Can you edit EAN on Amazon products without affecting reviews?

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Prabhat Shah at DaytodayeBay is, as the name suggests, an eBay expert but has also been working with Amazon sellers since 2009 and can help you accelerate your online sales.

Today Prabhat shares that you can update your EAN‘s (GTIN) on Amazon:

Can you edit EAN on Amazon products without affecting reviews?

The quick answer is yes!

I recently received an email from Amazon customer support with confirmation that this is now possible:

Greetings from Amazon Seller Support,

Thank you for contacting us.

I understand that there is new EAN for ASIN#9937101743 and you want to know about the impact on the reviews if you update the new EAN. Let me address this for you.

You can change the EAN and there would be no impact on the reviews. Your reviews would not change if your are changing EAN number. Moreover, if you are facing any issues while updating the EAN number, please write back to us so that we can assist you on this.

For a long time, Amazon sellers were using EAN/UPC sourced from third parties and their legitimacy has always been questionable. Most sellers are not affected but there have been issues with EAN sourced from suppliers other than GS1. There have been detailed discussions on Amazon Seller’s forum.

Why haven’t sellers always used GS1 EAN/UPC GTINs?

1. More expensive than alternative suppliers

GS1 carries a joining fee and annual fee which is OK for large businesses but may appear unaffordable for small and start up businesses who only require 10 – 100 numbers. There are alternative sources that provide numbers with a one-off cost but these number are technically incorrect as they won’t identify your business and product correctly.

2. Lack of awareness that issues as described above could appear in the future

Online sellers didn’t realise that Amazon would do stringent checks on their numbers – Amazon have started verifying GTIN numbers against the GS1 database. Private Labels have flooded Amazon and standardised numbers are the only way to track the source of product if something goes wrong with the product.

How to edit an EAN on Amazon

Recently I changed EAN on one of my products to a legitimate GS1 UK EAN and all went well as suggested by Amazon customer support. The reviews have remained and searching with the new EAN is giving the correct result.

Find your GS1 GTIN

Open the product edit page on Amazon

Update your GTIN

Amazon search confirms the change has been successful

Where to get EANs

If you have products listed on Amazon which don’t use GS1 GTINs, now is the time to update them. You can contact GS1 direct, or as a GS1 UK solution provider Prabhat would be happy to assist.

6 Responses

  1. I rarely trust what Amazon Seller ‘Support’ say on the rare occasion they bother to answer a case as they don’t seem to read what you ask and usually don’t understand the question.

    Does this work with products enrolled in Brand Registry once a unique identifier value has been assigned to a SKU by Amazon?

  2. I have heard different things from different people on seller support so I would be wary of this tbh

  3. We have been changing EANs on listings for a long time now and have never had any issues with loosing reviews.

  4. Can you do a title that’s not a one-word answer? 😛
    there really shouldnt be an article under that, when just the word “yes” would suffice.

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