New coupon pricing requirements
Hi Handmade Community!
Starting March 12, 2024, coupons will be subject to new pricing requirements as we continue to improve the coupons experience to build customer trust and, in turn, an even better selling experience for you.
Coupons are still required to have a discount percentage between the minimum (5% off) and maximum (50% off). Products will also be required to have a sales history before they are eligible to run, and a promotion price lower than either the "was price" or the recent lowest price.
If a product's price or discount doesn't meet these requirements, it won't be eligible for a coupon until all requirements have been met. If you receive a coupon error message, you can take the following actions:
Price history issue: To make this product eligible, create a sales history by selling more products to build the "was price." For more information on how the "was price" is calculated, go to Amazon policy on reference prices.
Increase discount: Make sure your promotion price is lower than the "was price" or the recent lowest price to make this product eligible.
Minimum/maximum discount issue: Update your sale price discount percentage to be between the minimum (5% off) and maximum (50% off) to make this product eligible.
To learn more about coupon pricing requirements and error messages, go to Understanding coupon errors.
Please note: If even after complying with these requirements, you're having any issues, please post your concern and related details here so I can escalate with my team.
New coupon pricing requirements
Hi Handmade Community!
Starting March 12, 2024, coupons will be subject to new pricing requirements as we continue to improve the coupons experience to build customer trust and, in turn, an even better selling experience for you.
Coupons are still required to have a discount percentage between the minimum (5% off) and maximum (50% off). Products will also be required to have a sales history before they are eligible to run, and a promotion price lower than either the "was price" or the recent lowest price.
If a product's price or discount doesn't meet these requirements, it won't be eligible for a coupon until all requirements have been met. If you receive a coupon error message, you can take the following actions:
Price history issue: To make this product eligible, create a sales history by selling more products to build the "was price." For more information on how the "was price" is calculated, go to Amazon policy on reference prices.
Increase discount: Make sure your promotion price is lower than the "was price" or the recent lowest price to make this product eligible.
Minimum/maximum discount issue: Update your sale price discount percentage to be between the minimum (5% off) and maximum (50% off) to make this product eligible.
To learn more about coupon pricing requirements and error messages, go to Understanding coupon errors.
Please note: If even after complying with these requirements, you're having any issues, please post your concern and related details here so I can escalate with my team.
90 replies
Seller_LPJZ2eQYqDMJl
Thank you for the info, however, this is the same info we were give for the past few weeks, and many of us are still having issues despite following all the protocol. Most of my coupons are suppressed, except for newly listed items with not much sale history.
Many of us believe the coupon system is broken, from another discussion
Jim_Amazon is looking into it about 6 days ago. We are still having issues and have not heard any updates yet.
Seller_UwQEr6G9ycEYY
Thank you for this post. We're still having issues despite having followed the requirements.
The error is always: No Reference Price available. ASINs must have a Reference Price.
What we did was to add List Price to the products, the same as Your Price.
One response from seller support I got is:
We checked and found that list price will not be validated as reference price always. The pricing services frequently check for catalogue updates, changes to pricing, and historical pricing - all of which factors into the reference price.
If our coupon validation system is unable to retrieve the Validated Reference Price from pricing services - the ASIN participating in the coupon will be marked as suppressed.
We are unable to provide you an estimated time frame for retrieving a valid reference price.
From the response, it seems that there's not much we can do on our end if Amazon's "coupon validation system" is not validating / getting the Reference Price. One reason that this is impacting many handmade sellers I can think of is that handmade items are unique (i.e. no two sellers offer the same product), so we never had to put in a List Price (MSRP) in our listings. The validation system somehow is not taking the straightforward approach, i.e. using the List Price we provide as the Reference Price, instead it's trying to calculate Reference Price based on some other factors but is failing to do so. Our case ID is 14968177201. Please help.
Seller_nTDvdPun50jLz
Reference price is still very broken.
Products with lots of sales are having issues with coupons.
Brand new products with no sales are working fine with coupons.
This does not align with the information provided, therefore the coupon system is broken and sellers cannot change or do anything to fix it.
My case is open for almost 2 weeks now, with them telling me the internal team is still working on resolving the issue.
Seller_bEd2UAB3sHnfy
Brand new products and FBA products are working with coupons.
Other products aren't working, even with sales history, list price, bigger discount - nothing helps
case 14985672701
Seller_2azHBWt7FzGTG
@priscilla_amazonI can tell you that this new coupon policy is absolutely not working as described.
I have brand new listings with no sales history that are eligible and running coupons.
I have listings that have been selling at regular price, with a sales history in the past 30 days that are not eligible for coupons.
I have changed the "List Price" to be the same as the "Your Price" as suggested in other forum posts and this does not work either.
I have no sale prices on my listings so this is also not the issue causing the error.
Seller_nTDvdPun50jLz
@priscilla_amazon
Can you tell me why they are requesting this type of information from me when it comes to Amazon Handmade reference price issues with coupons? What does a PR article represent here?
Thank you for reaching out to us and I will be happy to assist you today.
I can see the importance this has for your business, and I will make sure to provide useful information.
Please be informed that, in order to investigate further we kindly request you to provide us with the following information:
(1) link to brand owner website
(2) PR article
(3) Sibling ASIN with valid list price.
Once we receive this information, we will be able to continue researching this matter.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for selling with Amazon,
Seller_nKyeSPxRmseAq
I used to use coupons to get those first few sales on a new item. I guess no more of that.
Seller_nTDvdPun50jLz
My case is still open from March 13th. Coupons still broken with reference price issues. Can a moderator help me? I've been asking for help since early March.
Seller_UwQEr6G9ycEYY
Our coupons are incorrectly showing this error now:
Insufficient Sales History
Seller_QAYuMX7FJ1rWx
Products with sales are being suppressed. Products with no issues at all are being suppressed. Products with no sales history or list price are going through just fine...Last week I set up a coupon with 6 ASINS and it worked fine all week. I checked yesterday and found after the coupon had been used several times with no problems, all ASINS had been randomly been suppressed stating "insufficient sales history" even though I've been getting sales for the ASINS every day! Mothers Day is my busiest season of the year and not being able to run coupons is detrimental to my sales. Amazon needs to fix this mess ASAP - we've been complaining for weeks about the glitches but still nothing is resolved.
