How one seller resolved attorney fees in marketplace arbitration

A flat rejection from Amazon Seller Support feels like the end of the road. The account is restricted, the funds are held, and every standard escalation path has already come back with a form response. What many sellers do not realize at that point is that a different procedural path exists – one that does not require a multi-year court battle or an arbitration hearing that runs to six figures. This case study traces how one Amazon US seller moved through that path to resolve a dispute that included attorney fees, using the formal dispute-resolution mechanism built into the seller agreement.

TL;DRAttorney fees in marketplace arbitration on Amazon US are governed by the Business Solutions Agreement (BSA) and the American Arbitration Association (AAA) rules that apply to the account. A seller can raise a claim for attorney fees by first sending a Notice of Dispute, waiting through the informal resolution period, and then filing with the AAA if that period fails – with fee-shifting available under applicable rules.

What follows is a structured account of one matter we handled. The seller's identity and identifying details have been changed. The procedural steps, the decision points, and the trade-offs are real. The outcome is described qualitatively, consistent with professional responsibility obligations and honest practice.

What was the situation – and what was really at stake?

A liquidation and clearance seller operating on Amazon US came to us in spring 2026 after a prolonged account restriction that had combined two separate threads: a held disbursement balance and a performance-related restriction on several ASINs. Both threads had been open for several months. Seller Support had responded to each ticket with templated language. The seller's account had operated for several years without a policy enforcement action, and the restriction notice referenced criteria that the seller believed did not apply to their inventory category.

The commercial damage was real and compounding. The seller's FBA inventory was still physically in Amazon's fulfillment network. Removal orders had been partially fulfilled, but a meaningful portion of stock remained inaccessible. The disbursement hold covered funds from sales that had already cleared the A-to-z guarantee window. Monthly fixed costs – warehouse lease payments on the seller's own facility, payroll for two part-time operations staff – continued regardless of whether Amazon released anything.

What made the matter analytically interesting was the combination of the two threads. The performance restriction, standing alone, might have been addressable through a Plan of Action (POA). The disbursement hold, standing alone, might have been handled through internal escalation channels. Together, they had created a situation where each thread was being used by Amazon's automated systems to justify inaction on the other. Seller Support, when it responded at all, pointed to the restriction to explain the hold, and pointed to the hold as evidence of account-level concern.

The seller had attempted two Plans of Action before engaging us. Both had been rejected without substantive explanation. At that stage, the realistic options were either a further attempt at the administrative path or a move to the formal dispute-resolution mechanism in the BSA. We reviewed both.

What was really going on procedurally and legally?

Understanding what attorney fees in marketplace arbitration actually means on Amazon US requires reading the BSA alongside the AAA Consumer or Commercial rules that it incorporates, depending on the account type and the version of the agreement that applies. The BSA dispute-resolution terms are a volatile area of Amazon policy – the mechanism has changed over time, and the path available depends on which version of the agreement governs the account, which we check first on every matter.

In this seller's case, the BSA version in effect specified a mandatory informal dispute-resolution period following a Notice of Dispute, before any formal arbitration filing. That informal period runs a defined number of days from the date the Notice of Dispute is received – a step that many sellers skip entirely because they are not aware it is a prerequisite to filing. Skipping it does not strengthen a claim; it creates a procedural deficiency the other side will use.

On attorney fees specifically: AAA arbitration rules address fee-shifting in different ways depending on the applicable rule set. In consumer arbitrations, rules can provide for fee-shifting to the prevailing consumer in certain circumstances. In commercial arbitrations, the default is typically the American Rule – each party bears its own fees – unless the underlying agreement or applicable law provides otherwise. The seller's potential fee claim arose from two sources: a state-law consumer protection statute that carries mandatory fee-shifting to prevailing plaintiffs, and a contractual argument tied to a specific provision of the BSA.

Neither of those bases was obvious from the face of the dispute. Identifying them required reading the BSA in conjunction with the governing state law, mapping the seller's situation onto the statutory definition of an aggrieved party, and assessing whether the specific BSA provision created a fee-shifting entitlement or merely a right to reimbursement contingent on a separate finding. These are legal questions, not customer-service questions. The seller's prior DIY attempts had not engaged with either of them, which is part of why those attempts had not moved the needle.

For a deeper look at how the formal Notice of Dispute process works and when it is the right tool, see our complete guide to arbitration and pre-arb demand for marketplace sellers.

What strategy did we apply?

