Overview

On March 15 2024 Amazon began returning error 30006 whenever a promotion feed includes a Promotion ID that violates the platform’s validation rules. The error stops the feed from being accepted, delaying the activation of new or updated promotions. Sellers who rely on automated feed creation must revise their ID‑generation logic to avoid missed discount windows and lost sales momentum.

Key Points

• Error 30006 definition — The system marks any PromotionID that does not meet the required syntax, causing the entire promotion feed to be rejected and preventing the promotion from going live.
• 80‑character ceiling — The PromotionID field cannot exceed 80 characters, counting every letter, number, hyphen, underscore and space; a string of 81 characters such as “SUMMER_SALE_2024_SPECIAL_OFFER_FOR_ALL_ELECTRONICS_PRODUCTS” will trigger the error.
• Allowed characters — Only alphanumeric characters (A‑Z, a‑z, 0‑9), hyphens (‑) and underscores (_) are permitted; inserting symbols like “#”, “%”, “$” or any other punctuation results in immediate rejection.
• Feed‑only scope — Validation is applied exclusively to XML or flat‑file promotion feeds submitted through MWS or the newer SP‑API; promotions entered manually via the Seller Central UI are not subject to this check.
• Common scenario — Sellers who concatenate product SKUs, campaign dates, and market tags often create IDs that exceed the length limit, especially when the SKU itself is long, leading to frequent 30006 occurrences.
• No health penalty — Although the error does not affect account health metrics, it stalls promotional visibility and can cost revenue during peak shopping periods such as Prime Day or Black Friday.

How Error 30006 Occurs

1. Generate PromotionID — An automated script assembles the campaign name, launch date, and SKU into a single string; for example, “BLACKFRIDAY_2024_11_27_SKU_1234567890_SPECIAL_OFFER” totals 78 characters and therefore complies with Amazon’s limit.
2. Add extra segment — The same script later appends a market‑segment tag to the same base, producing “BLACKFRIDAY_2024_11_27_SKU_1234567890_SPECIAL_OFFER_EU_MARKET”. The new identifier reaches 92 characters, surpassing the 80‑character ceiling and triggering error 30006.