A year unable to run Amazon deals. A seller we were going to work with lost acce
By Vanessa Hung · May 20, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
A year unable to run Amazon deals.
A seller we were going to work with lost access to deal recommendations for an entire promotional cycle, the Big Spring Sale, Prime Day, and Black Friday/Cyber Monday, all of them, with a clean audit returned by Amazon's own Troubleshooter every single time.
Their account had a 4.7 store rating, ASINs above the 4-star threshold, account health within the normal range, and steady growth, as flagged by Amazon's own sales dashboard. Every published criterion was met.
At first, we thought that something specific had been missed in the catalog or account configuration, something the Troubleshooter would show once we looked closer.
But we found out that Amazon's Deals program operates across two eligibility layers presented to sellers as one.
1️⃣ The published checklist, the one visible in Seller Central, the one the Troubleshooter evaluates.
2️⃣ An internal quality scoring model applied at the ASIN level and at the brand level, drawing on sales history, review volume, star rating, and inventory depth.
That second layer is not visible to sellers, is not evaluated by the Troubleshooter, and is addressed in a single sentence in Amazon's own policy documentation after the checklist has already been presented: "Even if they meet these criteria, some ASINs might not receive a recommendation due to additional factors."
That sentence means the program is invite-only above the floor. Passing the checklist confirms the account was not disqualified, it does not confirm the backend issued an invitation.
When Amazon's internal team responded to the escalation, we confirmed the reason for the block and why they didn't give any metric, no specific value, no defined threshold, and no target to reach when it happened.
The full case breakdown and escalation sequence are in this week's OSS Lab issue, check it out: https://lnkd.in/dfnnSwkG
If this situation looks familiar, that is where the next step lives.
🩵 Hit like if this reframes how you read the Deals program.
#AmazonSeller #SellerCentral #AmazonDeals #EcommerceOperations #AmazonFBA