Overview

Amazon error 30005 appears when a seller’s promotions feed contains a start or end date that Amazon deems too early, often because the date is in the past or falls outside the platform’s accepted window. The validation failure stops the offending promotion from being created, while any other correctly‑dated promotions in the same upload may still be processed. Sellers who rely on timed deals—such as Lightning Deals, coupons, or seasonal discounts—must understand the cause and remedy to keep campaigns on schedule.

Key Points

• Trigger condition — The error is raised when either PromotionStartDate or PromotionEndDate is earlier than the earliest date Amazon will accept, for example a start date of 2023‑11‑01 submitted on 2023‑11‑15.
• Affected fields — Only the date columns in the promotions feed are responsible; the rest of the record (SKU, discount amount, etc.) can be valid and still be processed.
• Partial feed rejection — Amazon rejects only the rows with invalid dates; a feed containing ten promotions may still publish the eight that meet the date criteria.
• Common source — Re‑using an old template without updating the date fields or overlooking timezone offsets (e.g., a UTC‑0 start time that translates to a past local time) frequently generates the error.
• No health penalty — The error does not affect account health metrics, but it does halt the intended promotion until the date issue is corrected.

How Error 30005 Is Generated

1. Feed ingestion — Amazon’s backend receives the uploaded promotions file and begins parsing each record. Example: A seller uploads a CSV with a row that lists PromotionStartDate=2024-02-01T00:00:00Z.
2. Date conversion — The system converts the supplied ISO 8601 timestamp to Amazon’s internal clock (UTC). If the converted time is earlier than the current processing timestamp, the date is flagged. Example: The upload occurs at 2024‑02‑02 08:00 UTC, making the February 1 start date a past value.