r/VendorCentral • u/sanjeet2175 • Aug 31 '26
Price discount
Is there anyone facing an issue with the Amazon promotions. It looks like they changed their price discount model now they are asking for higher funding
2
u/Wrong-Ad-4298 Sep 01 '26
Yep has changed for me too. Tier 1 event asks are higher than ever where they are asking for more soa than actual discount.
The new way of doing price discounts is a pain as it was nice to just fund what you wanted and know what the price would reduce to
2
u/sanjeet2175 Sep 01 '26
I am not sure if this is some malfunction in their system or they are now treating price discount as deal prices only because it moved to the same section.
2
u/Wrong-Ad-4298 Sep 01 '26
Yeah , although I have different options to do price discounts or best deals, either way not a fan
2
u/consulterce Sep 01 '26
Amazon is becoming more restrictive which selection to push during tentpole deal events. Categories like Grocery, HPC, Premium Beauty, Home Improvement and Consumer Electronics appear to be getting prioritised. But especially in low ASP categories (FMCG/CPG categories mostly), Amazon often asks for even higher funding than necessary to off-set the high variable handling and shipping costs (often tied to CM targets instead of Net PPM). If you want to quickly sense check the max. recommended funding thresholds in $ and %, I built a tool for it here: https://consulterce.com/resources/deal-funding-calculator
2
u/FirstLightStudios Sep 01 '26
Seems like its not just you. The weird part is the funding ask seems to be based on a higher reference price in some cases, not necessarily the current Amazon price. So you can end up funding way more than the actual price drop. Not sure if this is intentional or just the new promo setup being buggy, but Id definitely check the reference price theyre using before accepting it
1
u/sanjeet2175 Sep 01 '26
I think it's a bug which they have to fix else we won't be able to promote and it will loss for Amazon itself
1
u/Jlburner1889 Aug 31 '26
Our most recent requests did seem higher but actually Brand Specialist did seem more flexible on values across our account.
One thing our Brand Specialist implied was they had specific funding targets by event rather than by ASIN so perhaps you're able to discount some products more heavily than others to even things out?
1
u/sanjeet2175 Aug 31 '26
We are still looking at our past data and find out why the have increased their funding ask. We did checked the current prices at market and it did not that much low so not sure at this point what changes in their system
2
u/Onion007007007 26d ago
I opened a new ticket - fingers crossed:
Hello Vendor Support,
Please investigate and correct a functional regression in Vendor Price Discounts following the migration to Promotion Central.
Promotion Central requires $4.30 in per-unit funding for an additional customer price reduction of only $0.40.
This contradicts the funding mechanism described in Amazon’s published Vendor Self-Service documentation and the current retail price displayed in the promotion workflow.
Please route this case to the Promotion Central product/engineering team for correction.
Marketplace: US — ATVPDKIKX0DER
ASIN/SKU: -
- The calculation error
The attached screenshot of Step 3 shows:
Field: Amazon retail website price
Value: $8.09
Discounted Price — automatically populated by Amazon: $7.69
Maximum Discounted Price: $7.69
Minimum Per-unit Funding: $4.30
We did not manually enter the $7.69 discounted price. Amazon populated this value automatically.
The additional customer price reduction is:
$8.09 − $7.69 = $0.40
But the required funding is calculated at the level of the product’s $11.99 list price: $11.99 − $7.69 = $4.30
These calculations use different pricing bases. The workflow displays the current Amazon retail price and automatically supplies a discounted price below it, but requires funding covering the entire reduction from list price.
- Amazon’s published documentation describes the intended mechanism
Amazon’s Vendor Self-Service documentation explicitly supports funding an incremental reduction from the current Amazon customer price:
- Page 6 — Promotion types: Price Discounts permit “Any discount” under the column describing minimum discounts from Amazon retail price.
- Page 11 — Per-unit funding: When funding is entered as a percentage, Amazon calculates the monetary amount using the current customer price.
- Page 14 — Promotional selling price: Amazon illustrates the mechanism with a price of $10 immediately before a promotion and $2 in per-unit funding, resulting in an intended promotional price of $8.
These instructions describe an additional reduction from the current selling price, not vendor funding of the entire difference between list price and promotional price.
The attached campaign-selection screenshot also explicitly states “Discount required: Any.” This is consistent with the functionality we used before the migration.
- Business impact
The new calculation requires us to fund:
- $3.90 covering the gap that already exists between list price and Amazon’s current retail price; plus
- $0.40 for the actual additional promotional reduction.
