Error on Product Identity tab has appeared on a listing since the new Add A Product Listing was introduced
Hi All,
This is the first time I’m posting and I need some advice please. I have been selling on Amazon since 2018 so my first product listing and variations have been running for quit a while now.
My best selling product variation has been fine until the new Add A Product Listing was introduced but now I have an exclamation error on the Product Identity tab on the External Product ID that is stopping me making any changes to the listing at all.
It is only affecting one product although other later variations have been setup the same way. I am registered on GS1.
The error I have on the field which is non-editable is:
Value for ‘externally_assigned_product_identifier’ is longer than the allowed maximum (12 characters).
It is 13 characters (from GS1 website) and value is set to EAN
My other listings also have a 13 character value and are set to EAN without any errors showing.
These are all FBA products.
I wanted to check in here to see if anyone had the same issue on existing products and if it was solved without issue by Seller Support.
With Q4 underway I am tempted to leave it as it is until next year in case my best selling product gets de-listed while they are trying to fix it.
Any advice gratefully received.
3 replies
Seller_JzKY9LBgXOZrP
I’ve checked some of our listings with variations and we’ve not had the same issue but there might be something related. In one of the main categories we sell through, on Monday this week it was possible to add variations (from a choice of seven) when creating a listing. We discovered yesterday that for a new listing in the same category, the information now states “Variations are not available for this category”. So I wonder if Amazon’s change to prevent variations being created for listings is leading to the error you are seeing? It may not be, of course, but it’s to do with a variation and Amazon are certainly making changes in that area.
We’ll be reporting the absence of variations to Seller Support today and trying to find out if it is a policy change or a technical issue.
Seller_JzKY9LBgXOZrP
I’d love to be able to say that Seller Support knew of the issue, gave really useful information about it and fixed it quickly. Unfortunately it was the usual lack of Seller Support everyone already knows about. Five messages were sent to them over the course of the case and each time my questions were ignored and they did not deal with why the issues are occurring. The most recent two back from them were identical copy and paste replies.
The issue you described initially I did see once on one of our variation listings on Friday afternoon but have not since. It was also a valid EAN for which we’ve had no previous issues, but cannot get that to recreate. Is it still something you are seeing?
Mostly for us now are messages (when trying to edit listings) to say “This SKU has an inconsistent product classification with the ASIN. Please submit a feed to update this SKU to match the ASIN product classification” and “The variation theme that you selected previously is no longer available in this category. You can still edit existing variations, but you cannot add a new variation.”
Seller Support stated that if there is no option to create variations in Seller Central then it means a product category does not support them, but also that we can use an inventory template to create the variations. As a template does work, I put it to them that the particular product category must support variations but simply why does it not work via Seller Central? That was ignored.
As it is possible to create variations using a template I wonder if anything further will show for you if you download the template for the variation family with the issue? Hopefully a template may also enable you to make changes to the listing.
