Our information on Amazon

Amazon policy changes without warning to users, so we keep our up-to-date information here: https://internationalbarcodes.com/barcodes-for-amazon/ 

 

Examples of our barcodes on Amazon products:

 

You need one barcode per listing:

One barcode is needed per unique Amazon listing, so if you have various products or product variations (and require different listings for each) you will need the same amount of barcode numbers as products.

 

Listing your products on Amazon

  How to list your product with Amazon  with a step-by-step guide to the process.

 

Found a fraudulent copy of your barcode on Amazon?

Anyone can improvise a barcode and use it on a product. Entire barcode businesses with slick online websites are founded on made-up barcode numbers.

This has caused Amazon and other retailers to tighten their vetting of barcodes.

So, although rare, it can happen that your legitimate barcode number has been duplicated.

If you discover that someone else is using a barcode number issued to you by us (International Barcode Network), here is a procedure to prove that your barcode number (not theirs) is legitimate:
How can I prove that my barcode number is legitimate? 

 

Amazon grey area?

Many thousands of barcodes that were bought from us are currently in use on Amazon products, but we’ve had queries on a possible “grey area” where Amazon appears to (theoretically?) require barcodes to have been licensed from the global body.

Background

The original global body for managing barcode standards and selling barcodes was the UCC (Uniform Code Council).

Our barcodes were issued by the original UCC to its members prior to 2002, and they remain as valid and legal for online retailers as any other barcodes in circulation.

Our barcode numbers are not currently licensed out because the global licensing body does not own them – our numbers were sold into circulation before the licensing model came into effect, and we secured them from the original resellers. We can provide a full audit trail back to the original UCC barcode reseller.

Current situation

Amazon is now theoretically only accepting barcodes that are licensed rather than owned, so these do not seem to include the barcodes that we sell. In reality though, our barcode customers are still selling products on Amazon.

What does this mean?

It appears that Amazon does not accept our legitimate UCC-issued pre-2002 barcodes.

However, two factors suggest that this may be only a theoretical specification:

  • Amazon has millions of listed products with pre-2002 UCC-origin barcodes. It is almost infeasible that they would disqualify these products from their inventory, as the loss of global sales and user trust would be enormous.
  • Communications between Amazon and other resellers of pre-2002-barcodes indicate that what Amazon is actually trying to achieve is to dissuade users of fraudulent barcodes selling on the Amazon platform.
    Fraudulent barcodes? Yes, some online barcode users / sellers simply make up numbers or fraudulently duplicate legitimate barcode numbers! We have monitoring mechanisms in place and highlight these frauds wherever possible.

Conclusion

Many of our clients are using our barcodes on Amazon, however we can’t guarantee that are barcodes will be accepted on Amazon. Our barcodes come with a GTIN certificate of ownership, which can help your barcode be accepted onto the Amazon platforms. We also provide videos on how to use your barcodes on Amazon and information about common Amazon error codes and solutions. Amazon policy changes without warning to users, so we keep our up-to-date information here: https://internationalbarcodes.com/barcodes-for-amazon/