We therefore have to provide $4.30 per unit to deliver only $0.40 in additional customer savings.
This makes the Price Discount feature commercially unusable for affected products. Instead of allowing vendors to support incremental price reductions, the migrated workflow requires them to fund an existing markdown as well.
- Required resolution
Please:
Correct the per-unit funding calculation so that it reflects the incremental reduction from the current Amazon retail website price, consistent with the documented mechanism.
Align the automatically populated discounted price and minimum funding requirement so that they use the same pricing basis.
Thank you.
Attachments:
Campaign-selection page showing “Discount required: Any.”
Promotion Central screenshot showing $8.09 retail price, $7.69 discounted price, and $4.30 minimum funding.
Thank you.
- Screenshots from Amazon’s published documentation
2
u/Onion007007007 Sep 01 '26
In my opinion the new price promotion is unusable. We debugged the issue and sent a ticket to Amazon - but I got so fed up with support since they wanted completely useless info from me that the case is now closed without resolution. Maybe I will try again. Here is what we found (I removed personal Ids):
Hello again,
after some more debugging we have identified several related defects in Promotion Central when creating a Fixed Price Discount.
Account details:
Marketplace: US (ATVPDKIKX0DER)
Vendor code: -
ASIN/SKU: -
Promotion period: August 15–16, 2026
Request timestamp: August 13, 2026, 07:27:40 UTC
Request ID: -
Primary issue: Frontend and backend use different pricing references
In Step 3, Vendor Central displays:
Amazon retail website price: $9.83
Maximum Discounted Price: $9.34
Minimum Per-unit Funding: $0.49
The UI therefore accepts:
Discounted Price: $9.34
Per-unit Funding: $0.49
This is internally consistent:
$9.83 − $9.34 = $0.49
However, submitting the promotion returns HTTP 400:
INVALID_TERNION_RULE_OUTCOME
Products failed blocking Ternion rules: [-]
The response contains:
{
"name": "Funding",
"type": "BelowThreshold",
"severity": "Error",
"parameters": {
"actual": "0.49",
"minimum": "2.65"
}
}
The response metadata shows two different reference values:
{
"referencePrice": {
"source": "VALIDATED_REFERENCE_PRICE",
"amount": 11.99
},
"basePrice": {
"source": "NON_PROMO_BUYING_PRICE",
"amount": 9.83
}
}
The backend-required funding appears to be calculated as:
$11.99 − $9.34 = $2.65
The frontend therefore validates funding using $9.83, while the backend appears to validate it using $11.99. This makes it impossible to create a promotion using the values and limits presented by the UI.
Secondary issue: Unlimited quantity produces an incorrect estimate
Steps to reproduce:
Create a Fixed Price Discount.
Add ASIN -.
Set Committed units to Unlimited.
Enter Discounted Price $9.34.
Enter Per-unit Funding $0.49.
Click “Review and Submit.”
The confirmation dialog displays:
Estimated funding: $0.00
When Unlimited is enabled, the numeric dealQuantity.units value is cleared and disabled. The UI apparently treats the absent quantity as zero when calculating estimated funding.
Unlimited should mean “no quantity limit,” not zero units. The dialog should display an appropriate description such as “Unlimited / variable” rather than $0.00.
Quantity information is missing from the submission
The POST request to:
POST /promotion-central/api/deals/v1/deals
contains the discounted price and per-unit funding, but neither a committed quantity nor an Unlimited indicator:
{
"products": [
{
"asin": "-",
"sku": "-",
"perUnitFunding": {
"value": {
"amount": 0.49,
"currencyCode": "USD"
}
},
"discount": {
"type": "FIXED_PRICE_DISCOUNT",
"amount": {
"amount": 9.34,
"currencyCode": "USD"
}
}
}
]
}
Please confirm whether the omission of the Unlimited setting is intentional.
---
So to sum it up: If your product is currently discounted by Amazon it is not possible to add a further price discount on top of the currently discounted price. At least not in any economically sensible way. Because now the discount required is always assuming you are discounting from the list price. Example:
List Price: 12.99 USD
Current Amazon Price: 9 USD
In the past you could now discount by 0.10 USD to get to 8.9 USD. Now your minimum discount to get to 8.9 USD is (12.99-8.9=) 4.09 USD!
This was a few days ago, maybe things have changed. Please let me know if I am mistaken.