fee | $1,000 | $5,000 | nobody extra |
| Never lost, because someone watched | $1,000 and no claim to file | $5,000 | nobody extra |
Read the bottom row twice. It is the only line where the money never left, and the only line no pricing model rewards.
The second omission is what a percentage does to incentives. A share of recoveries is a fee charged on your own operational mess, so it grows when the account is chaotic and shrinks when it is clean.
The third should end most sales calls. Nobody can tell you what your claims are worth without reading your account, because the rules and your history both sit inside it. If we put a recovery number in front of you before reading the account, do not hire us.
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One free thing to do this week, for a seller running one to three products at $5K to $30K a month. On your best selling product, write down what one unit keeps after landed cost and every fee, then divide that by the price.
That single figure turns every recovery quote you are handed into the amount of new sales it stands in for.
To have that margin and the account underneath it read by an operator, ask for the free written audit and get prioritized fixes back inside 48 hours from Flapen.
