Let’s be real: There’s nothing more frustrating than logging into Seller Central to find your active LD lost its badge for no reason, or getting a random price error when you try to schedule a deal you’ve run a dozen times before. I’ve been there, and I spent two weeks troubleshooting these exact issues—comparing notes with 12 other sellers, testing fixes on my own listings, and figuring out why Amazon’s system is acting up. Here’s the breakdown, straight from someone who’s been in the trenches with this.

First, let’s cover the basics (for US sellers—EU, CA, AU folks, double-check your site’s deal policies, but most of this applies). For LDs, you need at least 15% off your official reference price—that’s usually your List Price or Typical Price, if you have those set. BDs only need 10% off. Your deal price also has to be lower than the Net Price (that’s the final price customers pay after all discounts, per the Feb 11, 2025 update), at least $0.01 below your Was Price, and no higher than your lowest sale price from the past 30 days (including prior deals or coupons).

Quick side note: There’s still debate in the seller community about whether deals need to be 5% below Was Price, not just $0.01. Amazon hasn’t said anything official, but a lot of us have gotten errors when we’re less than 5% off—and that’s a quick way to get stuck in a downward spiral of slashing deal prices every time. Just keep that in mind.

Most of the time, this all works fine—until the system’s reference price changes without you noticing. That’s exactly what’s happening right now.

So, what’s causing all these errors? We narrowed it down to three key changes Amazon rolled out in the first half of 2025—none of which were really announced, by the way.

First, that early May List Price/Typical Price refresh. Thousands of listings lost their official reference prices during this update, so the system started using Was Price as the default for discount calculations. That means instead of taking 15% off your List Price, you’re now forced to take 15% off your Was Price—which is almost always lower. I saw this hit 8 of my skincare ASINs: the deal dashboard suddenly showed my reference price as my $27.99 coupon price, not the $39.99 List Price I’ve had listed for 18 months. Total nightmare.

Second, the Was Price calculation got a quiet overhaul. Before, Was Price was the median of non-promotional prices from the past 90 days—no coupons, no deals, no PEDs, nothing. Now? If your listing is on sale 70%+ of the past 90 days (which most of us are, let’s be honest), Amazon includes ALL promotional prices in that median. Run coupons or PEDs almost every day? Your Was Price is now your lowest discounted price from the past 3 months.

One seller I work with learned this the hard way: she ran a 30% off code for a holiday weekend, drove 1,200 orders, and her Was Price stayed stuck at that discounted rate for 2 months—even though she went back to full price immediately after the promotion ended. And while some Partner Success Managers (PSMs) say custom brand-specific promotions don’t officially affect Was Price, our testing shows they often do. Play it safe: avoid steep temporary discounts if you plan to run deals soon.

Third, Amazon’s cracking down on that Feb 2025 Net Price rule. Your deal price has to be low enough that even after active coupons or PEDs, the final price still meets the minimum discount. And here’s the catch: LDs are a separate price point from your standard listing price, while BDs are a direct discount on your standard price—so coupon stacking works differently for each. That’s why you might get an error on one but not the other.

Let’s talk about the three most common errors we’re all seeing—and how to fix them fast:

  1. The system asks for an extra 5% off your last deal price. This is almost always the Net Price rule, especially if you run a standard 5% coupon. The system is asking for that extra 5% to account for your coupon, so the final customer price hits the minimum discount. Here’s how to confirm: drop your deal price by 5%, and the maximum recommended deal price will jump back up by 5%. You don’t have to slash your base deal price—just keep your 5% coupon active with the deal, and the system will approve it. Trust me, I’ve tested this on 7 ASINs now.

  2. The system makes you drop your deal price by $0.01 every time you schedule a new one. This happens when your Was Price is set to your last deal price, so the system thinks you need to go lower. But here’s the secret: it’s just a glitch. We’ve tested this on 17 ASINs, and 9 times out of 10, you can ignore the $0.01 request and submit the same price as last time—it’ll still get approved. The error just means the system’s Was Price data is out of sync with your actual reference price.

  3. Coupons suddenly won’t activate. Coupons need to be at least 5% below Was Price—and they can’t be more than 30% higher than Was Price (this rule prevents sellers from running a steep discount briefly, jacking up the price, then offering a coupon that looks more generous than it actually is). If your Was Price dropped to match your lowest promotional price, your usual coupon discount won’t hit that 5% threshold anymore. And new listings? No Was Price = no coupons. Wait until you have 2-3 weeks of consistent sales before setting up coupons—saved me a lot of headaches with my last launch.

Now, the fixes that actually work—we tested dozens, and these four steps fix 90% of errors without killing your margins:

• Space out your promotions. Try to run coupons, PEDs, or other temporary discounts for no more than 60% of the year, so your Was Price calculation stays based on your non-discounted standard price. If you do run a steep temporary promotion, schedule 3-5 days of full-price sales immediately after to keep that one-off discount from dragging your Was Price down long-term. Make sure your regular promotional prices are at least 5% higher than your planned deal price, so you still have room to hit the minimum discount requirement when you schedule a deal.

• Check your List Price and reference price every 2-4 weeks. Head into Seller Central and verify your List Price and Typical Price are showing correctly, especially after Amazon’s scheduled site updates. If they’re missing or wrong, open a support case to request a reset, and have three or more non-discounted order receipts ready to submit as proof of your standard price. Pro tip: Don’t create fake orders to reset your reference price—that’s a violation of Amazon’s Seller Code of Conduct and can get your account suspended.

• Track Was Price changes monthly. Use tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout to monitor it, or just open a support case once a month to ask for the current Was Price on your top ASINs. This lets you adjust your coupons/deals before you hit errors.

• Fix active deal errors fast. If a deal goes down mid-campaign due to a pricing error, first check if your reference price was dropped during the latest refresh. If it was, submit an appeal with your non-discounted order proof to get the reference price reset as quickly as possible. If the error is from Net Price rules, add the required coupon to your listing or adjust the deal price by 1-2% to meet the threshold, and the deal badge should reactivate within 2 hours.

That’s everything I’ve learned over the past two weeks. Has anyone else run into these weird deal errors lately? What fixes worked for your listings? Drop a comment below—I’m curious if anyone’s found other workarounds for that Was Price quirk we haven’t tested yet. Happy to help troubleshoot if you’re stuck!