Amazon Barcodes

Amazon requires that sellers provide barcode numbers when listing products, and we have thousands of customers using our barcodes on Amazon. However, there have recently been changes to their barcode acceptance policy which make registering on Amazon more difficult than it used to be.

Amazon’s policy for barcode numbers continues to change, as well as how strictly it is enforced. While we work to keep this information up-to-date, if you wish to be certain about barcode acceptance on Amazon or with any other retailer, it is best to directly check with them.

Do Our Numbers Work on Amazon?

In general, yes- our numbers do work on Amazon as they are legal and unique barcode numbers. However, there are some restrictions you should know about before buying our barcodes if you intend to sell on Amazon.

Historically, Amazon had very lax rules when it came to barcodes. As long as the number was unique, they would accept it no questions asked. Products were listed with stolen or fake barcode numbers. In 2016, an Amazon executive joined the GS1 board and Amazon began implementing stricter barcode policies. This had the positive effect of reducing the fake numbers on the site. Unfortunately the crackdown was accompanied by a move towards encouraging only GS1 numbers for Amazon sellers. This impacts legitimate barcode resellers like ourselves as it restricts competition.

Amazon’s Current Requirements

One of the more difficult things about selling on Amazon is how inconsistent they can be, especially with their barcode requirements. Usually our barcode numbers are accepted by Amazon with no problems. Sometimes Amazon may ask for proof of ownership as in your guarantee certificate. However there is a small risk that Amazon may insist you use GS1 barcodes on your products. This doesn’t happen very often, but it is possible. We are here to support you in your communications with Amazon if this does happen to you. Our customers can usually get these issues sorted out with our help. Unfortunately, we can’t 100% guarantee Amazon will accept our codes. No barcode reseller can make this claim. Thousands of our customers are currently listed on Amazon, with more joining all the time.

Amazon Brand Registry

Amazon launched a new program in 2017 called the Amazon Brand Registry, which allows sellers to register their brand with Amazon and access certain features. If you intend on joining the brand registry, only GS1 barcodes are guaranteed to work. This is because Amazon sometimes checks the company name on the GS1 GEPIR database when a registered brand lists a new product, and if there is a discrepancy between the brand/company name on Amazon and the barcode owner on GEPIR then Amazon may disallow the listing. GS1 refuses to update their database to reflect the current owner of our barcodes, so it will show the American company that originally bought the barcodes from GS1 decades ago, instead of the current owner. No barcode reseller can provide barcodes that are certain to be accepted by the Amazon Brand Registry, so you have to decide whether registering your brand is worth the expensive GS1 fees.

Brilliant service – thank you, was up and running (on Amazon) in 10 minutes. Thanks again – will be definitely back for more!

Miranda

Workarounds

Some of our customers list their Amazon products with our barcodes by putting N/A, N\A, or My Brand in the brand field upon initial listing and editing their brand in afterwards. We have tested this ourselves and it currently works, but this may not be the case in the future. Another option is to not use the brand field and instead put your brand details in the product description for interested customers.

Now that you have all the information about using our barcodes on Amazon, visit our Retail Barcodes page if you are ready to make a purchase. Otherwise, keep reading for more helpful information about selling on Amazon.

How to List on Amazon

Check out these videos for some guidance towards getting your products listed on Amazon.

Fighting Against Stolen Numbers

There are still many leftover stolen numbers on Amazon, and shady sellers continue to slip them past Amazon protocols. Some of these stolen barcodes are numbers legally owned by us, so it is necessary to check our numbers on Amazon before we issue them to customers.

We used to use the Amazon APIs, which have some success with current products. Unfortunately, these are limited in how deeply they search the Amazon databases. So our tech-gurus developed some sophisticated search software that goes far beyond the traditional Amazon search options. We use this software to deep search Amazon for all numbers before we sell them. If it finds any of these (historic fraudulent listings using our numbers) we delete the numbers and don’t sell them. This is proprietary software that is much more effective than Amazon’s APIs, as it searches far deeper than any other barcode seller.