Our first step was to separate the two threads. Treating the performance restriction and the disbursement hold as a single undifferentiated problem had been part of what stalled the prior attempts. Each thread has its own procedural home, its own evidence standard, and its own realistic resolution path. Conflating them in a single communication gives Amazon's automated review systems more surface area to reject, and gives any later arbitrator a muddled record to read.

On the performance restriction, we reviewed the original deactivation notice, the inventory category, and the two prior POAs. The prior POAs had correctly identified one of the root causes but had addressed the corrective-action section in a way that was too forward-looking and not specific enough about the operational changes already in place. We rebuilt the POA around what the seller had already done, not what the seller promised to do. Amazon's review teams respond to evidence of remediation, not commitments to remediate.

On the disbursement hold and the attorney-fees question, we prepared and sent a formal Notice of Dispute. The Notice identified the held funds by period and amount range, cited the basis for the fee claim under state law and the BSA, and set out the relief sought with enough specificity to start the informal-resolution clock running. The drafting of a Notice of Dispute is not a template exercise. A well-drafted Notice does three things at once: it satisfies the procedural prerequisites for later arbitration filing; it signals to the Amazon legal team receiving it that the claimant has identified the correct legal basis; and it opens the possibility of resolution during the informal period without the cost and delay of a full AAA filing.

We also flagged the brand damage angle in the matter. While this was not primarily an IP dispute, the restriction had been triggered in part by a rights-owner complaint about one ASIN. That complaint, on examination, did not meet the threshold for a valid infringement claim under the Lanham Act – the seller had documentation of authorized purchase from a domestic distributor. Addressing that complaint directly, through a parallel counter-notice process, removed one of the subsidiary grounds Amazon had been using to support the ongoing restriction. For context on how seller-side demand letters and brand-damage claims interact in marketplace disputes, see our analysis of demand letters for destroyed-brand claims and what they mean for marketplace sellers.

The informal resolution period following the Notice of Dispute produced a response from Amazon's legal team within the expected window. That response was not an immediate concession, but it was substantive – a specific engagement with the disbursement calculation, a partial acknowledgment of the fund-holding period, and a request for additional documentation on the inventory removal status. That shift in register – from templated support responses to a substantive legal-team communication – is itself a meaningful indicator that the matter has moved to a track where resolution is possible.

We negotiated the resolution during that informal period. The result was a structured release of the held funds combined with a timeline for ASIN reinstatement, with the attorney-fee component addressed through the negotiated settlement amount rather than through a separate arbitration award. The seller did not proceed to a formal AAA filing. That outcome was not guaranteed at the outset – but it was a realistic possibility once the matter was on the correct procedural track.

The key decision points and trade-offs

This matter illustrates several decision points that recur across marketplace arbitration matters. Each involves a real trade-off, and sellers facing similar situations should understand them before committing to a path.

Decision 1: Whether to file another POA or move to the formal dispute-resolution path. These are not mutually exclusive. In this matter, we ran both in parallel – the rebuilt POA on the performance restriction, and the Notice of Dispute on the disbursement hold and fee claim. Running them in sequence, as the seller had been doing, had allowed each rejection to reinforce the other thread's stall. Running them in parallel required more initial work but created independent resolution paths.

Decision 2: Whether to go straight to AAA arbitration or use the informal period strategically. Many sellers and some advisors treat the informal resolution period as a box to check before the "real" arbitration fight. That framing misses value. A well-drafted Notice of Dispute, sent to Amazon's legal team rather than to Seller Support, changes the audience and the stakes for Amazon. A case that looks like a cost-free rejection risk at the Seller Support level looks different when a legal team has to assess an attorney-fees exposure. The informal period, in our experience across similar matters, resolves a meaningful share of well-presented claims without a formal AAA filing. For a direct comparison of when arbitration is preferable to litigation, see our piece on what to know about choosing arbitration over litigation.

The myth worth addressing directly: fighting Amazon does not always mean a costly, multi-year arbitration. The pre-arbitration demand and informal resolution path is designed to be faster and less expensive. The total time from Notice of Dispute to resolution in this matter was shorter than the time the seller had already spent cycling through Seller Support rejections. The costs were known and fixed from the outset.

Decision 3: Whether to accept a negotiated resolution or push for a formal arbitration award. A formal award has advantages – it is enforceable, it may carry more explicit findings, and in some circumstances it sets a clearer precedent for account-level treatment going forward. A negotiated resolution during the informal period is faster, has lower direct cost, and avoids the uncertainty of an arbitrator's decision on a fee-shifting claim that depends on a legal argument that is strong but not guaranteed. The seller in this matter chose the negotiated resolution. That was the right call given the commercial timeline, the inventory at risk, and the specifics of the fee claim. Different facts may lead to a different answer.

