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The Global Language of Business

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The Global Language of Business

Having Trouble Listing Your Product on Amazon? We Can Help!

Try These Troubleshooting Strategies Yourself

Thank you for reaching back out to GS1 US. We're sorry you've had trouble getting started with your GTIN on Amazon. Below are the most common ways to troubleshoot on your own.

Selecting the Correct Product ID

There are several options that you can select when entering your serialized number for Product ID. If you’re getting an error here, it might be because you’ve selected the wrong ID.

Amazon GTIN

If you enter a 12-digit UPC but select GTIN from the Product ID Type it will provide an error. If you select UPC instead of GTIN, the error goes away.

Here’s a quick Identifier cheat sheet:

  • GTIN = 14-digit number
  • EAN = 13-digit number
  • UPC = 12-digit number

Possible Duplicate Listing

A product, no matter who is selling it, may only have one GTIN (GTIN-14/UPC/EAN). If you are not the Brand Owner of the product, and the product is already available on Amazon, they might be blocking you from adding your own GTIN to identify a product that is already live in their marketplace.

If the brand owner has allocated a GTIN for the product but it is not yet in the Amazon catalogue, the seller may temporarily have an ASIN allocated to the product, however, if the brand owner comes to Amazon and establishes their ownership of the brand (through Brand Registry), the listing will likely be closed or allocated to the brand and the duplicate ASIN will be merged.

If you are not the brand owner and the brand owner has not allocated a GTIN for the product, but another seller has allocated a GTIN and established a listing before you (using other attributes of the product), Amazon will detect the ASIN and prevent a duplicate listing from being created. In this case, your GTIN is not being rejected, but rather Amazon is blocking you from creating a duplicate listing.

Did you get your barcodes today?

If you just got your barcodes today and you’re trying to use them on Amazon immediately, you might be experiencing an error because our databases need more time to sync. Amazon pings your information off our Database (GEPIR) to validate your barcodes. Sometimes we need a little extra time for everything to update between our databases. This is usually resolved within 2-3 business days. If you need to resolve this immediately, you can login to myGS1 US and download your GS1 Company Prefix Certificate or your GS1 US GTIN Certificate and provide it to an Amazon Marketplace employee to resolve the issue manually.

Issues That Will Require Escalation with Amazon Directly

Check the following list for scenarios that will require further assistance from Amazon.

If this is the case, please reach out to Amazon immediately to open a ticket with Amazon’s Seller Support Center.

This is typically when Amazon’s validation against the GS1 Database finds a mismatch in the company name associated to the GS1 Company Prefix and what is provided when listing on Amazon’s marketplace. The two need to be closely matched. This is remedied by providing Amazon the GS1 Company Prefix and/or GS1 US GTIN Certificate, and requesting Amazon to check GEPIR to resolve your issue.

Alternately this is caused by the case where the company name doesn’t match the brands and Amazon is looking to establish that link with an authoritative source. If this is the case, you should apply for the Brand Registry at Amazon.

In addition to its retail marketplace, Amazon hosts a 3rd party marketplace that allows sellers to list product for buyers to purchase even when they are not affiliated with the brand. If your brand has not been established on the platform yet, a seller may get to Amazon first and create a listing (ASIN) they control, that has less than optimal attributes, images, etc. for the product.

If you are the rightful Brand Owner, your best option here is to join Amazon’s Brand Registry which establishes you as the intellectual property owner of the brand. The brand must have a trademark registered to participate. Once enrolled in the program, you will have more control of how your products are represented and even who can sell them on Amazon.

Your ASIN creation process might have failed due to the identifier for your product already being used on a different product in the Amazon catalogue. The offending ASIN may be active or inactive.

If the ASIN is active, do not attempt to modify the current ASIN to match your product – rather escalate the violation to Amazon Seller Central to authenticate your license of a GS1 Company Prefix or GS1 US GTIN.

Amazon can then go into existing ASINs incorrectly bearing GTINs from your prefix and suppress the GTIN from these listings blocking your ASIN creation.

If the ASIN is inactive without any stock in Amazon warehouses and gets trickier if there are active ASINs with stock that is not using an FNSKU (stored by the GTIN).

Please reach out to Amazon Seller Support Center for assistance in resolving this matter.