What other sellers can take from this matter

The lesson from this matter is not that every seller should rush to send a Notice of Dispute. It is that the formal dispute-resolution path in the BSA is a real procedural tool that changes the dynamics of a dispute when used correctly, and that attorney fees in marketplace arbitration are a legitimate component of a well-structured claim under the right facts.

Several factors made this matter workable. The seller had maintained consistent business records – purchase invoices, distributor agreements, removal-order documentation – that could be assembled into a coherent account of what had happened. The disbursement hold covered a period where the underlying sales were unambiguously completed. The fee basis under state law was clear once the governing law question was resolved. None of those factors were accidents. They were the result of the kind of operational discipline that makes a marketplace business defensible when things go wrong.

What the seller did not have, before engaging us, was a map of the procedural path. The BSA dispute-resolution mechanism is not well-documented in Seller Central help pages. The relationship between the Notice of Dispute, the informal resolution period, and the AAA filing prerequisite is buried in agreement language that changes. The fee-shifting basis under applicable state law is not something Amazon's Seller Support will explain. That is a legal knowledge gap, not an operational one – and it is the kind of gap that makes the difference between a matter that resolves in weeks and one that stalls for months.

If the account history in your situation resembles what we have described here – a held balance, a restriction that has survived multiple POA attempts, and a performance notice that does not clearly fit your actual inventory or practices – the path forward probably does not run through another Seller Support ticket.

Related areas

• Arbitration & Pre-Arb Demand – formal dispute-resolution path for Amazon sellers, including Notices of Dispute and AAA filings
• Account Reinstatement – Plan of Action review and appeal strategy for deactivated Amazon accounts

If a first appeal or formal demand already came back without resolution, there is often a specific reason it failed that a second read can identify – and sometimes a different procedural route is still open. To discuss what the options look like in your situation, email info@tutamenlaw.com.

Frequently asked questions

How long does resolving attorney fees in marketplace arbitration usually take on Amazon US?

The timeline depends on which phase resolves the matter. The informal resolution period following a Notice of Dispute runs a defined number of days under the BSA, and in our experience across similar matters, a meaningful share of well-prepared claims reach a negotiated outcome during that window without proceeding to a formal AAA filing. A full AAA arbitration, if it becomes necessary, typically runs several months to over a year, depending on the complexity of the fee claim, the rule set that applies, and the availability of arbitrators. Starting with a well-drafted Notice of Dispute is the fastest path to knowing which outcome is realistic for a specific matter.

What are the main risks if I handle attorney fees in marketplace arbitration alone?

The primary risk is a procedural one. The BSA requires a Notice of Dispute and an informal resolution period before any AAA filing. Missing or mishandling that step creates a deficiency the other side will raise. Beyond procedure, the fee-shifting argument requires identifying the correct legal basis – often a state-law statute or a specific BSA provision – and framing the claim in a way an arbitrator can act on. A self-drafted notice that does not identify the fee basis correctly gives Amazon's legal team less to engage with and less commercial pressure to resolve. The record you build now is the record you have if the matter proceeds to a formal filing.

Do I need a lawyer for attorney fees in marketplace arbitration?

You are not required to have one. But the fee-shifting basis that makes an attorney-fees claim viable on Amazon US typically rests on a legal argument – a state consumer-protection statute, an applicable AAA rule, or a BSA provision – that requires legal analysis to identify and frame correctly. Sellers who handle the process alone often skip the Notice of Dispute entirely, misidentify the informal resolution period, or draft claims that do not preserve the fee basis. Attorney-led representation on a matter of this type is typically structured at a fixed fee, quoted up front, and the cost is itself a factor in the fee-shifting calculation if the matter proceeds to a formal arbitration award.

About Tutamen

Tutamen is an independent law firm for online marketplace sellers. We represent Amazon, Walmart, Etsy and eBay sellers in account deactivations, frozen-funds recovery, intellectual-property disputes, arbitration and Notices of Dispute, and US federal Schedule A defense, plus EU marketplace regulation. Our work is attorney-led and confidential, with fees quoted up front. We act for founders, brand owners and in-house teams who need a specialist for a marketplace dispute. To discuss your situation, email info@tutamenlaw.com.

By Claire Donnelly – arbitration & disputes analyst, Tutamen.

Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Marketplace policies and the law change, and every account and case is different. For advice on your situation, contact Tutamen at info@tutamenlaw.com.